RAJASTHAN: THE ‘GAU RAKSHIKA’
She wants PM Narendra Modi to declare the cow India’s national animal. “He’s a king,” she says, “and like earlier kings, he too must enforce a ban on cow slaughter.” Meet Sadhvi Kamal, 39, self-styled protector of cows and “national president of the Rashtriya Mahila Gau Raksha Dal”. She has been at the forefront of those protesting the state police’s action against the goons who lynched Muslim cattle trader Pehlu Khan at Behror on April 1.
Sitting on the floor of her basement home in Jaipur’s Chitrakoot colony, amid a crowd of religious idols and cow figurines, she apologises for being late: “I’ve just returned from a protest against bootleggers,” she explains. The sadhvi offers no apologies for what was done to Khan. She claims it was when the police failed to act on information about “cow smuggling” that her boys (from the Gau Raksha Dal) intervened.
Furious with the police for arresting her men, she questions the veracity of Khan’s dying declaration naming his attackers. “How could he (Khan) have known their names and surnames?” she asks. Sadhvi Kamal is evidently emboldened by the Rajasthan government’s hesitant stand on the issue, particularly, home minister Gulab Chand Kataria’s refusal to offer any assurance on action against the cow vigilantes.
In fact, there are many in the state government who echo Sadhvi Kamal’s questionable beliefs. Like MLA Gian Dev Ahuja, who said Khan’s attackers would find a deserved place in heaven. She herself equates the assaults by her followers with the nationalism of Bhagat Singh. “If we are able to instil a fear among the cow smugglers, we will succeed in stopping it,” she says. Cow vigilantism is not new to Sadhvi Kamal. In May 2016, she led screaming demonstrations against the arrest of young Hindu vigilantes, who had brutally thrashed suspected cow smugglers in Pratapgarh. The year before, she led angry demonstrations to protest the death of hundreds of cows at the state government’s Hingonia cow shelter in Jaipur. More recently, this March she forced the shutdown of Hyatt Rabbani, a Muslim-owned hotel, after alleging it was serving beef and not adhering to norms on disposing of food waste.
For someone advocating violent attacks by lynch mobs, Sadhvi Kamal curiously claims that Mother Teresa was her first inspiration. “I am a social activist, I stand for protecting all animals,” she insists.