Daily Times

Sir: Scores of non-Hindus were lynched by mobs in various Indian states on suspicion of slaughtering or smuggling cows. India’s central government blamed all of these incidents on the lax state governments. However the opposition demanded a central legislation to stop this disturbing trend. It is strange that the `status of cows’ has overshadowed all other issues in India. This topic is being vehemently discussed, inside and outside India’s House of People (lok sabha).

One is shocked to read that chief minister Yogi Adityanath of India’s Uttar Pradesh state equated cows with human beings. In over ebullience to show veneration to cows, Bharatya Janata Party’s president Rajasthan BJP president Madanlal Saini even distorted history. He said that a dying Mughal emperor Humayun told his father Babur that he should respect cows, women and Brahmins if he wanted to rule India. Babur was Humayun’s father who died in 1531.

Humayun took his last breath in 1556, 25 years later. Some political wizards have even tried to distort other religions; they say it is a sin under various religions to eat beef (Islam and Christianity included). A Goa legislator complained that cow vigilantes (gau rakhshak) intercept beef trucks into Karnataka and put phenyl on it to make it unfit for eating (Hindustan Times 26 July 2018). It is unfortunate that Imran Khan remained portrayed as the army’s poster-boy. His offer of rapprochement with India remained largely un-noticed.

What is the next step for so called secular India? Modi should amend India’s constitution to make India a Hindu republic and adopt cows as equal citizens.

NIKHAT SHAHEEN

Rawalpindi

Published in Daily Times, July 29^th 2018.