Instead of Beef vs Muslims, liberals should frame the debate as Extortionists vs Indians

File photo of a protester against the assaults on Muslims and Dalits in New Delhi | Burhaan Kinu/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

For Golwalkar and RSS, cow was always a political weapon, and there was nothing religious about it.

Lynching after lynching in the name of the cow has become the new normal. Every time such an event happens, the Hindu rights’ defence is the holy cow. For them, the issue is not the death of a man but beef.

Lynchings will stop when cow slaughter stops, says RSS leader Indresh Kumar. Liberals happily fall into this trap and start debating Cow versus Man.

Cow versus Man is how the RSS wants it framed, and many liberals oblige. But the issue is not cow at all. If a Muslim is so much as seen with a cow, lynch mobs pounce on him. Every Muslim is a beef eater in their dictionary, and all meat is beef.

Many of these gau rakshak groups are actually extortionists – people who charge money to allow valid cattle trade that has nothing to do with slaughtering. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has alleged that in the Alwar case too, it was extortion that was the issue.

If it was actually a matter of religious faith, why aren’t any gau rakshaks worked up when hundreds of cows die of neglect in cow shelters?

For the RSS and its affiliate organisations, cow and beef are political weapons, and not religious symbols. The religious devotion that many Hindus have towards the cow is being used as a political tool to further Hindutva and subjugate Muslims. The only fault of Muslims is that their religion does not prohibit them from eating beef.

That is why liberals make a mistake when they use the word ‘cow’ or ‘beef’ in the debate. The moment one has used these words, the lynch mobs have won the debate. Instead of Beef versus Muslims or Cow versus Man, the debate should be framed as Extortionists versus Indians.

Data collated by IndiaSpend shows that Muslims are the majority victims of these extortionists, but they are not the only ones. Dalits, tribals and even caste Hindus are among the victims.

Golwalkar’s idea

M.S. Golwalkar, the second chief of the RSS and a major influence on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was the man responsible for making cow slaughter a big issue in mainstream politics.

Under Golwalkar’s leadership, the RSS and its affiliates had launched a cow protection movement in the 1960s. Demanding a complete all-India ban on cow slaughter, sadhus attacked Parliament and other buildings around it in November 1966.

In 1967, Indira Gandhi government set up a committee to look into the issue, and placed Golwalkar and other anti-cow slaughter activists in the committee. The idea of setting up the committee was to bide time, which it did very well for a full 12 years. It didn’t even submit its report – that was never the point.

One of the committee’s members was Verghese Kurien, the milkman of India responsible for the success of Amul. Over the years, Kurien became friends with Golwalkar. In his autobiography, I Too Had a Dream, Kurien wrote about how Golwalkar told him it was just politics.

From Kurien’s book:

… One rather unusual and unexpected development during our regular committee meetings was that during that time, Golwalkar and I became close friends. People were absolutely amazed to see that we had become so close that whenever he saw me walk into the room he would rush to embrace me. He would take me aside and try to pacify me after our meetings, ‘Why do you keep losing your temper with the Shankaracharya? I agree with you about him. But don’t let the man rile you. Just ignore him’.

Golwalkar was a very small man – barely five feet – but when he got angry fire spewed out of his eyes. What impressed me most about him was that he was an intensely patriotic Indian. You could argue that he was going about preaching his brand of nationalism in a totally wrong way but nobody could question his sincerity. One day after one of our meetings when he had argued passionately for banning cow slaughter, he came to me and asked, ‘Kurien, shall I tell you why I’m making an issue of this cow slaughter business?’

I said to him, ‘Yes, please explain to me because otherwise you are a very intelligent man. Why are you doing this?’

‘I started a petition to ban cow slaughter actually to embarrass the government,’ he began explaining to me in private. ‘I decided to collect a million signatures for this to submit to the Rashtrapati. In connection with this work I travelled across the country to see how the campaign was progressing. My travels once took me to a village in UP. There I saw in one house, a woman, who having fed and sent off her husband to work and her two children to school, took this petition and went from house to house to collect signatures in that blazing summer sun. I wondered to myself why this woman should take such pains. She was not crazy to be doing this. This is when I realised that the woman was actually doing it for her cow, which was her bread and butter, and I realised how much potential the cow has.’

‘Look at what our country has become. What is good is foreign, what is bad is Indian. Who is a good Indian? It’s the fellow who wears a suit and a tie and puts on a hat. Who is a bad Indian? The fellow who wears a dhoti. If this nation does not take pride in what it is and merely imitates other nations, how can it amount to anything? Then I saw that the cow has potential to unify the country – she symbolizes the culture of Bharat. So I tell you what, Kurien, you agree with me to ban cow slaughter on this committee and I promise you, five years from that date, I will have united the country. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’m not a fool, I’m not a fanatic. I’m just cold-blooded about this. I want to use the cow to bring out our Indianness, so please cooperate with me on this.’

We know what Golwalkar’s idea of Indianness meant. Golwalkar said elsewhere, “Those only are nationalist patriots, who with the aspiration to glorify the Hindu race and Nation next to their heart are prompted… to achieve that goal.” The rest are “traitors and enemies to the National Cause”.