Nayantara, a niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, said people were being “killed for not agreeing with the ruling party’s ideology”. Referring to the recent killings of rationalist and writer M M Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Akhlaq, she said “….. in this rising tide of hatred, India is being unmade, being destroyed”. Vajpeyi said, “it is high time that writers take a stand against such incidents”.

After days of ominous silence, which drew widespread criticism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, spoke: “In a democracy everyone has to speak their mind. But Hindu musts decide whether they want to fight Muslims or poverty. Muslims must decide whether they want to fight Hindus or poverty”. PM asked the people to ignore “irrelevant” comments from politicians in what is seen as a stern message to rabble-rousers making incendiary statements about Dadri incident over cow-slaughter rumour.

Modi’s pitch for religious harmony came amid a growing clamour for him to speak on 55-year-old Mohammed Akhlaq’s killing that sparked off widespread outrage and a larger debate on the subject of beef ban. The Prime Minister broke his silence a day after President Pranab Mukherjee exhorted the people not to allow the core values of India’s civilization to wither away and reiterated that “over the years, our civilization has celebrated diversity, plurality and promoted and advocated silence. These values have kept us together over centuries”.

PM’s days of silence could have many reasons. But it has one fallout; it allowed full play to the voice of the bigots within, who can no more be described as the fringe, and who seek to cast the victim as the culprit and use the lynching to inflame the BJP base in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere. They include an MP like Sakshi Maharaj, an MLA like Sangeet Som and a Union Minister like Mahesh Sharma. The Dadri incident will inevitably have impact on the coming elections in Bihar. One wonders if a single Muslim will vote for the BJP?

The lynching of Akhlaq may have set off echoes that could return to haunt a government whose mandate was made up of a positive vote for change and a relegated regime. Even as Modi embodied the forceful alternative to a weak and discredited regime, many supported him for also representing a macular Hindutva, but many others voted for him with the hope that he would, if only for strategic and opportunistic reasons, keep the anti-minority strain in the BJP from spilling over.

The story of the cow is riddled with puzzles and paradoxes. The ritual killing of cattle was prevalent among the Vedic people, who routinely sacrificed cattle and ate their flesh. The Rigveda frequently refers to the cooking of the flesh of animals, including that of ox, as an offering to gods. The post Mayuran lawgivers are either ambivalent or generally reticent on the issue, more often, disapprove of cattle killing. The post Mayuran law books either restrict cow killing to guest reception or are reticent about it. Interestingly, they try to cover up the issue by approving of all sacrifices having Vedic sanction because, according to them, Vedic killing is not killing. This obfuscation was accompanied by the most-simultaneous development of the idea of the Kali Yuga. During Kali age, the Brahiminical texts tell us, a number of earlier practices. Repeated assertions that the cow should not be killed in the Kali age tended to make the disappearance of beef from the Brahmin menu. The killing of cows now came in for condemnation in religious books and now cow killer was deemed to become untouchable.

During medieval age cow killing became the basis of religious differentiation between Hindus and Muslims, who were beef eaters. It may have been in response to this kind of religious conflict that Akbar, under influence of Jains, issued firmans ordering his officials not to allow the slaughter of animals, including cows on specific occasions—a policy followed by Jahangir. Obviously, both were trying to control interreligious tensions. Even the will of Babur, which advised Humayun not to allow killing of cows, may have been a response to the views of Brahmins. There is no doubt that during the medieval period, the cow was emerging as an emotive cultural symbol in Brahminical circles. It became more emotive with the rise of Maratha power in the 17th century. (IPA Service)