Nearly 35 years before the attack orchestrated by the Laskhar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed took place in 2001, on 7 November 1966, a massive protest comprising nearly 125,000 people charged the Indian parliament. The protest was part of a movement for a nationwide ban on cow slaughter, led by various Hindutva groups. In his September 2016 story, In the Name of the Mother, Ishan Marvel reported on how the state is nurturing the gau rakshaks, or cow-protection vigilantes, of Haryana. In the following excerpt from the story, Marvel recounts the first-ever attack, and how it was a “a day of violence and vandalism.”
In ancient times, according to many historians, such as DN Jha and Romila Thapar, beef was a part of the diet of most communities living on the subcontinent, including Brahmins. Cows, among other animals, were also sacrificed for many Brahminical rituals. The popular sentiment against cow slaughter began to reify in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the emergence of Hindu nationalism. By the early twentieth century, organisations such as the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS had started using the cow as a political tool to mobilise Hindus.
In late 1948, during the constituent assembly debates, a few members of the assembly demanded that cow protection be made a fundamental right. However, among others, BR Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee, opposed the idea, preventing India from becoming the first country to provide a fundamental right to an animal. Eventually, a compromise was reached, as a ban on cattle slaughter was declared one of the Directive Principles of State Policy—guidelines to be kept in mind by central and state governments while framing laws. The resulting Article 48 of the Constitution reads, “The State shall endeavour to organise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.”
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