NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a fairly glittering Town Hall meet in the capital on Saturday and provided the headlines with his long delayed reference to the cow protection vigilantes who have spread terror across the states of India.

The Prime Minister made the following points:

  1. In the name of gau raksha (cow protection) some people have opened their shop/ I get so angry. Gau bhakti is different, Gau seva is different.
  2. I have seen that all night some people (kuch log) indulge in anti social activity, kuch log (repeats), in the day they wear the gau rakshak cloak and in the night carry out anti social activities
  3. I ask governments to prepare dossiers, 70-80 per cent of these people are anti socials.
  4. For those who want to serve cows, then ensure that they do not eat plastic. More cows die of eating plastic than are slaughtered.


These remarks come a month after the Una incident in which four Dalits were stripped and beaten publicly. Subsequently there have been numerous such attacks, including one five days ago in Lucknow, and an earlier with two Muslim women being beaten mercilessly at a Madhya Pradesh railway station.

Muslims and Dalits have been the target with the first global shocker taking place at Dadri last year when gau rakshaks stormed into the small house of a Muslim man, beat him to death and severely injured his son. This incident was flashed across the world but the PM kept silent for a full week after which he merely said, “The Dadri incident or the opposition to Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali’s concert are sad and undesirable. But what is the role of the Central government in these incidents.”He further added, “Such controversies have happened in the past too. The BJP has always opposed pseudo-secularism. Today, when we are faced with such an unfortunate malady, the same debate has resurfaced. This can only be resolved through discussions.”

The response was clearly seen as encouragement by the cow vigilantes who were emboldened enough to carry out more attacks and lynchings in the past several months. In Jharkhand two cow traders were found hanging from a tree. Just yesterday Muslim truck driver who accidentally hit a couple of cows, jumped into the river to escape gau rakshaks and is feared dead. Muslims were the bigger target, with the Una incident marking another turning point in the violent cow protection drive with the focus turning to the Dalits. Several reports of increased atrocities against Dalits, particularly in states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, have been carried in the media with the violence creating concern across India.

The terror has taken the form of threats, extortions, with direct violence against the poorest of the poor who eke out a living from lifting carcasses, and skinning these for some extra money. The cow vigilantes have spoken out about their modus operandi, where they receive a tip off, and take action on the basis of unconfirmed reports, with the police becoming a virtual bystander.

A new trend, and very evident on the social media are videos of the crime carried out under the guise of protecting cows. Significantly, most of these videos are taken by the perpetrators of the violence themselves and put out as warnings to their target groups. And probably to ingratiate themselves with those who approve of and sanction such violence.

Inherent in this new approach, of video-graphing the violent incident---is clearly an assurance from those in authority that no action will be taken against the cow rakshaks and they can continue their work with impunity.

Against this background, the story thus lies in not what PM Modi said after a month of the violence against the Dalits in Una, but what he failed to say at his Town Hall kind of event:

  1. He did not condemn the violence that has been terrorising the countryside for over a year now. There was not a word about the public flogging of Dalits at Una.
  2. He said he was asking the states to prepare dossiers to prove that 70-80 per cent of those involved these days were anti social elements but did not add that strict action should be taken against them all. Surely this was a sentence that needed to be said and not left in the air given the nature of recent crimes;
  3. He urged the cow vigilantes to turn their attention now to plastic bags as the bigger danger to cows than slaughtering, but did not assure the victims that all those responsible for such crimes would be dealt with a heavy hand;
  4. He did not give a call with the authority of his persona and his office for all vigilantes to stop terrorising the people.
  5. And of course the final question that is being asked by all concerned: why does the Prime Minister keep silent on issues as big as the lynching and flogging of the poor marginalised sections when all know that one word from him with the authority of his office, will silence the attackers?

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SEEMA MUSTAFA