LEGISLATION
Beefing up a law
VIKHAR AHMED SAYEED
The Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill,
passed by the State Assembly, raises a wave of protests .
K. BHAGYA PRAKASH
Members of various Dalit organisations staging a protest against the
Bill in Bangalore.
The butchers at Bangalore's largest beef market, in Shivajinagar, are
a worried lot. On March 19, the Karnataka State Assembly passed a Bill
that proposes to ban completely the slaughter of cattle in Karnataka.
"I see this as a conspiracy by the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]
government in the State against minorities and backward castes," said
Suhail, a young butcher whose livelihood depends on the procurement
and sale of beef.
Another butcher remarked that the elections to the Bruhat Bengaluru
Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), held on March 28, could be the main reason
for the Bill's passage at this juncture. Elections to the 198 wards of
the BBMP were held more than three years after the term of the last
council ended. The keenly contested elections had 1,336 candidates,
including those from the three leading political parties in the State
– the BJP, the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular).
Behind the beef market and in the thickly populated lanes of
Shivajinagar is the office of Khasim Aijaz Quraishi, the president of
the Beef Merchants' Association of Karnataka. Quraishi is furious that
the government could contemplate such an enactment when 35 lakh people
in the State were dependent on the trade in beef. The figure, he said,
included people involved in the ancillary activities such as
transportation of cattle, the leather industry and the meat packaging
industry.
"While theBill seems to be targeted at Muslims, what the State has
overlooked is that almost all the people involved in the associated
trades are non-Muslims," he said His estimate of the number of people
is not backed by any documentary evidence, but there is no doubt that
if all the people involved in all the ancillary trades of the beef
industry are enumerated, it will be a huge figure.
A complete ban on the slaughter of cattle figured in the manifesto of
the Bharatiya Janata Party when it contested the elections to the
Legislative Assembly in 2008. Once the party emerged as the single
largest party in the Assembly and formed the government with the
support of independent legislators, right-wing pressure groups within
the party began demanding that the pre-election promise be fulfilled.
The government first introduced the Bill in the Assembly last year but
withdrew it on March 3, a couple of days after the communal skirmish
over the publication of Taslima Nasrin's translated article in a
Kannada newspaper (see Frontline, March 26). However, it was
reintroduced in a much more draconian form a few days later as the
Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill of
2010, which proposed to replace the Karnataka Prevention of Cow
Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act of 1964.
There are two major differences between the two pieces of legislation.
The latest Bill extends the prevention of slaughter to "cattle", which
it defines as "cow, calf of a cow and bull, bullock, buffalo male or
female and calf of she-buffalo". The 1964 Act had its scope restricted
to the slaughter of cows, calves of cows and calves of she-buffaloes,
but allowed the slaughter of bulls, bullocks and buffaloes if they
were over 12 years of age or if they were no longer fit for breeding
or draught or did not give milk.
The other difference is the severity of the penalty. The maximum
imprisonment for violating the provisions of the 1964 Act was six
months whereas the 2010 Bill prescribes imprisonment extending up to
seven years. It is this that has made people question the intentions
of the State BJP government as in the Indian Penal Code, imprisonment
for such long terms is usually meant for crimes of a far more heinous
nature.
Karnataka, especially its coastal areas, has routinely been the target
of right-wing groups who use the cow slaughter issue to create
communal tensions. Skirmishes follow allegations of transporting of
cows for slaughter.
In March 2005, a 60-year-old man and his son were stripped, paraded
and beaten in public for trying to buy a calf in Udupi district. In
another incident in May 2006 in the same district, an elderly Hindu
man was killed for being a middleman in the sale of cows. The
involvement of fundamentalist organisations such as the Bajrang Dal
and the Hindu Yuva Sena was alleged in both these incidents.
M.A.SRIRAM
Right-wing groups in the State use the cow slaughter issue to create
communal tensions.
Activist groups such as the Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike (KKSV, or
the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum) feel that the harsh clauses of
the 2010 Bill will be used to target religious minorities.
The Bill has come under the scanner for two other reasons. First, for
its interference in the food habits of people – apart from the
religious minorities, a large number of backward caste people consume
beef. Second, the excessive burden that the Bill will place on
farmers, who will now have to look after their aged cattle instead of
selling them off to meat traders.
Members of Dalit communities across the State have protested against
the Bill, saying that it is a case of interference with their food
habits and fulfilment of the upper-caste, Hindutva agenda of
"Sanskritisation".
Ideologues of the Dalit cause such as Kancha Ilaiah have, in the past,
argued that beef-eating is an inherent part of the lower-caste
identity. Many opponents of the Bill quote extensively from D.N. Jha's
2002 work, The Myth of the Holy Cow, which expounds that in the Hindu
religion, "the 'holiness' of the cow is a myth and that its flesh was
very much a part of the early Indian non-vegetarian food regimen and
dietary traditions". Jha writes that beef-eating is not Islam's
bequeathal to India, as is commonly believed. He cites Vedic sources
to demonstrate Indra's preference for ox meat and Agni's and Soma's
fondness for cow meat.
The cow emerged as the rallying point for communal mobilisation in
northern India in the late 19th century. It was the reason for riots
on several occasions in pre-independent and post-independent India.
There is evidence to show that many rulers in medieval India banned
the killing of cows. And when the issue came up for discussion in the
Constituent Assembly debates, the Drafting Committee decided to
include cow protection in the Directive Principles rather than accept
the demand for a total ban on cow slaughter across the country. The
demand for a total ban continued in independent India, the apogee of
which was in 1966 when a large crowd marched to Parliament and the
Shankaracharya of Puri decided on an indefinite fast demanding the
same.
The demand was raised sporadically across the country even after that,
and a few States such as Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh banned the
slaughter of all cattle. When the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance
(NDA) was in power at the Centre, it had tried to introduce the
'Prevention of Cruelty to Cow Bill' in 2003 but its efforts failed as
it could not build a consensus on the issue. While most States across
India have banned the slaughter of cows but not other cattle, it is
legal to slaughter cows in Kerala, West Bengal and in the
north-eastern States.
The Bill was passed in the Karnataka Assembly by a voice vote after a
lengthy debate and amidst protests from the Opposition parties. Chief
Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa said that the aim of the Bill was to
preserve the rich cattle wealth of the State and should not be
construed as being against any particular community. He said it was in
accordance with Article 48 of the Directive Principles. But the
government will find it more difficult to get the Bill passed by the
Legislative Council, where it does not have a clear majority. The
Governor's sanction will follow this approval.
If the Bill becomes an Act and the sale of beef is completely
forbidden in the State, it will be the responsibility of the State
government to provide for the upkeep of lakhs of head of cattle. This
will increase the burden on the State exchequer.
The ban will also bring about a change in the dietary habits of lakhs
of people. Beef is relatively cheap, selling at between Rs.100 and
Rs.120 in Bangalore, while mutton sells at double that price. The BJP
government has not given a thought to this or to the livelihood
problem of lakhs of people involved in the cattle meat trade while
attempting to appease its right-wing constituency.
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