HOLY COW IN INDIA: A POLITICAL DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE.

• Author: Akram, Muhammad

1. Introduction

   In India, cow slaughter and beef consumption are extremely unpredictable, emotional, and politicized issues. The avowed sacredness of the cow in Hindu India is at the center of the debates on cow slaughter and beef consumption (Chigateri 2011). In Hinduism, the cow is a holy animal, symbolizing self-giving, nonviolence, and gentleness, which gives human beings more than it takes away from them. Therefore, especially for food, she should not be killed or harmed (Winston 2015). Cow safety, a powerful instrument in the hands of cow vigilantes for atrocities against Muslims and Dalits, has become a heavily politicized issue. Its origins can be traced to the late nineteenth century, linking the themes of caste-Hindu religious sentiment, communalism, and economic logic. Simultaneously, simple problems about the intriguingly complicated use of cattle are far older (Gundimeda and Ashwin 2018). As per statistics, India has 145.12 million cows, 18 percent more than in 2012 (Business Line 2019). Around 1.3 billion people worship cows as goddesses and "cow urine can sell for more than milk in India" (Gowen 2018, Narayanan 2019, Upadhyay 2016). India was the world's largest beef exporter until 2017, but after Narendra Modi was elected India's prime minister, exports decreased, placing India in second place after Brazil (Marlow, 2019). In the election campaign, Narendra Modi's party, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), vowed cow safety, creating difficulties for those who are engaged in cow businesses.

   India has seen an increase in violent attacks against minorities committed to defend cattle against slaughter since 2015. In the aftermath of legislation passed in several states to tighten restrictions and bans on cattle-slaughter and the selling or possession of beef, laws banning cattle slaughter have been on the books since independence in many Indian states (Adcock 2018). Defense vigilantes, Hindu nationalists who seek to protect cows through blind acts of violence against those whom they accuse of possibly killing the cow, shatter the nonviolent symbolism of cows. In order to perpetuate stereotypes of Indian Muslims as a harmful, anti-national presence and to justify anti-Muslim violence by Hindu vigilantes, both Hindu nationalists and cow protectionists perceive Muslims as the primary opponents of cow protection.

   In scholarly literature, cow vigilante violence in India has been less noticed from the point of legislation difference on cow slaughter in different states. Scholars have covered the significance of cow protection in India and minority rights. However, social media influence to raise the cow vigilante violence has been less explored. Moreover, in scholarly literature, the factors causing cow vigilante violence are rarely discussed. Besides, in published research, a theoretical viewpoint associated with cow vigilante activity remains elusive.

   This study discusses political discourse and people's dark shades of emotion on social media to cow vigilante violence in India. It describes the legislation difference and political interests that leads towards conflict among Hindus, Muslims and Dalits minorities in India. This paper addresses questions: a) What is the role of the cow in India subject to history and legislation? b) How have social media platforms played their part in cow vigilante violence in India? c) How is the restorative justice approach support reducing cow vigilante violence in India?

   The paper structure comprises historical, legislations, political, and social media aspects of cow vigilante violence in India. Exploratory research is used to conduct situation analysis using published sources. The analysis section covers the restorative theories and models to practice for addressing the violence amidst cow vigilantism in India.

   1.1. Indian states' legislations on cow protection

   Article 48 of the Constitution of India justifies the prohibition of cow slaughter as: "the State shall endeavor to organize agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and other milch and draught cattle". Though this article does not use religious reference, the various Hindu nationalist groups urge for the religious symbolism of cow and call for a total ban on cow slaughter. Concerning this article in the constitution, several states of India legally prohibit cow slaughter to a limited or complete degree (Chegateri 2011).

   There is no ban on cow slaughter in eight states of India, four of them have a Christian majority, such as Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland. Although the rest of the four states named Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Kerala, and Tripura have the Hindu majority population, the nationalist narratives are not politicized, and this has avoided the ban on cow slaughter. The politics in the latter four states is derived from the regional politics, rather than religious one. The two states where Hindus are in minority but have a ban on cow slaughter are Punjab with the Sikh majority, and Indian administered Kashmir with Muslim majority population. There is persecution against Sikhs and Muslims in those states by Hindu nationalists due to the nationalistic politics (Asrar 2017, Census 2011).

   1.2. History of cow protection

   The vegetarian ideologies in the sub-continent were inspired by the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, which urged many Hindus to stop eating the meat of cows as they produce milk. Until the first century A.D., killing a cow was considered as killing a Brahman, the highest caste in Hinduism (Winston 2015). However, the cow was not sacred to all the Hindus. Regarding the Hindus' beliefs, when the first Muslim Mughal emperor of the subcontinent banned cow slaughter in 1527, some Hindu kings did not support the emperor to enforce the ban in their states. "[A]ncient Hindus ate beef--the cow got its revered status around 500 A.D. Coinciding with an agricultural boom on the subcontinent, beef was not sacred during the Vedic period (1K-5K B.C.), which was the time when Hinduism's oldest scriptures--the Vedas--were written", Dwijendra Narayan Jha notes in his book The Myth of the Holy Cow (Jha 2002). Even after the spread of vegetarianism, many Hindus continued eating beef. Since Brahmins received mass donations for cow protection, the Brahmins made cow protection controversial for various political arguments throughout history (Doniger 2017).

   Cow-related violence was discovered in April 1881 when riots broke after a Muslim butcher was found traveling with an uncovered beef basket in Multan, a city now in Pakistan. Further, the Fyzabad and Ayudhya riots in 1912, Calcutta beef riots in 1909, widespread clashes between 1911 to 1917 in Patna, Muzaffarpur, Bihar, and Gaya cities, mob attack of 25 000 Hindus on a Muslim village in Ibrahimpur on September 30, 1917, and Delhi riots in 1924 (Chatterjee 2016) are significant incidents of violence related to the cow protection in British colonial India. After the British left in 1947, India's government legalized cow protection, which later turned into the hands of Hindu nationalist vigilantes with radical political ideologies. "Those who are dying without eating beef can go to Pakistan or Arab countries or any other part of the world where it is available," BJP's Muslim union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said (Hindustan Times 2015).

   In today's India, the cow has legal protection in 22 states from being slaughtered or harmed. With police's biased law enforcement, the victim families of cow vigilante violence are pushed into a vicious circle of investigations and threats of not pursuing their call for justice (Human Rights Watch 2019). The complex but systemic political narratives knit the web of religious-political discourse for cow protection. They use mob violence to create fear for Muslims to engage in the cow-industry. Such political scenarios are popular during the BJP's regime in India (Hindustan Times 2013). Cow protection at the intersection of religious and political narratives has been a critical factor of political divisiveness, mainly during the election seasons at local and national levels. For example, the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi extensively quoted his support of cow protection and future strategies to further strengthen this if he would be elected. Even the BJP's political leadership is not fully agreed upon the notion of cow protection. The BJP's General Secretary in Meghalaya state, David Kharsati, and Party Chief in Mizoram state, JV Hluna, did not support the ban on cow slaughter in their states but were only concerned with nutrition and hygiene measures while slaughtering (Parashar 2017).

2. Methodology

   The exploratory research design was used to review secondary sources about cow vigilante violence in India. It reviews the historical, political, and social media usage subject to the cows' importance in India. The systematic review of the literature was performed using the Web of Science database from 1970 to 2020, three indexes used social sciences citation index, arts & humanities citation index, and science citation index expanded. Scholars on cow protection in India conduct limited research; thus, Sunder (2018) and Kennedy et al. (2018) found from the database. This study expands the search to review books, index and non-index papers, blog posts, and news channel posts to find content. The review of content includes valid sources with author details, publication time, and established platforms such as news web portals. This study excluded personal notes and speeches of social activists and leaders to minimize the bias. Content...