'Cow is my mother': India's cow-related lynching incidents are on the rise. Is the BJP to blame?
Mob killings fuelled by religious hatred have been on the rise in India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took power in 2014, with most incidents related to alleged slaughter of cows, an animal considered sacred by many Hindus.
In the latest such incident, a BJP lawmaker is shown on video making a controversial statement about the number of people killed by cow vigilantes.
"We have so far killed five people," Gyan Dev Ahuja says in the video that went viral at the end of August, referring to the lynching of two men, Pehlu Khan and Rakbar Khan, by cow vigilantes in 2017 and 2018.
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The BJP has tried to distance itself from Ahuja's remarks, saying that those were "his own views", and maintained that it was unfair to say that hate crimes have intensified under Modi, given a lack of government data to back the claim.
On other occasions, party leaders have said that while such killings are unfortunate, there was no need for a new separate federal law to deal with the problem.
According to data journalism website IndiaSpend, 28 people were killed in cow-related violence between 2010 and 2017. Of those, about 90 per cent were reported after Modi took office in May 2014, and about half occurred in states with governments dominated by BJP.
It is often difficult to ascertain the exact number of such killings as India's laws do not make a distinction between cases of murder and lynchings, so lynching cases are not reflected in official crime statistics.
The Supreme Court in 2018 asked the central government to enact a law against lynching and directed states to take steps to address them. These include police patrolling of vulnerable areas with an officer designated to monitor such crimes in each district, creating special courts to complete trials within six months, and providing compensation to victims or their families.
Four states of India's 29 states - Manipur, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and West Bengal - have drafted laws against lynching but are awaiting approval from the central government to enact them.
These bills propose jail terms ranging from three years to life imprisonment and fines of between 100,000 Indian rupees (US$1,300) and Rs2.5 million (US$31,400) if a mob attack results in the victim's death.
Legal experts have identified the problem to be a failure in enforcing laws. This, and the outright or implicit endorsement of such attacks by high-ranking government figures, has created a culture of impunity.
Salamuddin, who goes by one name, is a lawyer and president of a civil society group that works with the families of hate crime victims in Haryana. He said that anti-lynching laws would be a deterrent only if the police were effective and impartial.
"Police always function in sync with the politics of the ruling dispensation," he said.
After Pehlu Khan, a 55-year-old dairy farmer from Haryana, was killed by a mob in Rajasthan state in April 2017 for allegedly smuggling cows, BJP member of the Rajasthan legislature, Ahuja, said he did not regret the killing as it was "the fate of cow smugglers".
A court acquitted all six people accused of the murder, blaming the police for a botched investigation. It found that the suspects presented in court were different from the men Khan named in his dying declaration. The court also ruled that a video recording on which the charges were based could not be considered as admissible evidence.
After Khan's killing, all other Muslims in his village shut their dairy farms and stopped all trades remotely connected to cattle.
Khan's son Mubarik, 22, who used to help run the farm, now works as a truck driver, earning Rs8,000 (US$104) a month.
Elsewhere in the northern Indian state of Haryana, Sairo Bano is still trying to come to terms with the killing of her 15-year-old son, five years after he was fatally stabbed and thrown off a train by a group of fellow travellers.
"What was his fault? No one has answered this question all these years," she asked.
Her elder son, Shakir, who survived the attack aboard the train taking the brothers home from New Delhi two days before Eid Al Fitr in 2017, said it began with an argument over seats and turned into religious taunting.
"A group of 15-20 passengers boarded the coach and asked us to vacate our seats. When we refused, they became aggressive. They pulled my brother's beard and called us beefeaters and anti-nationals," he said.
Six suspects have been put on trial. All are free on bail.
In other cow-related attacks across India, victims or their relatives have been charged under laws against cattle slaughter that several states have adopted since 2014.
"The communalisation of the entire criminal-justice delivery system is a major factor in the unchecked incidents of mob lynching," said Rakesh Shukla, a New Delhi-based lawyer and psychoanalyst.
"A police report is filed against the victim/survivors under the provisions of cow protection laws," he said. "Later, if there is public pressure, a report is lodged against the perpetrators of the violence."
In September 2015, Mohammad Akhlaq, a 52-year-old ironsmith from Dadri district in Uttar Pradesh state, was beaten to death by a mob for allegedly storing and eating beef.
Police charged Akhlaq and his brother, Jan Mohammad, with cow slaughter.
The 18 men on trial for his killing are out on bail. Despite the case being referred to a fast track court, the witnesses are yet to depose.
Akhlaq's family left their home in Dadri district after the killing and never returned. Jan, 53, a senior technician with an automobile firm, spent the past six years dealing with legal paperwork, financially supporting his brother's family, and giving interviews to the media.
When this reporter spoke to him at his home, he was busy with phone calls to arrange the wedding of his late brother's son, who was severely injured in the mob attack.
"After ages, we will experience an occasion like this. My brother could not live to see this day," he said ruefully.
Ved Nagar, head of a cow-protection group in Dadri, has freely admitted to his participation in the attack.
"I led the group that killed Akhlaq," said Nagar, 35.
"Let the cops and authorities do their job. We will do ours," he said, accompanied by an armed police guard provided by the state government. "Cow is my mother. If someone kills my mother, I cannot remain a mute spectator."
Senior BJP leader and hardliner Yogi Adityanath, who heads the Uttar Pradesh government, is well known for similar rhetoric and his virulent Islamaphobia. Other party members have publicly defended and shown support for people accused of cow-related killings.
Apoorvanand, an academic at Delhi University who goes by one name, is a vocal critic of crimes against minorities, and said this was the "chilling effect" of religion-based hatred.
"Such crimes have genocidal tones as they send a message to the entire community."
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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