Daily Times

Sir: India is constitutionally supposed to be a secular state. Yet senior leaders of Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatya Janata Party, especially their militant wing, Rashtraya Swayem Sevak Sangh,have made a mockery of that ideal. Recently they claimed that it was a `sin’ for a Muslim to even touch or kill a cow. It was their belief that the rising lynching of Muslims in the country was a knee-jerk reaction to the sinners that dared to eat beef. The leaders went as far as tomake the demand that the Indian government should declare cows “rashtra mata”, or the mother of the nation.

It is RSS leader Indresh Kumar who is leading this movement to declare the cow as a sacred entity around the nation, and he is being supported by senior BJP leader and union minister Giriraj Singh, as well as former BJP MP and Hindutva poster boy Vinay Katiyar, as they strive to achieve their dream for a ‘cow nation’.

These leaders argue that cow slaughter has been a sin across different religions as well, including Islam, as it was banned in Mecca and Medina, and even Christianity. They want on to make the ridiculous argument that “Jesus was born in a cowshed that is why they call it the ‘Holy Cow’”, and that “we should make it a resolution to rid humanity of this sin (cow slaughter and beef eating). However, quite interestingly the Indian Prime Minister, who has been visiting African countries in order to dilute Chinese influence in the region, has, in stark contrast, gifted 200 cows to Rwanda.

For a country that strives to be a secular state, it is concerning that such a large percentage of their population, and many of their senior political leaders have started to support the rhetoric spewed by the Hindu fanatics and are willing to give excuses to justify the illegal lynching of Muslims across the country.

MOHAMMAD ASAD MALICK

Islamabad

Published in Daily Times, July 26^th 2018.