Cows and beef do not have such baggage in many areas and don’t fit into the same contested conceptual space. This is precisely why, there has been no concerted effort by holy-cow-lovers to actively lecture about the “horridness” of beef consumption or to push beef-ban in areas like Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland, Meghalaya, etc. The natives of these areas largely do not share the contested status of cow. Those whose political memories go back to before Google age might remember George Gilbert Swell, MP. The late George Gilbert Swell in a sterling speech in the parliament of the Indian Union talked about his people, who were not part of any Hindu-Muslim binary but for whom beef was a food as good as any other. He talked about the cow-belt and the non-cow belt. He was saying this in a House that is run by a constitution that encourages the state to take necessary steps to single out cows for protection. Whose principles are these? Clearly not Swell's or his people's. All the eloquence about 'unity in diversity' notwithstanding, some of the diverse are necessarily silenced, and the list of the silenced is predictable. Thankfully, not all diversities have been domesticated enough to be featured in the Mumbai airport or NOIDA's Great India Place for yuppie Indian consumption. Some diversities retain tooth and nail and other attributes of diversity beyond Dilli Haat type art, craft and cuisine. Any serious push of beef-ban in these areas would fail. But more importantly, the lack of push in these areas also demonstrates what lies behind beef-ban – of having finally “won” in a contest that started before partition. These areas were simply not part of any such contest. No wonder, just before 1937, when Burma was separated from British India and made a separate crown colony, London was in two minds about where to place what is called “north-east” and seriously considered proposal of making that a part of Burma (What would Delhi then think of the Naga or Manipur nationality questions is an interesting thought experiment to be conducted in private). When aliens become citizens by fiat, that shows up in “clerical” errors in election manifestos nearly 80 years later – as was the case of the latest Delhi BJP manifesto terming people from “north-east” as immigrants.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP went to the people with a manifesto that stated that the government will develop “necessary legal framework to protect cow and its progeny”. States like Tamil Nadu, Telengana, Kerala, West Bengal, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Tripura and Sikkim gave the BJP and its beef-ban manifesto a thrashing at the Lok Sabha polls. On 30 March 2015, Indian Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said “Cow slaughter cannot be accepted in this country”. He also promised the gathering that the present government will try their best for beef-ban across the Union. Either these above states do not belong to the country Rajnath Singh is talking about or he doesn't care about dem0cratic opinion of the people as expressed at the Lok Sabha elections. These no-beef ban, non-BJP states must study such statements from New Delhi with care and understand the farce that underlies the Hindi-Hindu-Hindustani conception of 'cooperative federalism”. The multi-headed hydra of homogeneity has many faces – some are about beef ban, some are about cosmo-liberal “idea of India” and so forth. On a recent flight on New Delhi sarkar's Air India, general passengers were served eggless cake and onion-less paneer puffs (when people with whatever special dietary issues can chose to have eggless, onion-less meals served on board). His Holiness will not stop at beef, or at food, for that matter. Only, first they came for the beef. And I have an ugly suspicion that we ain't seen nothing yet. (IPA Service)