Congress cares nought religious sentiments of Hindus

Vaishakh Shuklapaksha 11, Kaliyug Varsha 5115

The Congress in Karnataka has done what its ‘high-command’ is adept at doing all over the country — trampling majority religious sentiments. Siddaramaiah and his mentors have, over the past two years, shouted themselves hoarse on the BJP Government’s mis-governance and non-performance in the State and yet one of the first things that it did is — not to announce measures that would try and straighten this imbalance of governance and performance in the state — but rather something that would create resentment among the vast majority.

The announcement of the Government’s intention of lifting the ban on cow slaughter in the State by the Chief Minister himself is something that could have been avoided. It was not a core issue affecting governance anyway. But what more can one expect from a Congress Government? It has always thrived on division, ghettoisation and segregation, post-independence these have been its principal political pathways and oxygen.

As I have always and often argued, the Congress has thrown to the winds and abjured all that it stood for in the days of its most intense struggle. Since the present confused and ideologically barren Congressmen tend to forget these past ideals and positions, it is necessary to run a reminder.

For the Mahatma, whose name the Congress is quick to invoke at every instance and who has been anointed the ‘Guru’ by its not-so-young vice president, goseva and cow-protection was an integral pillar of the Indian freedom struggle. When it came to protecting and caring for the cow, Gandhi exuded a certain fanaticism that present day diluted Congressmen can scarcely envisage.

At the annual meeting of the Gandhi Seva Sangh in Karnataka in April 1937 Gandhi moved the resolution “pertaining to goseva”. It said that “economic and moral uplift of India is one of the aims of the Sangh and the protection of our cows is non-violence in its concrete form and it implies economic benefits to millions of people.” Gandhi who had evolved his theories and methods of cow-protection unequivocally reminded the gathered workers, that “our religion exhorts us first to protect the cow” and that “cow-protection is an inseparable part of our religion. But today we do not protect, but rather devour our cows. We should lay down our lives for the sake of the cow. But today we are allowing the cow to die for us.” He plainly asked the workers to “kill” themselves “if it is necessary in order to save the cow.”

The historic Haripura Congress session of 1938 saw the inauguration of a ‘Cow exhibition’ in which the Mahatma again reminded Congress workers that “from the historical and economic point of view the cow must be protected. Unfortunately we have not taken cow protection seriously.” He urged all present to “understand the real significance of cow protection.” Nor was the Mahatma alone in this exhortation of his, Sardar Patel observed at the same gathering that the idea of cow-protection had come from the “Mahatma himself” who was the pioneer of “two things, the charkha and cow protection.”

Strange isn’t it that those who are in fact at the forefront of the cow protection movement today, once the core-agenda of the Congress, are not Congressmen but are derisively referred to by five-star Congressmen themselves, as ‘knicker-wallas’ or ‘relics from Nagpur’! In that logic, the Mahatma for them would now appear as having originated in the ice-age!

Ironically the Muslim League’s ‘Report of Enquiry’ (1938), known as the ‘Pirpur Committee Report’ complained that “with the taking over of the reins of Government in the seven provinces by the Congress, the question of cow protection has assumed great importance and propaganda has been carried out with redoubled energy in this connection … Organised picketing has been done to prevent the sale of cows.” Present desperation for manipulating the minority vote-bank has been so strong in the Congress that it has led, over the years, to a complete disappearance of its original nationalist avatar.

Leave aside the historicity of cow protection, the move in Karnataka will only add to the already growing illegal cattle trade. It will further open up supply channels to the east in West Bengal where trade is now thriving and where reports of belligerent cattle smuggler cartels attacking border villages and the BSF are on the rise. The BSF, with orders to only use rubber bullets while tackling cattle-smuggling gangs, has becoming easy target for these marauders who are increasingly armed and bellicose. Bangladeshi slaughterhouses need around 3 million cows every year to help meet their demands and neighbouring India is their only major source of cow-inflow. Hence any move to facilitate cattle trade is welcomed by these beneficiaries across the border. It is estimated that more than 2 million cows are smuggled into Bangladesh from all over India, often coming from as far as Kerala and Tamil Nadu. There also exists a greater nexus in support of this trade and a lifting of ban allows that nexus to thrive and recoup. Once the ban is lifted in Karnataka, another vast supply field will definitely open up for the cow cartels.

But one can hardly expect the Congress, especially in its present state, to deliberate on these larger and crucial issues of national security and majority religious sentiments. It has displayed an incapacity for understanding the former and an acute and deliberate insensitivity towards the latter. It has always thrived by keeping alive the minorities’ sense of victimhood and discrimination and by fanning the winds of sectarianism.

But for how long will this happen without consequence, as a nationalist minority member of the Constituent Assembly once said, anyone or group who thinks that they can “flourish on sectarianism is asking for ruin.”

Political ruin, despite momentary gains, awaits the Congress in the long run.