In May 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government introduced regulations preventing the sale of any cattle for slaughter at animal markets across the country. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules received criticism and open defiance from several governments of states with a beef-consuming populace. In the days following the notification, the governments of Kerala and Meghalaya passed resolutions in their respective state assemblies opposing the centre’s notification, while those of Nagaland and West Bengal stated that the notification would not be implemented in their states. Among India’s beef-consuming states, however, the BJP-led Goa government, which appeared to be searching for a solution to the effect of the regulations on the state’s beef supply, was conspicuous for its relative silence.
Goa’s tryst with gau rakshak—cow-protection—groups began at least half a decade before they became active on the national landscape. With Christians comprising 25 percent of the state’s population and Muslims about eight percent, Goa’s food politics have provided adequate opportunity for saffron groups to test their mettle. For instance, at the sixth edition of the All India Hindu Convention that was held in the state in June 2017, the groups present passed resolutions seeking the establishment of a Hindu nation and a nationwide ban on cow slaughter. Sadhvi Saraswati, one of the speakers at the event, likened the consumption of beef to “eating one’s own mother,” and called for public hangings of those who eat beef.
According to Albertina Almeida, a Goa-based advocate and human-rights activist, “Goa has always been a laboratory for saffron politics.” The politics over the state’s beef supply and production has been a long simmering one, which started off innocuously as campaigns by animal welfare non-governmental organisations. Several meat traders I spoke to recalled that trouble first began for them more than a decade ago when these NGOs began to file cases under the Transport of Animals Rules, 1978, to shut down slaughterhouses and highlight conditions of spacing within the bovine transport facilities. According to Angela Kazi, the secretary of the Panjim Animal Welfare Society—an NGO that runs animal shelters in the state—the groups took up cases where traders would force 16 bovines in a vehicle that was supposed to carry only eight.
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