[The initiatives have disillusioned some of Mr. Modi’s early cheerleaders, economic liberals who supported him for his pro-growth economic agenda. R. Jagannathan, the editorial director of the conservative Swarajya magazine, called the new regulations “politically stupid, economically unsustainable, morally and ethically unacceptable and communally dangerous.”]
By Suhasini Raj and Ellen Barry
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A cattle market in Savda,
India. New regulations on cattle slaughter, issued last
month by the
central government, would require anyperson selling livestock
to produce a written guarantee that it will not be slaughtered.
Credit Tom Jamieson for The New York Times
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MEERUT,
India — When Uttar Pradesh’s
state government began a crackdown on unlicensed slaughterhouses in March,
Sanjay Chaturvedi, a local veterinary inspector, celebrated. For years, Mr.
Chaturvedi said, the government had protected the lucrative, predominantly
Muslim-owned buffalo meat business, making it difficult for him to enforce
environmental codes.
But Mr. Chaturvedi has spent the past two
months watching the local economy collapse. And now he is beginning to worry.
Of the 10 slaughterhouses and meat-processing
factories operating in March on the stretch of road he patrols in Meerut, seven
have shut down, putting much of the local population — 10,000 people, by his
estimate — out of work. Migrant workers have packed up. Factory owners are
defaulting on bank loans.
What alarms him most, he said, is the
government’s recent announcement of stringent new regulations effectively
banning the sale of cattle — a category that includes buffaloes as well as cows
— for slaughter. The rules threaten to all but cut off the supply of animal
products for the lucrative leather and buffalo meat industries, which together
account for about $10 billion in annual exports.
Three years into Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s term, the two agendas that were woven together in his 2014 campaign —
economic development and Hindu cultural revival — are becoming more difficult
to reconcile, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, which was India’s top
meat-producing state. Mr. Chaturvedi has concluded that the government does not
intend to clean up the meat industry but to eliminate it.
“These policies are headed toward a
disastrous situation,” he said. “Instead of using state machinery to shut down
the industry in a roundabout way, why not shut it down openly?”
Far-right Hindu groups have long opposed the
slaughter of cows, which are considered sacred in Hinduism. Only recently have
they expanded their opposition to include the vibrant buffalo trade, claiming
that cows are smuggled into the slaughterhouses to be killed.
In March, when the governing Bharatiya Janata
Party named a far-right Hindu cleric, Yogi Adityanath, as the chief minister of
Uttar Pradesh, among his campaign promises was to shut down “illegal”
slaughterhouses, a simple enough task in a country with dozens of overlapping
laws governing the handling of meat.
New regulations on cattle slaughter, issued
last month by the central government, would go significantly further, requiring
any person selling livestock to produce a written guarantee that the animals
will not be slaughtered. The new regulations were almost immediately challenged
in state courts, with petitions arguing that measures on animal cruelty are
subjects of state law, not federal law.
If they survive, the regulations would
sharply diminish the supply of animals for the leather and buffalo meat industries,
which were surprised by the announcement. The changes would also strip small
farmers of the opportunity to sell livestock when they are too old to work or
give milk, a safety net in hard times.
Protests erupted in the southern Indian state
of Tamil Nadu, where supplies of cattle to markets had fallen sharply, by
three-quarters in some places. Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West
Bengal, criticized the new rules as “undemocratic and unconstitutional.”
Livestock markets in Kerala, in the south, were reported to be facing closure.
The initiatives have disillusioned some of
Mr. Modi’s early cheerleaders, economic liberals who supported him for his
pro-growth economic agenda. R. Jagannathan, the editorial director of the
conservative Swarajya magazine, called the new regulations “politically stupid,
economically unsustainable, morally and ethically unacceptable and communally
dangerous.”
Mr. Jagannathan argued that the regulations
would damage the governing party in the critical regions of India’s south and
the northeast, where beef is commonly eaten, and he warned Mr. Modi against
“allowing rogue elements to circumscribe its political future by repositioning
the party as a violent champion of Hindutva,” a movement that seeks to
establish Hinduism as India’s intrinsic culture.
For Mr. Chaturvedi, the veterinary inspector,
the crackdown initially seemed promising.
He had hoped that a large, efficient
government slaughterhouse would replace the constellation of small, unsanitary
facilities. But after helping to shut down seven meat-processing plants — in
one case, because the smell emanating from inside “seemed to indicate that
there were cow parts there” — he realized that no new permits were being
issued.
“If the authorities do not find any other
loophole, they get the city development authority to say that so-and-so factory
did not get its building plan passed, so let’s shut it,” he said. Twenty-six
slaughterhouses have been shut down for violations since March, said Rahul
Bhatnagar, the chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh. Forty-one remain open. No new
licenses have been issued. “There is something called the law of the land,” Mr.
Bhatnagar said. “It has to be implemented, then, whatever effect it may have.”
The economic blow has rippled through Muslim
villages surrounding the meat factories. Villagers said they had sharply cut
back their expenses — cutting out meat, eating only one meal a day and forgoing
the usual celebration of Ramadan, which began late last month.
Many said they were terrified of being
singled out by Hindu vigilante groups, who patrol villages hoping to spot and
punish anyone found illegally slaughtering cows.
Membership in the far-right vigilante
organization founded by Mr. Adityanath, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, has expanded
rapidly in the western part of the state, with the organization adding 2,000
new members in the past two months, said Anoop Rastogi, who leads its Meerut
chapter.
“We are totally committing our time to
building the Hindu base,” Mr. Rastogi said.
Altaf, a Muslim who uses only one name, said
that four of his brothers who lost their factory jobs had tried to make some
money by selling a buffalo. They were going to sell it to a dairy farm, he
said, but then the buffalo broke its leg, and they slaughtered it for meat. A
Hindu neighbor called the police, who said it was cow’s meat.
The men in the family have gone into hiding,
he said, and they leave the family home locked from the outside, to avoid
frequent visits by the police.
“There is an atmosphere of fear in the
village,” he said. “First the jobs were taken away, and then the brothers,
too.”
Murtaza, 40, who also uses only one name,
said that his family used to earn money by selling buffalo but that after he
was stopped by a cow-protection gang several weeks ago, he had been too
frightened to try it anymore. His son, who is 20, lost his factory job in the
licensing crackdown.
The family is celebrating Ramadan by drinking
milk, because they are unable to afford mangoes, fruit juice or meat, as in
previous years.
“We are scared of this Hindu government,”
said his wife, Rehana Khatoun. “The meat business is predominantly run by
Muslims. What does this step mean? That they want to drive us out. To render us
jobless, or drive us out.”
