One More Puppy Under the Car

In July 2013, in an interview to Reuters, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, was asked: “Do you regret what happened in 2002 [during the riots in Gujarat]”? Modi replied “…any person if we are driving a car, we are a driver, and someone else is driving a car and we’re sitting behind, even then if a puppy comes under the wheel, will it be painful or not? Of course it is…If something bad happens anywhere, it is natural to be sad” (sic).[1] We are all aware of the political storm that broke out after this interview. I am afraid Prime Minister Modi has had one more puppy moment when he commented on the Dadri lynching incident and labeled it as merely “unfortunate”.[2]

Dadri and its aftermath

Between the time that Muhammad Aklakh was lynched in Dadri and Modi finally broke his silence, politicians of all hues sought to extract much political mileage from the incident. However, the behavior of BJP members was exceptional in fanning the already tense communal situation. Local BJP leader Srichand Sharma[3], Nawab Singh Nagar (a former BJP MLA from Dadri)[4] and BJP Union Minister Mahesh Sharma[5] had already made inflammatory statements before Asaduddin Owaisi (AIMM),[6] Rahul Gandhi (Congress)[7] and Arvind Kejriwal (AAP)[8] visited Dadri. The worst of them all was, of course, Sangeet Som who spoke of a “befitting reply”[9] and referred to Aklakh’s family as “cow killers”.[10] Minister of State in the BJP government, Sanjeev Balyan, threatened more violence if cow slaughter were not stopped.[11] The vitriol spewed by the BJP members was not matched by anyone, not even Azam Khan who wished to approach the United Nations in connection with the Dadri killing.[12]

The Dadri incident took place on 28 September 2015,[13] while Modi made his Dadri-specific statement as late as 15 October 2015. In fact, in the ten days following Dadri, Modi, who is famously Twitter-happy, found the time to tweet about many different issues but he uttered not a word about the lynching. His tweets, during this time, included: birthday greetings to Mahesh Sharma, governors of Bihar and Nagaland, David Cameron and Vladimir Putin; congratulations to Pankaj Advani on winning the billiards world championship, Sushama Swaraj on her UN speech (5 tweets);  report of Angela Merkel’s visit (11 tweets); rallies in Bihar (11 tweets); Swachh Bharat (5 tweets) among some others.[14] In between the tweets, he also spoke on the radio programme Mann Ki Baat,[15] but the silence on Dadri remained complete and deafening.

Was it too much to expect that the Prime Minister should speak up on the Dadri incident? For a person who communicates so regularly and frequently on Twitter and on the radio, the silence was certainly shocking. The BJP brigade was quick to defend Modi’s silence. Modi cannot speak on every murder, said Sanjeev Balyan.[16] BJP secretary Siddharth Nath Singh threw in the emotional angle, saying that the Prime Minister is a “sensitive person” and should not be judged by “what he writes or doesn’t write on social media”.[17] Modi himself, in his statement of October 14, threw in the towel when he said “Incidents like Dadri…are really sad but what is the Centre's role in them”?[18] When there was such a clamour for Modi to speak on the Dadri incident, no one expected such a weak and pusillanimous statement from the Prime Minister of this country. Here was the man who had boasted of a 56-inch chest[19] hiding behind India’s federal set-up as an excuse for not taking a stand. Despite what the lackeys might say, there is much that Modi could have said without damaging India’s federal structure. He could have expressed outrage at the Dadri incident. It is common knowledge that law and order is the responsibility of the state but why should that stop the Prime Minister from commenting on it? In a brilliantly argued piece, Srinivasan Jain is scathing in his critique of the PM’s silence.[20] Having stridently spoken of a fictitious “pink revolution” (apparent reference to the slaughter of cattle during the UPA regime) while campaigning for the 2014 general elections,[21] could Modi still command the moral authority to rein in the rabid elements in the BJP? Was that the reason for his silence? He had sown the communal wind in 2014 and was now reaping the whirlwind in the form of Sangeet Som and Sakshi Maharaj.

Writers protest

Had Modi been so inclined, he could have taken the wind out of the sails of the protesting writers (who returned their awards) by taking action against members of his party who had made outrageous communal statements. That he did not do so is hardly surprising: Sakshi Maharaj, Giriraj Kishore and Yogi Adityanath have made innumerable offensive comments in the past and all that we have got is silence from the PM. If Amit Shah had summoned the recalcitrant BJP members, apparently because Modi was “very angry”, in early October instead of on 19 October[22] the whole sorry spectacle of vicious attacks on some of India’s finest minds – Nayantara Sahgal, Shashi Deshpande and other award winners – would have been avoided. Of course, it is well-known that the authors were protesting not just the Dadri killing but also the assassination of M.M. Kalburgi allegedly by a Hindutva outfit that found his views unpalatable.

I am certain that it does not matter to the unthinking and blinkered BJP supporters, but India’s reputation as the world’s largest democracy has been besmirched.[23] As if this were not bad enough, the reactions of the BJP towards the protesting authors were particularly odious and designed to paint them as individuals who had thrived under Congress rule and now found themselves left out in the cold. Arun Jaitley called it a manufactured revolt and questioned how many of these writers protested during the Emergency and the 1984 Sikh riots.[24] Is Jaitley really ignorant of the fact that Nayantara Sahgal was a bitter opponent of the Emergency?[25] Is he genuinely unaware that a large number of other artists had protested against the Emergency?[26] Swapan Dasgupta[27] – him of the smug looks and triumphant smiles – and Tavleen Singh[28] alleged that the protest of authors was due to their hatred of Modi. Others made it a Congress versus BJP issue, labeling the authors as pro-Congress,[29] presumably, since they did not protest the 1984 Sikh riots. The charge of being pro-Congress is quite easily dismissed and, surely, this must be apparent even to those in the BJP. If the authors did not protest after the 1984 riots, many of them did not do so after the Gujarat riots of 2002 either. So, if at all, the authors are guilty of two acts of omission but, since they protested neither riots, they cannot be accused of being pro-Congress and anti-BJP. In fact, accusing the authors of partisanship or selective protests is to insult them and devalue their contributions to arts and literature. I wholeheartedly agree with Rana Ayyub when she calls on us to celebrate the dissenting writers.[30] The works of these writers and their protests should inspire Indians to proudly believe that liberal thought is alive and strong in the country.

It is important for the BJP to label any protest, any dissent as a Congress bias. Given the disdain in which Congress is held by a large number of Indians, anything that smacks of being pro-Congress is automatically suspect. Calling the protesting authors pro-Congress is a neat trick to deflect attention from the fact that the authors are protesting against a very disturbing trend in India, namely, the silencing of inconvenient voices like Kalburgi, Pansare and Dabholkar. The blame for these killings is squarely on violent outfits – can they still be called fringe parties? – which claim to represent a militant Hindutva. I don’t think anyone has blamed the BJP for these murders but what is expected is an unequivocal condemnation by the party without any attempt at pointing out extenuating circumstance, such as hurting the feelings of the majority community. This is what the authors were expecting from the Prime Minister which, alas, was not forthcoming.

Cow politics

The reaction of the BJP and other right-wing outfits like the RSS to the Dadri killing has been disappointing in the extreme. The RSS calls it a natural reaction to cow slaughter,[31] never mind the fact that there was no real slaughter of any cow. The BJP’s Sangeet Som called Aklakh’s family “cow killers” as if that was enough justification for the murder. The Prime Minister gave encouragement to this by referring to “pseudo-secularism” in his statement.[32] This reference to pseudo-secularism is again a clever attempt to implicate the Congress in the protests against Dadri since this has been BJP’s favourite jibe since the elections of 2014. Once again, the BJP, by equating secularism with Congress – hence, all the ghastly epithets such as ‘sickularism’ –, seeks to discredit the hallowed, democratic idea of secularism, understood either as a separation of the government and religion or as a non-discriminatory treatment of all religions. The BJP tries to announce its “genuine” secularism by espousing the noble notion of sabka saath, sabka vikas (development for all) but does little to distance itself from its fellow travelers from the Hindutva brigade that blatantly display their communalism. Whether the BJP has the gumption and courage to dump its ideological masters in the RSS as well its fringe elements and remain steadfast to its secular election promise remains to be seen. The evidence so far does not inspire much confidence especially when the so-called fringe elements, such as Sakshi Maharaj and Yogi Adityanath, are among the elected MPs of the BJP.

Cow politics has become the latest tool in the hands of the Hindutva brigade to vent their animosity and hatred for minorities. In the process, they have destroyed the core values of true Hinduism, namely, tolerance and diversity. The despairing aspect of this development is that all political parties have caved in to this assault on Hinduism. For instance, the Congress has promised to support an all-India ban on cow slaughter.[33] Not only is everyone falling in line, but any dissent from this “manufactured” consensus is seen as anti-Hindu, nay, anti-Indian! Haryana’s Chief Minister represents this position when he stated that “Muslims can continue to live in this country, but they will have to give up eating beef”.[34] The storm-troopers of the BJP, who believe that having a majority in the parliament or in assemblies permits the party to ban cow slaughter and even ban beef-eating, display a very poor understanding of democracy and Hinduism. The possibility that such an aggressive position on cows leads to loss of innocent lives is of little concern to this unthinking lot. It is beyond their comprehension that such aggressive behavior will lead to the talibanisation of India. Aklakh was killed on the basis of a rumour that he had killed a cow which is almost an exact parallel of the killing of a 27-year-old woman named Farkhunda in Kabul on the basis of rumours that she had burnt a copy of the Koran.[35] It should also be remembered that Aklakh’s killing was not an isolated incident: 22 year old Noman was lynched to death in Himachal Pradesh,[36] two youths lynched were in Uttar Pradesh[37] and Zahid was burnt to death in Kashmir.[38] Mere suspicion of cow smuggling/cow slaughter/beef eating seems to be enough to warrant a death sentence, much like the death sentences carried out by the Taliban.

Legality of cow slaughter ban

The usual defense of the ban on cow slaughter (and extended to eating beef as well) is that it is mandated by Article 48 (see endnote [39] for a statement of this Article) of the Indian constitution. State governments which have passed such laws have presumably employed, what economists call, a Benthamite Social Welfare Function (SWF)[40] by means of which the positive change in the welfare of those who worship the cow more than compensates for the negative change in the welfare of those who might lose by the ban. I don’t think anyone has denied that those occupied in the business of slaughtering cattle will lose their livelihoods but their losses have been deemed small enough to be ignored. Economists and social scientists have, for long, recognized serious problems with a Benthamite SWF; the following quote illustrates this unease: “…the complete loss of income of a single agent [any individual]…cannot be counterbalanced by a finite income [or welfare] increase of all other agents [individuals]”.[41] But there can be a stronger objection to the imposition of such laws apart from the technical one of using an inappropriate SWF.

A law passed by a government can be rejected in India if it conflicts with the fundamental rights as enshrined in the constitution. My view is that the law banning cow slaughter possibly violates Article 21 of the constitution which protects the Fundamental Right to Life The full import of this Right to Life can be gleaned by referring to the judgment of Justice Chandrachud in the case “Olga Tellis & Ors vs Bombay Municipal Corporation” in 1985.[42] In brief, Justice Chandrachud extends the Fundamental Right to Life to include the Right to Livelihood (see endnote[43] for an extract from this judgement).

I am no expert in law, but my commonsense reading of the judgment suggests that the right to livelihood of those who depended on cow slaughter has been abrogated and this violates their Fundamental Right to Life. In the terminology of economics, Justice Chandrachud’s judgment has the flavor of a Rawlsian SWF[44] which states social welfare increases only if there is an increase in the welfare of the relatively worse-off individual(s) in society.

Summing up

Any sensitive, thinking Indian is bound to be disturbed by the sequence of events of the last few months, starting from the murders of independent thinkers to the killing of an individual in the privacy of his home. India has had a bloody history of communal violence but rarely has a killing such as Aklakh’s happened before. Never before have temple loud-speakers been used to incite a mob to murder an individual. However, there is a sordid history of governments abdicating their responsibilities: Sikh riots of 1984, demolition of Babri Masjid and its aftermath, Godhra attack and the mayhem in the rest of Gujarat and, now, the supine response of the present government to the violence of cow politics. I fear things will get worse before one can hope for any improvement in Indian society. Malevolent genies, once released, are notoriously difficult to stuff back into the bottle.

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[1] http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2013/07/12/interview-with-bjp-leader-narendra-modi/

[2] http://www.livemint.com/Politics/RdJb5L8xp3iD5gc2GSWOjJ/Narendra-Modi-says-Dadri-beef-lynching-sad-and-unwelcome.html

[3] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/dadri-lynching-one-bjp-leader-calls-for-a-mahapanchayat-another-blames-the-victim-family/

[4] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/dadri-lynching-one-bjp-leader-calls-for-a-mahapanchayat-another-blames-the-victim-family/

[5] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/dadri-lynching-an-accident-dont-give-it-a-communal-twist-says-union-minister-mahesh-sharma/

[6] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/dadri-killing-linked-to-religion-aimim-leader-asaduddin-owaisi/

[7] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/dadri-lynching-rahul-gandhi-visits-bisara-village-meets-family-of-akhlaq/

[8] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/kejriwal-stopped-from-entering-dadri-village-asks-why-me/

[9] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/in-dadri-sangeet-som-accuses-up-govt-of-framing-innocent-for-lynching-incident/

[10] http://www.ndtv.com/cheat-sheet/mob-killing-sangeet-som-visits-dadri-homeguards-constable-detained-1225905

[11] http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/dadri-lynching-incident-pm-cant-comment-on-each-and-every-incident-says-bjp-leader/1/490228.html

[12] http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/will-take-up-dadri-mob-killing-with-un-says-minister-azam-khan-1226291

[13] http://www.thehindu.com/specials/in-depth/the-dadri-lynching-how-events-unfolded/article7719414.ece

[14] https://twitter.com/narendramodi?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

[15] http://www.narendramodi.in/mann-ki-baat

[16] http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/dadri-lynching-incident-pm-cant-comment-on-each-and-every-incident-says-bjp-leader/1/490228.html

[17] http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/pm-sensitive-person-seized-of-dadri-lynching-incident-bjp/story-ZVeLMycs7eplzKxtFwpptO.html

[18] http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/pm-modi-says-dadri-mob-killing-controversy-over-ghulam-ali-concert-sad-1231924

[19] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Will-take-a-56-inch-chest-to-turn-UP-into-Gujarat-Modi-to-Mulayam/articleshow/29269342.cms

[20] http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/gai-pe-charcha-bjp-and-cow-violence-1234237?pfrom=home-opinion

[21] http://www.ndtv.com/elections-news/governments-pink-revolution-destroying-cattle-says-narendra-modi-555981

[22] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pm-modi-upset-over-controversial-remarks-on-beef-amit-shah-summons-bjp-leaders-sources/article7776809.ece

[23] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/world/asia/india-writers-return-awards-to-protest-government-silence-on-violence.html?emc=edit_th_20151018&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=69322355&_r=0

[24] http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/it-s-a-manufactured-protest-says-jaitley-on-akademi-awards-issue/story-LuA2LrQOHqaa3UeASBjJ5N.html

[25] http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-return-of-sahitya-akademi-award-not-a-first-nayantara-sahgal-bitterly-opposed-the-emergency-too-2132374

[26] http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/the-morning-after-how-artists-and-individuals-creatively-resisted-emergency/

[27] http://www.swapan55.com/2015/10/the-flawed-logic-of-award-returnees.html

[28] http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/fifth-column-literary-politics/

[29] http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/writers-protest-is-congress-sponsored-alleges-bjp-115101501034_1.html

[30] http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/celebrate-not-mock-the-dissenting-writers-1233429

[31] http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-rss-mouthpiece-defends-dadri-lynching-calls-it-a-natural-reaction-to-sin-of-cow-slaughter-2135992

[32] http://www.livemint.com/Politics/RdJb5L8xp3iD5gc2GSWOjJ/Narendra-Modi-says-Dadri-beef-lynching-sad-and-unwelcome.html

[33] http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/digvijaya-singh-congress-will-back-beef-ban/1/491222.html

[34] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/muslims-can-live-in-this-country-but-they-will-have-to-give-up-eating-beef-says-haryana-cm-manohar-lal-khattar/

[35] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/11585490/Four-to-hang-for-mob-killing-of-Afghan-woman-accused-of-burning-Koran.html

[36] http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/suspected-bajrang-dal-members-lynch-man-over-alleged-cow-smuggling/story-MRBEhyD4UqwjZg1wzwjm6J.html

[37] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/days-after-dadri-lynching-mob-beats-up-two-over-alleged-cow-slaughter-in-mainpuri/

[38] http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/clashes-in-jammu-as-trucker-targeted-over-beef-rumours-dies-1233569

[39] http://lawlex.org/lex-bulletin/article-21-right-to-life-livelihood/3631

Article 48 under Directive Principles of State Policy states “The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle”

[40] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-42-environmental-policy-and-economics-spring-2011/lecture-notes/MIT14_42S11_lec02.pdf

[41] http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hejc/papers/review_swf_fuessel_prot.pdf (quote taken from p. 5)

[42] http://indiankanoon.org/doc/709776/

[43] “The sweep of the right to life conferred by Article 21 is wide and far reaching. It does not mean merely that life cannot be extinguished or taken away … except according to procedure established by law... An equally important facet of that right is the right to livelihood because, no person can live without the means of living, that is, the means of livelihood. If the right to livelihood is not treated as a part of the constitutional right to life, the easiest way of depriving a person his right to life would be to deprive him of his means of livelihood to the point of abrogation”.

[44] http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-42-environmental-policy-and-economics-spring-2011/lecture-notes/MIT14_42S11_lec02.pdf