As an Hon. Animal Welfare Officer (HAWO) with The Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) from 2013 to 2019, I travelled many parts of the country extensively, spending weeks and months in key places. The exposure to the unbearable crimes against animals, especially the cow family, often left me staggering. However, the panting pace of the rescue operations I did, almost alone, hardly afforded me the space to video record the evidence of cruelty. At the end of each campaign, I wrote passionately in the media to shine light on the neglected issue of crimes against animals, especially cattle. I also wrote copious letters/ petitions to cops, judges and ministers to stir them into action.
In the second year of the work, I received a video of the Gadhimai ‘Festival’, held every five years in Bariyarpur the Bara district of Nepal. The cover picture was an aerial view of hundreds of severed buffalo heads. Inside, there were action shots of diabolical men letting out the netherworld cries, holding swords with both hands and striking the necks of the animals with full force. The image of the decapitated buffalo heads moving long after being cut from the body did something to my physiological brain, which is difficult to explain. For four days after watching that, I was simply sagging. On the fifth day, I met the friend who had sent me the video and described my state. As a sadhak since the age of 19, the 45-year-old friend has some god-given powers. I don’t know what he did during the few hours we were together in and out of a crafts exhibition, but the weight I had been carrying came off me. I told him not to send me such videos again.
Of course, as an activist involved in rescues, I had to confront such stark realities several times before and after this terrifying experience. They haunted me for long: In 2013, I saw cattle carcasses atop a hill in Jamu Shahi in Odisha’s Khorda district, which is a hub of butchers. They are so-called cattle traders, all Muslims, who are actually cattle mafia dons. The hundreds of cattle of the choicest Indian breeds that are kept in the backyards of their houses are smuggled to West Bengal and to Bangladesh for illegal slaughter thrice a week during regular times and daily around Eid. The police, mostly Hindu, on the payrolls of the mafia, are accomplices in the crime. They side with the law and you only if you are physically present in these places to stop the smuggling. Otherwise, they patronise this rampant crime.
I have been off that work since the expiry of my term as HAWO three years ago, but I remain in touch with people and outfits involved in rescue and rehabilitation work. In the recent weeks, I saw two videos put out by Dhyan Foundation on YouTube which were a very sad reminder of the continuing human atrocities on cattle. There is a bull whose leg broke because of the cruel way it was being transported for illegal slaughter, but which was still trying to run as he was brought down a vehicle post-rescue, and there is another one patiently submitting to a healing hand as a big green chilli is removed from one of its eyes. The third image was the most horrifying: A rescued and bleeding bull with multiple bullet injuries, apparently caused by a trigger-happy and perverted mind. Minus the bullet wounds, the bull looked okay.
Such violence is deeply disturbing. What makes it worse is that hardly any animal welfare organisation or Hindu outfit is ready to stand up to the cattle mafia or run a meaningful and effective campaign that would put an end to the daily slaughter of cattle, which happens throughout the country, the state laws prohibiting it notwithstanding. There is not a city I have been to as part of my animal welfare work which does not have a kasai gali (butchers’ street). These streets remain active throughout the year regardless of the party in power. During Eid, they enjoy state protection to carry out the slaughter of bulls. In October 2012, I witnessed the police provide protection to Muslims to carry out the slaughter of perfectly healthy bulls (which is illegal) during Eid in Karnataka’s Belgaum city and, in August 2016, I saw the same in Odisha’s Balasor. Karnataka had a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and Odisha had a Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government. The officials are bribed into issuing the mandatory fit-to-slaughter certificates.
Unlike in the case of the Gadhimai festival, a primitive and misguided Hindu ritual killing that goes back 300 years, no animal welfare outfit dares run a campaign against the daily butchery of cattle by the largely Muslim cattle mafia in India. The campaign against the carnage of animals at the Gadhimai temple, involving thousands of supporters and activists from Nepal, India (with Maneka Gandhi’s People for Animals at the forefront) and famous international animal welfare bodies like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has been running for years. Petitions were filed before the supreme courts of Nepal and India to stop the massacre and trafficking of animals from India. They did succeed in getting a ban order. The judges and the Nepal government were ready to be persuaded against the sheer scale of the bloodbath, on grounds of the law, concerns about environment and those about human health. The Nepal government, that had earlier been supporting the festival, stopped funding it. The issue got due coverage internationally, in BBC, Al-Jazeera, The New York Times and CNN. The ban order was passed in 2015, but even before that, the campaign had been effective in bringing down the scale of the killings — from 500,000 in 2009 to 200,000 in 2014. In 2019, the massacre happened despite the ban order, but the numbers came down to less than 10,000. The activists continue to work assiduously to put a complete end to the killings in the near future.
There is, however, no such hope with regard to the atrocities being committed on the cow and family in India. From Bailhongal in Karnataka and Digha in West Bengal to Baraut in Uttar Pradesh and Kishanganj in Bihar, I have seen pools and drains of blood in congested human colonies, all of which come from the makeshift and illegal slaughter places. The slaughter is done very early in the morning, slyly and openly, depending upon whether the streets have more Hindus or Muslims. There is no way you can persuade anyone in the civic and police administration to take action against these daily violations of the law that also entail serious threats to human health and communal peace. The official reasoning against shutting down these places everywhere I heard was that it would cause communal trouble (because Muslims running these places would protest). My argument that the opening of these places and their existence, too, were a threat to communal peace (because Hindus find them offensive to their religious sentiments) always fell on deaf ears. And this is what brings me to the core point, the impact of the daily and illegal slaughter of cattle on society and politics.
Having studied the issue closely over the last ten years, I am convinced that as long as there is official, media and social apathy towards the religious dimension of the massacre of cattle, you can forget about communal amity. There is deep rage and frustration among the common Hindus at what is done to the cow family by the Muslims. There is even deeper rage at the near blacking out of the issue in the mainstream media. The government, the animal welfare outfits and the media all need to treat the cow and progeny with the sensitivity due to all living creatures. Ignore the fact they are worshipped by devout Hindus or considered superior to other animals. Just give them their due as ordinary animals that suffer and feel pain like all other animals. That would be a good start. Eventually, it might raise your sensitivity to a level where you would appreciate that saving an animal—any animal–in the name of religion is much better than killing it in the name of religion. (end)
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