INDIAN VIGILANTES SEIZE MUSLIM FARMERS’ COWS
Attacks by right-wing Hindus spark concerns over the country’s direction under nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi
The beating that ended Pehlu Khan’s life was televised nationwide. Cellphone video captured a group of men punching and slinging Khan around the middle of a road in north India, stomping on him and then slamming the 55-year-old farmer down on concrete as he begged for mercy.
Khan had been stopped by the lynch mob of right-wing Hindus as he rode home from a market in April with two cows and two calves in the back of a truck. The crowd was furious at the sight of a Muslim transporting animals held sacred by Hindus, according to the accounts of his sons and two fellow villagers who were also attacked. Before the men beat Khan so badly that he later died, breaking his ribs in multiple places, they screamed that he was planning to slaughter the cattle for beef.
Outside the frame of the video, something else was happening: Pehlu Khan’s cows were seized. They were hauled off to a nearby Hindurun shelter that takes in cattle snatched from Muslims and sells them.
Assaults meted out in broad daylight against India’s Muslim population, some 14% of the country’s 1.3 billion people, have sparked concern about the direction the country is taking under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There has been another, less noted dimension to the violence: the theft from Muslims and redistribution to Hindus of cows that provide crucial income in the Indian countryside.
Such scenes clash with India’s image as an investor darling in Asia and the pro-business message Mr Modi broadcasts to foreign investors. But three and a half years after his electoral victory, the cow seizures illustrate how the nation’s right-wing Hindu factions that propelled Mr Modi to power are now shaping India and stirring religious upheaval.
Having stoked Hindu nationalist passions in his bid for the highest office, it’s unclear to what extent Mr Modi can now control them. The bands of right-wing Hindus who seize the cows are operating essentially as private militias. They are undeterred by the prime minister’s public calls for them to end the violence. States governed by Mr Modi’s party have seen a marked increase in cow theft from Muslims as well as funding for cow shelters that in many cases take in the stolen cattle.
Interviews with nationalist Hindu leaders and militia members across the country reveal an impatience for Muslims to demonstrate obeisance to the Hindu majority.
There are no official statistics for how many cows have been stolen from Muslims in incidents involving such groups since Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to national power in 2014. Reuters’ reporting across India, though, puts actual numbers on the extent of the cow theft. It also provides the first in-depth look at how the actions of cow vigilantes are leading to further economic marginalisation of the country’s Muslim minority.
In northern India, the leadership of just two of the main organisations of gau rakshaks — right-wing Hindu cow vigilantes, or literally “cow protectors” — said they have taken about 190,000 cows since the year of Mr Modi’s election, some in the presence of police and almost every single one of them from Muslims, the reporting shows.
Separately, Reuters surveyed 110 cow shelters or farms, known as gaushalas, across six Indian states that were led by BJP chief ministers from before or just after Mr Modi’s 2014 election win. The survey found an increase of 50%% in their cattle holdings, from about 84,000 head before Mr Modi came to power in 2014 to more than 126,000 today.
The survey, conducted by phone and in person, covered a fraction of the thousands of cow sheds nationwide.
It was not possible to determine how much of the 50%% increase was due to cow vigilantes, because record keeping in many cases is nonexistent. But of the 110 cattle facilities surveyed, all but 14 said they receive cows from the Hindu vigilante groups. About a third said they sell or give cows away, nearly all to Hindu farmers and households.
In a separate survey, Reuters found that only three of 24 cow facilities in four states not ruled by a BJP chief minister said they sold or gave away cattle — mainly to Hindus — after receiving them. While cattle stock has risen about 40% in these gaushalas since Mr Modi took office, only a small part of the increase was due to vigilantes. In many of the cases, cows were donated to the shelters for religious reasons or purchased from cattle markets for fear they would be slaughtered.
It is hard to put a value on the seized cattle because the price of cows ranges from zero for animals near death to 25,000 rupees (12,800 baht), if not more, at cattle markets for healthy milk cows. But taking the average of those two points, just the 190,000 cows captured by the two vigilante groups in northern India would be worth more than US$36 million. That is a significant amount of money in India, where some 270 million people live on less than $1.90 a day. In rural areas, home to about 70%% of the nation’s population, a family’s milk cow is often its most valuable possession.