It took hundreds of people gathering in public places in several cities for Narendra Modi to break his vow of silence. A day after the #NotInMyName rallies rang out in spirited protests against the recent spate of lynching of Muslims in India, the prime minister spoke on social media against such crimes.
Gau bhakti, or devotion to the cow, isn't an acceptable reason to resort to violence, Modi said, citing the ever-convenient example of Mahatma Gandhi to uphold the value of ahimsa (non-violence) as a way of life. It's the same icon, by the way, who was called a "chatur baniya" a few days ago by the PM's close aide Amit Shah, who is also the president of the party leading the government at the Centre.
This is not the first time the PM has condemned dastardly acts such as lynching of lower-caste citizens and Muslims, though his reactions usually are a long time coming.
Gau bhakti, or devotion to the cow, isn't an acceptable reason to resort to violence, Modi said
In 2015 after Mohammad Akhlaq was hounded out of his home by a mob in Dadri village in Uttar Pradesh on the suspicion of storing beef in his fridge and killed, Modi didn't address the incident for a year. It's true, as the leader of the nation, it's not always possible for the PM to speak on every infringement of human right, but Akhlaq's case had a gravity quite apart from any other hate crime.
It marked the rise of a new group of moral police — the cow vigilantes — who seemed to act without fear of consequences. They didn't care to get their facts right, although even that wouldn't excuse their deplorable behaviour. The merest whiff of a rumour about a dead bovine, or someone transporting cattle, was enough to spark a series of calculated brutalities, usually ending in death. In the odd case, however, timely police intervention managed to save a precious life or two, but mostly the bloodlust of the mob proved insatiable.
Last year in Una, Gujarat, the state over which Modi reigned for over a decade as chief minister, Dalit men were stripped and flogged mercilessly on the suspicion of killing bovines, when they were only carrying out their age-old caste-assigned duty of dispensing carcasses of dead cattle.
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