Beef is a delicious food item and it consumed across the world, with plenty of cuisines are practically incomplete without it. But you cannot eat beef in India. And if you do, it could be at the expense of your life. For in the past three years, 44 innocent people have been killed over this issue by the Hindu Nationalists, who are backed by the law enforcement and the nationalist politicians from the Modi’s party. Yet, he has been reelected in a landslide victory a few days ago.
After a hectic month of the electoral process in India, that saw seven phases India’s 900 million voters have spoken for Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party, again, and with an even greater majority. The BJP improved its electoral performance from the 282 seats that it gained in 2014, to 303 seats in these elections. From all the electoral standards, the victory margin is phenomenal when one observes the nature of the country’s politics. A Party needs 272 seats in the Lok Sabha to gain the required majority in order to form the government. No party in 30 years had done so until Modi-led BJP gained 282 seats in the previous elections. But one thing has been missing throughout the tenure of BJP-led government in the past five years, i.e., the true spirit of secularism, that has been at the center-stage of Indian politics since the creation of the country in 1947, and especially in 1950, when the country adopted its first and only constitution.
To say the least, Modi’s India between 2015 and 2019 has been divisive. The years of his BJP rule have witnessed the marginalization of minorities, especially Muslims. Many of whom have been lynched in the name of cow protection. The animal that is sacred in India, but a source of meat and leather industry for the rest of the world has cost dozens of human lives, and the incidents are not ceasing to happen. Not only this, the Modi years have seen the Hinduization of the media and bureaucracy, according to the Independent. And despite the dismal performance of the economy, with the highest unemployment rate in 45 years, Modi is back yet again in 2019, for another five years.
According to Report of Human Rights Watch in 2019, Modi years have seen increased levels of bigotry, with the unprecedented number of Hindu Nationalist vigilante attacks related to the cow protection. Of the 100 such attacks, the report says, as many as 280 people were injured. The most tragic aspect is that this extremism has been patronized by the government and its officials, with the BJP Nationalists’ continued incitation and promotion aimed at fanning the communal hatred.
The following is the most-talked-about tweet by a Bollywood legendary actor, Rishi Kapoor:
I am angry. Why do you equate food with religion?? I am a beef eating Hindu. Does that mean I am less God fearing then a non eater? Think!!
— Rishi Kapoor (@chintskap) March 15, 2015
The report also cites the comparable data between the period of 2012 and 2015 with such sporadic incidences of similar sort. But the violence has increased since Modi’s rise in 2014 coincided with the insecurity of the Muslims, the significant minority of the country with the 14 percent population of the country, and also the world’s third largest Muslim population in a country. One breathing moment was the country’s Supreme Court that suspended a law in 2017, in a bid to save the secular face of the country, that would have banned the sale of cattle for the slaughter nationwide.
The current situation of the political as well as religious minorities in India under Modi’s government is disappointing, if not entirely dismal. This is explained by the following quote of the Professor Emeritus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, C.P. Bhambhri,
“ The present trust deficit between the Hindu majority party governments and the 160 million Muslims minority community is worrisome if Muslims are not made to participate in the democratic process, a section among the community may take to undemocratic methods to resolve their problems” (Mishra, 2018).
