Dealing with 'Cow' Cadres

In recent months, those claiming to be the protectors of cows in India, maged to create a secure niche for themselves, regardless of the absence of specific provisions in our Constitution to declare the cow a protected or privileged animal in the country. What many people in India tend to overlook is that despite being a Hindu-majority country, India has chosen not to be a theocratic state like its neighbours, but to be a secular democratic republic. This decision has placed a heavy burden of responsibility on the tion of having to take a stand on all major issues that is free of bias about religious or cultural preferences in matters of food and related spheres of human activity. Over the decades, the Indian ethos has evinced exemplary tolerance in adopting a catholic and liberal approach to cultural or gastronomic differences among different communities. And considering that there are a few Christian-majority States in the Northeast, over the years there has been the desired tolerance even about the consumption of beef among certain communities. Lately, this tolerance over dietary preferences had been threatened and a few deaths had resulted from the kind of intolerance that erupted. There was, for a time, an impression that such intolerance about dietary preferences had the tacit support of the BJP. The impression maged to gain ground because of the Prime Minister’s silence on such issues. People who had such impressions have now been reassured by the Prime Minister’s recent call for “stringent action” against cow vigilantes. “All political parties should collectively denounce hooliganism in the me of cow protection. The State governments should take stringent action against such anti-social elements,” the Prime Minister said in a recent series of tweets.