Litmus test for Indian secularism: Don't milk the cow politically

Would you like your government to spend Rs 18,000 crores a year -- or half the total Indian expenditure on primary education -- on 10 million aged cows and bullocks? Want a special paramilitary Central Rapid Police Task Force to save cows?

Do you believe "the most extreme form of cruelty" is not mass murder or Nazi-style torture of human beings, but the "cruel treatment of cows"?

These questions aren't rhetorical. The cost-estimate derives from calculations by Prof N.S. Ramaswamy, former director of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and chair of the government's Meat Committee and Animal Welfare Board (AWB).

India has 210 million cows and bullocks. If the 10 million cows slaughtered each year are to be kept alive for five years, they will need as much additional pasture land as India has. If Rs 10 is spent on each animal daily, that will annually cost over Rs 18,000 crores!

The cow-protection force demand comes from AWB chairman GM Lodha, who recently ordered Guwahati zoo officials to stop feeding beef to lions and tigers. They were fed live chickens, on whose feathers they nearly choked to death. The extreme cruelty statement is in the Prevention of Cruelty to Cows Bill, 2003.

Its Preamble calls the cow "the embodiment of divine virtues like love, compassion, benevolence, ..." This is perhaps the first Indian Bill to invoke divinity, and impose one particular faith upon society. It makes the killing of cows (or abetment) non-bailable, and punishable with 2-7 years' imprisonment. The Bill is a litmus-test for resisting majoritarianism.

Banning cow-slaughter will violate two fundamental rights -- the freedom to live (and eat) as one wishes (provided that doesn't infringe other people's rights), and the right to "carry on any occupation, trade or business".

This violation is especially egregious because it panders to a particular group in India's multi-cultural, multi-religious society -- under the false pretext of respecting "religious sentiments".

It's doubtful if most Hindus want cow-slaughter banned. Many are ambivalent about reconciling the spiritual and practical aspects of life. Some believe the cow is sacred. But they treat her badly.

Most cows that roam India's streets foraging for food and obstructing traffic are half-starved or sick. They eat rotten vegetables, meat, and above all, plastic bags. Bullocks are treated worse. According to Prof Ramaswamy, they daily receive 500 million beatings.

Most Hindus have the farmer's attitude to cattle. They sell them off once their utility is exhausted. Indian cattle-owners are largely Hindus. They also butcher the male-calves of exotic breeds soon after birth. (They cannot serve as draught animals). So the cow-slaughter issue is related to intra-Hindu politics.

A ban will only drive cow-slaughter underground. About half of India's meat animals are killed illegally -- outside authorised slaughterhouses. The proposed law, with heavy penalties for ill-treating cows, won't stop this.

Banning cow-slaughter will impose huge economic costs. India is 40-50 percent short of fodder. Keeping ailing, old, cattle -- and especially all bulls, irrespective of age -- forcibly alive by feeding them will worsen the shortage, resulting in higher milk prices.

There will be the additional loss of $1 billion from forgone exports of leather and meat products. Besides, 15 million people associated with the bovine-livestock economy will lose their livelihoods. This also means a value-addition loss of Rs 15,000 crore.

Finally, it's wrong to claim that Hindus don't eat beef. Surveys show that low-caste Hindus and Dalits regularly do so. In Kerala, beef accounts for 40 percent of all meat consumed. Four-fifths of the people eat it.

Indian beef is at least twice as cheap as mutton or chicken. It is the poor's preferred source of first-class protein. Surveys of butchers show that three-fourths of Indian beef is consumed by non-Muslims. Beef production has been annually rising at 7 per cent, compared to 4-5 percent for mutton/chicken.

The proposed ban originates in the mistaken belief that cow-slaughter was "imported" into India by "invaders". Eminent historians say beef-eating was integral to ancient dietary customs. Animal sacrifice, including killing cows, is prescribed in many scriptures, including the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Dharmashastras, etc. All groups, including Brahmins, consumed beef in ancient India.

In no major scripture, says Professor D.N. Jha, of Delhi University and author of The Myth of the Holy Cow, "is killing a cow described as a grave sin, unlike drinking liquor or killing a Brahmin... It is only in the 19th century that the demand for banning cow-slaughter emerged as a tool of mass political mobilisation."

Prof Jha's book was banned in 2001. After the ban was lifted, no Indian publisher would print it. He had to get it published in Britain.

The Bill hypocritically bans cow-slaughter on animal-rights grounds. If its real objective is to prevent cruelty to animals, then why single out the cow when hundreds of other animals are maltreated?

Many states rightly protest against the Bill on a subject which belongs to their domain. Meghalaya's chief minister says: "A particular diet may be poison to one community, but food for another [For] the Northeast's hill people, the main diet is beef." Mizoram's chief minister fears the next call: ban pig slaughter! "Beef and pork are part of our food habits".

Even Andhra Pradesh spurns banning cow-slaughter. Some 3.5 million people are dependent on it. India's two most mechanised slaughterhouses, including Al-Kabeer's, are in Andhra. Al-Kabeer, a big beef exporter, is owned by a Hindu!

The BJP has manufactured a homogenous holy-cow "tradition", which it's trying to ram down the throats of all Indians. This majoritarianism cannot be justified by the Directive Principles of the Constitution. Article 48 says: "The state shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines [and take] steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and other ... cattle".

The BJP's agenda is nauseatingly parochial. The Bill must be scrapped.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.