INDIAN MUSLIMS ABANDON COW SLAUGHTER IN EID

Kolkata, 9 Dzulhijjah 1435/3 October 2014 (MINA) –  As world Muslims prepare their rams for Udhiyah this year, millions of Indian Muslims will not be able to observe the religious ritual due to the growth of campaigns by Hindu far-right groups against cow slaughter, considering it a sacred animal.

“Traders from other areas buy cows from our district’s largest Wednesday weekly cattle market,” Ramzan Ali, a cow trader in West Midnapur district of West Bengal, warning that the latest Hindu campaign against cow slaughter has affected the cattle market to a good extent.

“This Wednesday the number of traders was 30% or 40% less than our expectation and the market traded around 70,000 cows this week- down from 110,000 cows last year,”  Ali said, Onislam quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting, Friday.

Since Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed the national government in May, anti-cow slaughter campaign by the Hindu activists has reached a new height across West Bengal where cows from across the country are brought in by the traders for slaughterhouses in India and Bangladesh.“Many traders over phone informed that many Muslims were afraid of hassles by Hindu activists and are avoiding sacrifice of cow this `Eid,” Ali added.

Being very popular among the West Bengal’s 230 million Muslims, cow meat tops the list of animals sacrificed in the state during `Eid Al-Adha.

However, the religious ritual has been threatened this year after the rise of campaigns since the beginning of September activists from Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and other Hindu organizations to stop Muslims from slaughtering cows on `Eid.

In many places of West Bengal cow-laden trucks bound for cattle markets were attacked by Hindu groups, the animals were released and the Muslim cow traders were thrashed in recent weeks

The case was even worse in Hyderabad, a city in southern India, where Muslims in the historical city will not be able to sacrifice cows, buffaloes or calves.

The city police have imposed a ban on the sacrifice of these animals during `Eid Al-Adha on which Muslims commemorate Prophet Abraham’s submission to God’s command by slaughtering cows, camels, buffaloes or goats.

“It is strictly prohibited to sell cows, she buffaloes and calves (calf), which is a crime under the AP Prohibition of Cow Slaughter and Animal Preservation Act 1977,”said an official statement released by the Hyderabad police department, earlier this month.

The police have also warned that any violation of the ban will attract punitive action as per the law.

While beef is a favorite food and the prime source of proteins for Indian Muslims, for the majority Hindus beef-eating is a sacrilege, as they consider the cow a goddess, their sacred mother and hence, holy.

Christians, few elite and most Dalits- or low-caste Hindus too eat the cow-meat in India.

According to Hindu mythology, some 330 million gods and goddesses reside in the bowels of the cow whom they lovingly call Gaumata or the ‘cow mother’. Some trace cow worship back to Hindu god Krishna, who is believed to have first appeared as a cowherd.

As even urine of the cow is held sacred and consumed by many Hindus for religious as well as therapeutic purposes, the issue of the slaughter of the ‘goddess’ has always been a bone of contention between cow worshippers and beef-eater communities.

Even the ‘father of the nation’, Mahatma Gandhi had very famously said: “Cow-protection is the outward form of Hinduism. I refuse to call anyone a Hindu if he is not willing to lay down his life in this cause. It is dearer to me than my very life. If cow-slaughter were for the Muslims a religious duty, like saying namaz, I would have had to tell them that I must fight against them.”

The Hindu fundamentalist organizations, including the ruling BJP and its affiliates, leave no opportunity to milk the issue of cow-slaughter.

For decades the Saffron organizations have been using the issue to ignite communal passions which many times in the past turned violent even taking Muslim lives.

In 2002, in the Indian state of Haryana, a frenzied mob lynched five Dalit men, while they were skinning a dead cow.

Later, a local Hindu priest Mahendra Paramanand said to media, “If they can kill our mother then what if we kill our brothers who kill her,” while reacting to the lynching.

Giriraj Kishore, a senior Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader proclaimed: “The life of a cow is more precious than that of a human being.”

Interestingly, history shows, eating beef was a tradition among Hindus in ancient India, and during religious rituals Hindus slaughtered cows in Vedic period.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who authored the Indian Constitution, wrote in his book, “You will be astonished if I tell you that, according to the old ceremonials; he is not a good Hindu who does not eat beef. On certain occasions he must sacrifice a bull and eat it.”

The Hindu beef-eaters also cite their religious scriptures to prove that cows were routinely slaughtered and consumed in ancient India.

“One of the holiest Hindu scriptures, the Rigveda says that the Hindu god Indra used to eat the meat of cow, horse and buffalo. The Vashistha Dharmasutra, which is a source of religious law also sanctions beef-eating saying that a Brahmin who refuses to eat the meat offered to him on the occasion of ‘Shraddha’ or a holy ritual, goes to hell,” says S. Mahato, a low-caste Hindu high school teacher in West Bengal.

“What I am saying is the truth. Until two or three decades ago the history text books in our school clearly stated that Hindus sacrificed cows during religious rituals and ate cow meat…But I know that the Hindutva goons will attack me, if I speak this truth openly,” Mahato, who did not wish to be identified by his first name, fearing retaliation from Hindu activists around him, added.

Falling under repeated Hindu attacks, many Indian Muslims were resorting to sacrifice sheep or camel, abandoning their favorite cow meat.

“We heard that carrying cows on foot from the cattle market to our home- as we have done for decades, will not be safe this year with Hindu activists lurking at places. We are going to sacrifice a goat this year,” said a Muslim tailor in a suburb of Kolkata, Basir Ali.

Like other Indian Muslims, he was forced to change a family tradition by not sacrificing a cow this `Eid Al-Adha.

“In our locality in the past 20 years I have never seen less than 50 cows being sacrificed during `Eid Al-Adha. But this year only 17 cows are there for sacrifice next week,” he added.

A journalist from Telangana capital Hyderabad said that an unofficial ban on cow sacrifice has been placed in Muslim localities across the state this `Eid Al-Adha.

“Officially there’s no ban on slaughtering of cows in Telangana. But police stations across the state have been ordered to enforce a ban on cow slaughter this Eid-al-Adha. It’s rather clever and insidious,” said the Muslim journalist who does not want to be identified.

But this time BJP has formed the national government on its own- without support from any other party. Many now believe that very soon cow slaughter will be banned across the country.

“I am sure that our Prime Minister Mr Modi will do whatever is needed to ban cow slaughter across India,” Subrata Gupta, who heads the Hindu anti-cow slaughter campaign in West Bengal, said in Kolkata recently.

“None will be able to hurt our Hindu sentiment by slaughtering any cow.”(T/P008/P3)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)