An exhibition titled “Dastavez 2 – The Fragrance of Yesterday” was held this month in Lucknow. It showcased bureaucrat Suboor Usmani’s private collection of news magazines, such as Time, Newsweek, Life, India Today, Outlook, Frontline, chronicling defining moments in India and abroad since 1925. The cover stories of the magazines showcased included the ones on Iran, its assassinated Ayatollah Khomeini, and cow protection in India. Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati staged a protest in Lucknow for the cow protection. (HT PHOTO)
Some issues live on with the US-Israel war on Iran and the regional war it sparked, dominating the headlines and eclipsing the assembly elections in five Indian states. In Uttar Pradesh, the cow is again at the centre of a debate ahead of the assembly polls due next year.
Swami Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotish Peeth, has demanded that the “mother cow” be declared a national animal and that a nationwide ban on bovine slaughter be imposed. After staging a protest in Lucknow, the Shankaracharya, who was booked last month for allegedly sexually abusing two boys, plans an 81-day statewide yatra, beginning on May 3 from chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s constituency of Gorakhpur, to press for his demands. It is easier said than done. Adityanath, who is regularly photographed feeding cows, is known for his strident Hindutva politics.
In 2023, the government told Parliament it had no plan to declare the cow the national animal after Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmakers raised the issue, calling the animal an integral part of Indian culture and seeking legislation.
Vigilantism has risen, even as 20 out of 28 states have laws prohibiting the slaughter or sale of cow meat. States like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh even have cow ministries and cow ministers. There are no restrictions on cow slaughter in states including BJP-ruled Arunachal Pradesh and Goa.
With elections less than a year away in Uttar Pradesh, will Shankaracharya’s yatra make the cow a major issue? Cows are revered. In states such as Maharashtra, they are decorated on special days. But so far, it has not been used successfully as an election issue.
In any case, there has been stricter implementation of the anti-cow slaughter law since the BJP returned to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. So far, it has been a religious-spiritual issue. But it has not really fetched votes. Otherwise, the issue would have figured prominently in the BJP’s poll agenda.
The cow and bovine protection issues have figured in elections since the 1966 anti-cow slaughter agitation turned violent in Delhi. Demands for cow protection and its status as the national animal have been made during elections, especially in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Baba Jai Guru Dev’s Doordarshi party was founded in the 1980s and contested elections on the same plank, but failed to attract voters. The party wound up in 1997.
The Constituent Assembly debated including a provision in the Constitution for the protection and preservation of the cow before the matter was included in the Directive Principles of State Policy, calling for preserving and improving the breeds of cattle and prohibiting the slaughter of cows and other useful cattle, especially milch and draught cattle and their young stock. States have passed independent laws to ban cow slaughter.
The courts have also weighed in on the matter. In September 2021, the Allahabad high court said that the cow should be declared the national animal while denying bail to a man accused of bovine slaughter. It underlined the significance of the cow and observed that Muslims have also considered the cow an important part of India’s culture. Mughal rulers Babur, Humayun, and Akbar prohibited cow sacrifice during religious festivals.