Who would have thought that closing down of unauthorised slaughterhouses and butcheries would have raised such a storm not quite in a teacup? But then, when the newly sworn-in chief minister of the most populous state in the country is donning a saffron robe and presides over a religious mutt, any decision taken by the government becomes suspect in the eyes of the secular-liberal-democratic opposition.
An open season can be declared to raise myriad issues from fundamental right to eat what you wish, to systematic targeting of Muslim minority.
To this list, you can add livelihood issues, very real threat posed by zealot vigilantes. Blend all these ingredients in the well-heated political cauldron and you have an idiot-proof recipe for a tasteless but highly-poisonous qorma. Alas! We can’t follow in the ‘matter of meat’ due to the honourable apex court’s sage advice to settle the dispute amicably out of court.
First things first. Let’s get rid of the myth that India is a vegetarian nation or a nation predominantly of vegetarians. Countless credible surveys have demonstrated that a large majority outside the minority community is happy to bite into delicacies prepared with flesh, fowl or fish.
The closet carnivores are reluctant to come out and make a big fuss about eschewing non-vegetarian repast on Navaratra, shradha, Tuesdays, Ekadashi etc; but truth be told, the lovers of meat cut across secular and religious fanatics of all hues.
The problem arises when meat prohibited for consumption by one community (read Hindus and beef in this context) is claimed to be the protein of the poor, or preferred over all else by the minority (read Muslims mostly in this case).
What is amazing is that there is only a minuscule minority that appreciates the difference between beef and buff. In the Hindi belt, where the fierce controversy is raging, buffalo meat is euphemistically referred to as ‘barhe ka’. What the rabble-rousers on both sides mischievously forget is that what the law in most states prohibits is beef, not buff.
Also, the self-styled custodians of constitutional rights conveniently fudge or forget that those who framed the Constitution did include specific provisions about the protection of the cow.
This is not the place to debate whether this was a fatal folly committed succumbing to the emotional blackmail of the Father of the Nation, or due to a conspiracy hatched by the revivalist members of the Constituent Assembly who wanted to establish a Hindu Rashtra. Nonetheless, we can’t remain blind to the correct legal position. No fundamental right is absolute—either for citizen belonging to the majority or the minority community. These can be curtailed or restricted in public interest.
The argument is unexceptionable that individuals or a community should be free to eat what they wish to. This applies to matters of attire, and for adults to read what they like, or watch films they prefer. There is no place for moral policing or imposition of dictatorial culinary prohibition by the brute majority in a democracy.
But at the same time one must concede that no minority can exercise a veto in perpetuity over all decisions taken by a democratically-elected majority in all matters unacceptable to it. What would have been amusing, had it not been fraught with such peril, is that a minority within the minority is holding all of us to ransom.
All kinds of figures are being brandished. The closure of illegal slaughterhouses will cause a loss of over `50,000 crore and render over two million people, mostly daily wage earners in the unorganised sector, jobless and push them towards the precipice of pauperisation. If you believe these figures, then Uttar Pradesh under Akhilesh-SP Raj had no other source of revenue or employment either in industrial or agricultural sector!
The greatest irony is that the unauthorised and illegal slaughterhouses were allowed to flourish despite the orders of Green Tribunal and courts.
Obviously, the rampant corruption during the previous regime with pronounced proclivity for appeasement of the minority vote bank rendered it impotent to enforce court/tribunal orders. No less specious the argument that no one ever communicated any information about legal provisions that have to be complied with.
It was hilarious to encounter a very articulate owner of a slaughterhouse arguing in a television debate on how can the government lock slaughterhouses or meat processing units that comply with say six of 10 conditions prescribed by the law?
Who is to decide which of the 10 conditions prescribed by the law are hazardous and which are minor and harmless?
Surely, not the accused. Then there was this charming old lady who claimed that her family had been plying the trade for centuries since the reign of Moguls without the need to acquire any licence!
We look forward with sadness to more myth-making and post-truth history in days to come.
pushpeshpant@gmail.com