Let us talk about the least reported crime
For about a year, I have been receiving video links from Dhyan Foundation (DF) about the daily rescues of cattle by its volunteers all over the country. The cattle are rehabilitated in 47 shelters of the Foundation across India. From Chakulia in Jharkhand to Warangal in Andhra Pradesh, and Bhandara in Maharashtra to Debipur in Tripura, the story of rescues is the same: the cattle, largely cows, sometimes, buffaloes; bulls and male calves, are being transported in extremely cruel conditions for slaughter within India and in Bangladesh. Sometimes, the trucks are intercepted with police help and the cattle are rescued.
The condition of some of the cattle is unbearable because of being stuffed and tied together like logs of woods. Many die, others get mauled, they have their eyes pierced by the horns of others, and their delicate parts, like nose and anus, lacerated by the jute ropes used to tie them. It is gut-wrenching to look at them. The volunteers keep making the videos and putting them out on YouTube and social media. For them, every rescue is a story that needs to be reported. Going by the numbers, there is hardly any viewership for the videos. There are two reasons for this general disinterest.
Media Apathy
The mainstream media, that generates public opinion, does not take this issue seriously unless it involves a communal angle, like the violence committed by Hindu gau-rakshaks against the smugglers, most of whom are Muslims, as borne out by my own experience of rescues done in nine states over six years (2012–19). Then, too, the real story gets sidelined by the sensational aspects. During the last seven years since human killings over the cow issue started making headlines, I have seen just one balanced story on the subject in the mainline media. The Quint covered Mewat in Haryana and, beginning with the headline—“Gau Raksha Law, The Real Picture: Targeting Minorities and Failing The Cow,” the reporter seemed to have grasped the issue. Mercifully, no communalist or political activist was interviewed; their incendiary views only bring trouble and confuse the reporters, most of whom are not well-versed with the subject. And this brings me to the second reason for the media apathy on this issue.
There are plenty of criminals, who are Hindus, involved in extortion rackets in the name of cows. This, too, is a fact going by my experience. So organised are these gangs that cops in almost every state first did a background check on me to ascertain if I had any links with them. A superintendent of police in Odisha even warned me, in 2013, that if any of these criminals was found anywhere near me (and most of them, pretending to be great gau-bhakts, warm up to the unsuspecting activists coming from outside the state), I would be arrested and sent back to Delhi. Such groups not only extort money out of the Muslim smugglers, he said, but are also active in fomenting communal and political unrest in the guise of the sensitive issue of cow protection. Being familiar with the cloak-and-dagger ways of some such groups, particularly in Odisha, and knowing the political capital made by a fake activist-turned-MLA in Hyderabad, I could relate to the cop’s viewpoint.
Kerala Dog Killings
To come back to the story of cruelty to cows: going by the regular standards of professionalism, the gut-churning stories should be covered by the media–just as the stories of the mass dog-killings in Kerala were. The issue was kept alive internationally by animal welfare groups; the left-ruled state was sufficiently shamed by the propaganda; protests were held in Delhi outside Kerala House by DF and People for Animals (PFA) with powerful slogans, describing Kerala, which prides itself on being “God’s Own Country (the State tourism promo)” as “The Devil’s Own Backyard”, and the two organisations even went to court against the Kerala government before there was a halt in the killings.
I remember having heard an activist curse the “Killer State”: “I wish that state would drown in the sea for doing these despicable acts.” Not long after, Kerala did experience a mini pralay (deluge). I had heard an echo of this even in Odisha when an old man said that he wished to see “hurricane Phailin (October 2013) drown the state responsible for causing the killings of thousands of cattle each day.” The state is, indeed, corridor number one for the cattle-smugglers, as they converge to its two highways on the way to West Bengal and Bangladesh. When I reminded him that he also lived in Odisha, he said, “Life is not worth living as a helpless witness to the crime of cow slaughter.”
Power of Thought
Most people would like to rubbish such ‘curses’ but anyone with the slightest claim to intelligence should know that there is such a thing as pain or joy wave. Scientist Nikola Tesla, who designed the air conditioning motor among a host of electrical engineering inventions, talked about waves and vibrations lyrically while proving their existence scientifically. I have been getting personal proof of it all my life, but I will quote only one case. As a birdwatcher since childhood, I always took the house sparrow for granted. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it began to disappear. So powerful was the vibration created by the collective thoughts of some of us who lamented the loss that the house sparrow made a sudden comeback around our homes in 2003, and I saw quite a few of its nests every summer for some years.
In 2010-11, it vanished again, but I did not have the mental space to think about it. Later, it hit me hard to know that the house sparrow had found a place in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list of endangered species. It also set me thinking about the dark clouds looming over our environment and our very survival. During the last four years, since I again started thinking about the house sparrow, it reappeared—in five or six pairs around my place. All thoughts count. They create waves. Each one of us has the power to effect change through thoughts.
The daily videos I have been receiving from DF about cows are just reinforcing a positive thought, and creating a positive wave. The spirit of service to the gentle bovines that DF volunteers have shall not go waste. The pain these animals are going through shall not go unheard by the forces above us. Neither will the cry of pain it generates in the hearts of those who watch these videos.
Silent Suffering
On the side, let me tell you a special feature of cows I have noticed. Theirs is the most silent and soundless suffering I have known during rescues, and even in the shelters where I spent time. They seem to just submit to the pain and withdraw into a shell. They die without fuss. That is when they are dying in normal circumstances. The story is the opposite in slaughter houses. Whether in automated hacking machines or in slow killings, they struggle and scream. Calves are killed in front of the mothers without a second thought in makeshift slaughter houses. Visiting those sights, even mentally, is stressful. I find it hard to write any further about what I have seen.
The crux of the story is that the silence and the screams of these cows, buffaloes, bulls, bullocks and calves, and the actions of those who care to rescue, feed and nurse them, are literally being recorded in the atmosphere. It is bound to lead to comeuppance for those who cause the pain and rewards for those who relieve it.
The author is a senior journalist, based in Delhi
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