Hindu hardliners push to ban slaughter of beef cattle throughout India
Hindu groups are pushing to expand the slaughter ban to include all types of cattle, male or female. Meat traders, many of whom have carried their trade for generations, are worried about their jobs.
Every morning just before dawn, hundreds of trucks loaded with buffaloes trundle into New Delhi’s sprawling slaughterhouse complex where young men rush to unload the bellowing cargo. Skidding on heaps of fresh dung, they pull the animals out of the trucks, herding them for the daily auction and eventual slaughter. The work is hard and the money at the end of it, poor.
But the business is big. Despite Hindu beliefs that cows are sacred — and the fact that their slaughter is banned in most of the country — India is the world’s fifth-largest consumer and second-largest exporter of beef. The meat, which in India comes from bulls and buffaloes, is widely eaten in some communities, particularly by low-caste Hindus and millions of Muslims and Christians.
With the victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party last year, hardline Hindu groups are pushing to expand the slaughter ban to include all types of cattle, male or female. Meat traders, many of whom have carried their trade for generations, are worried about their jobs.
“This is a political decision,” said Mohammed Aqil Qureshi, president of the Buffalo Traders Welfare Association in Ghazipur, the New Delhi neighbourhood where the slaughterhouse complex is located. “They want to gratify the Hindus and harass the Muslims.”
A beef ban would hit the poor the most, said Qureshi.
“This is poor people’s food and is a key source of nutrition for millions of people,” he said.