Recently, an interesting incident came to light. In Pratapgarh district, Rajasthan, Isaaq Sheikh, who works at the local bus terminal, devoted himself entirely to the cause of protecting the holy cow or gau mata, as it is fondly called. Since cows in this region are known to often randomly stray into the bus terminal area at night, endangering their own lives, Sheikh has chosen to mark the horns of the cows with radium stickers so that buses plying in and out of the terminal do not end up inadvertently hitting or hurting the cows.
Unfortunately, Sheikh’s story is an unsung one. The Indian mainstream media which went berserk with stories of Mohammed Akhlaq and Pehlu Khan. They chose to completely ignore the story of Sheikh. Why? Well, because good news does not sell; ‘bad’ surely does!
Sheikh’s story busts the myth that the cow is a holy animal only for Hindus. The cow is as much revered by other communities too, Muslims included. Hence, divisive groups and ignorant journalists, who thrive on sensationalism rather than sensible reporting and have used the cow to defame the current Narendra Modi-led Government in India, need a fact check.
Wikipedia has this malafide post, getting its facts completely wrong. Says Wikipedia, “There has been a rise in the number of incidents of cow slaughter-related vigilantism since the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the Indian Union Government in 2014. The frequency and severity of cow-related violence has been described as unprecedented. Human Rights Watch has reported that there has been a surge in cow vigilante violence since 2015. The surge is attributed to the recent rise in Hindu nationalism in India. Many vigilante groups say they feel ‘empowered’ by the victory of the Hindu nationalist BJP in the 2014 election. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has been emboldened by the fact that the Prime Minister of India is also one of its members. The RSS has a history of launching vigilante campaigns, including cow protection groups. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has denounced the vigilantes, saying they were not legitimate gau-rakshaks.”
Wikipedia would do well to know that some of the worst communal clashes and lynchings have happened under the erstwhile Congress dispensations at the Centre, be it the 1984 massacre of Sikhs, the 1989 Bhagalpur riots, the 2012 Assam riots or the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
Even the Una violence in Gujarat, the Jat quota riots in Haryana in 2016 and the recent Mandsaur violence in June this year, were reportedly spearheaded by the Congress and its cohorts. Again, Wikipedia would do well to educate itself on Hindu nationalism.
The Supreme Court of India, in a historic judgement in 1995, clearly stated that “Hinduism is a way of life and a state of mind”. Radicals and Muslim fanatics, masquerading as secularsm, need to know that Hindu nationalism is rooted in diversity, inclusiveness, pluralism and is not bound by religion or any form of bigotry.
Speaking of the cow, a moot point to be noted here is that even Mahatma Gandhi championed for cow protection all through his life. Article 48 of the Constitution of India mandates the state to prohibit slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle. On October 26, 2005, the Supreme Court of India, in a landmark judgement, upheld the constitutional validity of anti-cow slaughter laws enacted by different State Governments in India — with 24 out of 29 States in the country currently having various regulations prohibiting either the slaughter or sale of cows.
Again, the ‘preservation, protection and improvement of stock and prevention of animal diseases, veterinary training and practice’ in Entry 15 of the State List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution implies that State Legislatures have exclusive powers to legislate on the prevention of slaughter and preservation of cattle.
Of course, cow protection laws does not give gau-rakshaks a carte blanche to indulge in lawlessness and Prime Minister Modi has made this amply clear on various public platforms.
Equally, the issue is deeper… few stray incidents of cow vigilantism get amplified by a TRP-hungry Press and a bunch of pseudo-seculars, who thrive on appeasement and vote-bank politics. No wonder that it is the same Hinduphobic bunch that shed copious tears on the sad deaths of Akhlaq and Pehlu Khan and did not even have crocodile tears to spare on the brutal killings of policeman Ashok Yadav, homeguard Ghan Shyam, senior policeman, Manoj Mishra and Dalit VHP leader, Arun Kumar Mahaur — all were reportedly lynched by a bunch of Muslim cattle-smugglers and cattle thieves between 2014-2016, under the erstwhile AkhileshYadav-led Samajwadi Party Government in Uttar Pradesh.
Of course, gau-rakshaks cannot and should not take the law into their own hands. But do not the same rules apply to cattle thieves too? Is lynching by cattle thieves, who are reportedly largely Muslims, a crime that is not worthy of the same outrage?
The fact remains that despite India being 79 per cent Hindu, it is the Hindus, who in many cases, have been denied their basic right to even pray — a classic case being Nalhati village in Birbhum district in West Bengal, where Hindus are disallowed from celebrating Durga Puja by the Muslims residing there.
West Bengal, under its Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has completely lost the plot, and she is not alone. There is a whole bunch of radicals out there, journalists included, who maintained a radio silence when a blood-thirsty Muslim mob went rioting, looting and killing in the name of religion in Dhulagarh, Malda and Baduria in West Bengal, but have the time to outrage on everything else under the sun.
Nothing debunks the malicious narrative being peddled by large parts of the discredited global Left-centric media against the Modi Government, more than the data below:
As per date from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, though African Americans and Hispanics constitute about 32 per cent of the American population, they comprised 56 per cent of all incarcerations in 2015.
Again, the US has five per cent of the world’s population but is home to 21 per cent of the world’s prisoners. One in every 37 American adults is under some form of “corrective supervision”.
Furthermore, African Americans, in 2015, were incarcerated at a rate that was five more than that of white Americans. There’s more. In its first year in office, the Obama Administration witnessed 1,211 anti-Semitic crimes, with the total number of anti-Semitic crimes peaking at 7000 in the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Also, anti-Muslim hate crimes in the US went up by a whopping 600 per cent from 38 to 260 between 2014-2016. Even Britain saw a massive surge in Islamophobic hate crimes between July 2014 and July 2015, with the total number of anti-Muslim crimes going up from 478 to 816 in the said period.
India takes pride in its multi-lingual, multi-racial, multi-religious diversity. Equally, under the Narendra Modi led dispensation, Hindus have finally found a voice and have no qualms in proudly reclaiming their rich heritage, their cultural roots and, of course, the forgotten legacies of ancient Hindu customs and traditions that are so relevant even in the age of the millennials.
Courtesy: The Pioneer
