http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2088866/why-world-needs-sit-and-take-notice-indias-war-meat
Over the last two and a half years, ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) took office at the centre of India’s federal government, beef has become the big political issue of the day. Laws have been changed to increase the punishment for transporting or trading in beef. Restaurants have been prohibited from serving it. People have been dragged out from their homes and lynched on suspicion of serving beef. A month ago, an innocent dairy farmer was beaten to death by a group of vigilantes who thought he might have been transporting his cattle for slaughter. Government ministers have proudly declared how much they disapprove of beef-eating.
And yet, it is hard to not to think back to Walter Mondale, or even to Wendy’s. Just as they used the phrase to refer to a lack of substance, so it is in contemporary India. The beef campaign addresses no real or direct threat to Indian society. But used as a symbol of exclusion, it could have lasting effects on the future of a nation founded on secular principles.
The current anti-beef campaign has two origins, both rooted in a conception of Hinduism. The first is the view that because the cow is sacred to Hindus, it should never be slaughtered. The second is a more general proposition: good people are, almost by definition, vegetarians, and all meat eating is fundamentally evil.
As the beef-ban is slowly being recognised as a fact of modern Indian life, it is the vegetarian-only campaign that is gathering momentum.
The anti-cow slaughter campaign has played an annoying if not particularly constructive role in Indian politics over the last century. Observant Hindus do not eat beef because the cow is venerated.
