Vigilante attacks: After PM remarks, act firmly

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at last said something strong against cow vigilantes, who are on a killing spree but are still called “gau bhakt” (cow devotees) and “gaurakshak” (cow protectors) by the Hindutva lot, at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad on Thursday.

We are relieved. We hope something positive will flow from this, and that killer squads would be made to face their comeuppance under the law. But it should be noted that the PM should have taken the lead in delegitimising the killers by calling them out through using a different terminology, rather than stick to cow devotees. Mr Modi needs to go that extra mile for his words to have effect.

The PM said in no uncertain terms killings in the name of the cow “will not be tolerated”. He also said such acts were “unacceptable”. His statement came in the wake of the killing of 16-year-old Junaid, and the huge protests that erupted in India’s major cities on Wednesday under the rubric “Not In My Name”.

The impact of Mr Modi’s words might have been compelling if he had named the teenager who was pummeled by a goon squad for being a “beef eater”, tortured, knifed to death (all this in a moving local train just outside the nation’s capital) and his lifeless body flung out of the train.

Last August, the Prime Minister had said cow vigilantes engaged in “anti-social activities” by night and became killers in daytime. This was a step forward from his sphinx-like silence on an issue that was already roiling the country and creating a communal divide, not to say a deep sense of insecurity among Muslims in the country.

It would be in the fitness of things if, in the light of the PM’s recent Ahmedabad musings, the government directed a stocktaking of the way things have moved since Mr Modi’s first warning 10 months ago.

Unofficial estimates suggest 20 episodes of lynching-deaths of Muslims have occurred in the first six months of this year at the hands of the so-called cow-protection brigades despite the PM’s disapproving remarks in various parts of the country. That makes a mockery of his August statement.

It cannot have passed notice that hours after the PM’s Sabarmati remarks, a Muslim man was killed in the Ramgarh district of Jharkhand by cow vigilantes. This is a fraught moment for India and the government has failed to intervene.

It is not enough for the PM to say that Mahatma Gandhi would have disapproved of the actions of cow brigade killers. The Mahatma is someone their philosophy has taught them to hate, and one of their ideological kin assassinated him. The government must act now, Gandhi or no Gandhi.