Delhi Diary: Holy Cow : Cows In India Get ‘Unique Identity’

By Shakir Husain NEW DELHI, May 2 (Bernama) -- A cartoon shared on social media shows a yoke over the necks of two frail men and attached to what looks like a bullock cart. A well-fed man holding a whip is in the driving seat while a cow rides the cart as a smug passenger. The image illustrates the current state of cow politics in India rather well. The cow in India has become more than a holy animal; it is driving national politics as never before. The Hindi-speaking “cow belt” and the states ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are often in the news these days for violence by self-styled “cow protectors” against people transporting animals. It has become a dangerous business to trade cattle in the country’s rural communities. Many politicians and groups compete to proclaim the cow’s sacredness and issue threats to anyone not adhering to their version of the animal’s holiness. The cattle, like fish and poultry, may be part of the food chain worldwide, but do not even let such thoughts cross your mind if you are in India. The cow’s holiness is not new in the country of 1.3 billion people, but the rhetoric and politics over the issue has reached a new level. It may sound incredulous, but the Indian government is going to issue millions of “unique identity” numbers to cattle, similar to a biometric-based identity card for people issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India. The federal government will approve tamper-proof identity tags for cattle and these will be used for tracking the animals and providing them veterinary services. It would include a 12-digit number and details such as the animal’s age, breed, colour, height, horn type, tail switch and special marks of cattle heads and its “progeny”, reports in the local press said. The information was given by the country’s solicitor general Ranjit Kumar to the Supreme Court during a hearing on cow smuggling. A report submitted to the court said that "each cow and its progeny across India should get a Unique Identification Number for tracking". “This is definitely a regressive step and not compatible with the constitutional goals that were envisaged by the founding fathers of the Indian Constitution,” said S. Sethu Mahendran, a lawyer at the Supreme Court. “Too much importance is being given to cattle. If similar attention is paid to addressing the problems of poverty, corruption and inequality, people’s lives will improve tremendously,” he told Bernama. Cow-related violent incidents are happening across the country. The political focus on cows has led to more communal polarisation and violence against Muslims and Dalits, who have been targeted by “cow protection” gangs. “Thousands of children and women are trafficked every year in the country, but we are busy with schemes for cows,” said Kavita Krishnan, a women’s rights activist. “Cow politics has created communal polarisation and conditions for violence against minorities,” she told Bernama. Recently the state of Gujarat proposed imprisonment for life for cow slaughter, while Chhattisgarh’s chief minister Raman Singh said anyone found killing cows in his state would be hanged. “Not a single incident of cow slaughter has taken place in the last 15 years. Anyone who does so will be hanged,” Singh was quoted as saying in the media. Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state ruled by the BJP, has seen a spate of attacks on meat shops. Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said he was working to make his state “vegetarian”, but insisted he was not against those who eat non-vegetarian food. “Categorising people on the basis of their eating habits and determining their related nature has a long history tainted with untouchability and social stratification (in India),” said Sethu Mahendran. In cattle protection, Gujarat’s preference is for indigenous varieties of Gir and Kankrej cows and not Jersey cows. The reports of violence and political rhetoric may give the impression that cows are slaughtered in the meat trade of these states. This is misleading as what is sold in India and exported in the name of “beef” is buffalo meat. Cow slaughter is already banned in most of India’s 29 states, especially in the Hindi-speaking region. Trading in cows can be an invitation to violence and police is often helpless when mobs are in action. In Rajasthan, a dairy farmer was lynched and his colleagues attacked while transporting cows from a cattle market recently. In Assam, two men were lynched on Sunday on the suspicion of stealing cows. Tourists cannot miss the sight of cows roaming the roads in Indian cities, but driving in India is fraught with dangers these days. A pick-up van driver in the state of Bihar was blinded in an eye for scaring away a cow by honking on a highway. When the man honked, the cow panicked and ran away. This enraged the cow owner, who beat up the driver with a stick. However, not all cow news is gloomy. Indian engineers have today developed an automatic alert system with audio-visual features to avoid cow-car collisions. -- BERNAMA