Patralekha Chatterjee | Venom or Viksit Bharat: The choice is quite clear

Last month, 72-year-old Ashraf Ali Sayyad Hussain was brutally assaulted by a mob in a moving train in Maharashtra. The reason: they suspected him of carrying beef. In another ghoulish and widely reported case, 22-year-old Sabir Malik, a Muslim migrant worker from West Bengal, was beaten to death by self-proclaimed cow protectors in Charkhi Dadri district of poll-bound Haryana because they suspected him of consuming beef. The same venom led to 19-year-old Aryan Mishra being shot dead on a highway in Haryana. Thugs who call themselves “cow protectors” mistook the teenager for a Muslim and a cattle smuggler. It is vicious prejudice which prompted a school principal in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically powerful state, to take on a seven-year-old schoolboy because his lunch box carried non-vegetarian biryani.

These are not isolated instances. Neither is killing, assaulting, and humiliating in the name of the cow a new horror story. Back in 2016, this columnist pointed out that “the ringing endorsement about vikas” coincided with “gruesome images of the lynching two Muslim cattle-herders, one a teenaged boy, in a remote village in Jharkhand’s Latehar district… The two had been mercilessly beaten, then hung from a tree. The relatives of the victims said the pair were taking buffaloes to a nearby cattle market when a mob attacked them.”

There have been many other gruesome incidents.

Then, as now, the response has been condemnations with caveats. And a few arrests. The end result -- near-normalisation of mob-instigated crimes spurred by an ideology which brooks no deviations.

In the case of Aryan Mishra’s murder, the Haryana police arrested five people but later claimed they had acted out of a misunderstanding. The Haryana police have also arrested five persons for allegedly beating migrant worker Sabir Malik to death and injuring another in Charkhi Dadri district.

The police says it is preparing a "list of cow vigilantes" to track their movements.

In Amroha, the committee investigating the lunch box story has reportedly given the principal a clean chit. The schoolboy’s mother had alleged that the principal had beaten up the student, confined him to a solitary room in the school for three hours and then expelled him. The committee said it could not find any corroborative evidence of that and that the boy had not been expelled. The basic point remains: can a lunch box carrying a seven-year-old’s favourite dish be a threat to society?

The larger question: Can a country with a dominantly young population and aspirations to be a “developed” nation persist with a politics of polarisation in India that leaves almost nothing untouched?

It is no secret that cows are revered by most Hindus. Many Indian states ban their slaughter, as well as the sale or smuggling of beef. But it is grotesque and ghoulish to divide killers into “good killers” and “bad killers” and condone the murder of human beings in the name of saving the cow. Due process must be followed.

Anil Kaushik, the self-proclaimed protector of cows who allegedly shot dead Aryan Mishra, regrets killing the teenager as he was a Brahmin, on the top of India’s caste hierarchy.

In contrast, Uma, the grieving mother of Aryan Mishra, asked the most pertinent question: “Are Muslims not humans? Are they not our brothers? Why would you kill a Muslim?”

How can a country which uses democracy as its calling card normalise killings in the name of saving cows? How can we vilify the food choices of any community or people? Food is a matter of personal choice and no cuisine is superior or inferior. Take the case of Indonesia and Malaysia, two countries in Southeast Asia with a Muslim majority. Muslims traditionally do not eat pork, as everyone knows. But nothing stops minorities and visitors to both countries from consuming the same. Restaurants openly advertise pork delicacies.

For the record, official data from the latest National Health and Family Survey (NFHS-5, 2019-2021) shows that the number of Indians who eat non-vegetarian food -- eggs, fish, chicken or meat -- has been increasing steadily. Around 57 per cent men eat such food items at least once a week now, compared to 49 per cent in 2015-16. However, there are gender disparities. Far fewer Indian women eat non-vegetarian dishes.

Why is there such a push to vilify the much-loved biryani in India? Is it because demonisation of biryani, and other non-vegetarian delicacies, intersects with broader issues of cultural exclusion and identity politics?

This brings us to another fundamental question: what do we understand by a “developed” nation? Is “Viksit Bharat”, the Narendra Modi government's promise and hope to make India a developed nation by 2047, only about malls, multiplexes, high-rise buildings, highways, soaring GDP and international clout? Or is Viksit Bharat also about the vision of a cohesive, stable society where all communities can thrive, where everyone lives without fear, without having their culture and cuisine demonised and where everyone can aspire to have a slice of that dream of development?

India has over 200 million Muslims. There is no way the country, with a population of over 1.4 billion, can realise its full potential if such a significant number of its people constantly live in an environment of fear. In recent years, there have been attempts to economically boycott Muslim scrap dealers, bangle sellers, dosa hawkers, tongawallas, fruit sellers, street vendors, tour operators, cabbies, meat shop owners. These are Indian citizens.

Targeting and instilling a sense of fear and insecurity among Muslims is not just morally and ethically wrong, it is also economically damaging. How can we expect to have a booming economy if a large section of our population cowers in fear and is sidelined?

During his recent visit to Singapore, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his hope to create “several Singapores” within India. But Singapore is not just about the optics of a developed country. It is also about systematically creating a cohesive society, seen as a prerequisite for material prosperity. Singapore intervenes politically to ensure social cohesion. There is near-zero tolerance for hate and offensive speech of any kind and no room for ghettoisation or stigmatisation of any community’s culture or cuisine. Singapore’s housing laws are intended to prevent the formation of ethnic enclaves. Residents of different ethnicities and religions must live together and interact on a regular basis in public housing, where most Singaporeans live.

India has a compelling story to tell and an exciting future. Junking the ongoing toxic narrative which otherises entire communities will get us closer to Viksit Bharat.