Gujarat's law on cow slaughter is absurd

The BJP government in Gujarat passed a law on Friday under which a maximum punishment of life imprisonment and a minimum of 10 years in jail is prescribed for cow slaughter. The statement for amending the Animal Preservation Bill says that “more stringent provisions are required to be made… for curbing the menace of illegal slaughtering...”

If the intention of the Vijay Rupani government was genuine, it should have offered convincing statistics to establish that the cow slaughter in the state had been on the rise and had assumed the proportions of a “menace”.

If this were indeed true, it would be suggestive of the fact that the incidence of cow slaughter had been rising in Gujarat under the nose of the BJP government, which has been in power for close to 15 years. Two, this would indicate that the earlier Narendra Modi government in the state had been indifferent to the killing of the cow and its progeny.

It is doubtful, however, if the statistics needed to make the case can be summoned. Two kinds of data are needed — corroborated figures for the killing of cows (and a decline in the population of cows and their progeny in the state through unnatural causes), and systematic data for prosecutions for this criminal offence.

There are two visually arresting aspects of the passage of the amendments in the state Assembly. The opposition Congress had been bundled out of the chamber before the passage, a throwback to the days of Mr Modi’s Gujarat, and the visitors’ gallery was overflowing with Hindu “sadhu-sant” or holy men in their saffron robes.

The combined effect of the two is suggestive of the deeply political impulse that has, on the face of it, motivated the amendment, which pretty much effaces the difference between manslaughter and cow slaughter when seen in light of the fact that capital punishment for the former is given only in the “rarest of rare” cases and even this frequently tends to be commuted to life imprisonment. It will be interesting to see if the saffron-robed religio-crats will be pressed into service, overtly or covertly, in the state Assembly election which is due in the not too distant future.

It can’t have escaped notice that while the saffron party is escalating punishment for taking a cow’s life in Gujarat (and who knows similar legislation may follow in a state like UP), the party has no wish whatsoever to tread the same path in northeastern India, where the consumption of beef is common. Kiren Rijiju, minister of state for home at the Centre who is from Arunachal Pradesh, said not long ago that he ate beef. Political opportunism and absurdity seem to be the order of the day.