Comments 15

印度：神圣的牛和不神圣的政治

Nov 9, 2015 Shashi Tharoor

新德里—最近几周，印度的热门新闻读起来令人作呕。令人震惊的是，这些报道中的主角大多是和平的无辜动物——牛。

距离新德里一小时行程的一个小镇，一位男性穆斯林因为据传屠宰并吃掉了一只牛而被打死。牛是印度教的圣物。另一位男性因为被相信卷入了牛只走私而被村民袭击致死。还有一位卡车司机在查谟和克什米尔邦的乌德汉普尔（Udhampur）被杀，因为据传他参与了杀牛。三起死亡事件相隔不到三周。

公职官员也参与了行动。反对党国大党党员、卡纳塔克邦首席部长最近宣布他要吃牛肉，而执政党印度人民党的一位政客威胁说，如果他真的吃了牛肉，就要他的项上人头。

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Shashi Tharoor

Writing for PS since 2002
115 Commentaries

Shashi Tharoor, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs, is currently an MP for the Indian National Congress and Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. He is the author of Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 15 in all 15 Comments on this article

Peter Spyers-Duran Nov 22, 2015

This article demonstrates that every religion has fanatics on the fringe. I think that Chick fil A would do well to open franchises in India.
hari naidu Nov 19, 2015

The fundamental problem of governance in the subcontinent is casteism based on sectarian divide in its body politics. If it continues indefinitely - it'll inevitably spell end of democratic governance & social development.

Shashi reuses to address the holy credo of casteism which is (still) life-blood of sectarianism in state/regional/Centre politics of India.
Alok Shukla Nov 15, 2015

Handling of murder of Akhlakh in Uttar Pradesh is a State Subject (Law and Order Issue), why the honorable MP is asking this question.

It has become very fashionable to criticize the Central Government these days, seems people can't digest the fact a chai wala can also become a PM of India.

We have to accept the fact that we are basically intolerant people, the history of india is littered with examples such as partition of Bengal State on religious lines, 1947 partition of india on religious lines, Massacre of 3000 Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 and members of Congress party were involved in organising those pogroms, ethnic cleansing of J&K and Punjab by killing of hindus.

We expect a critique not criticism from a person of authors stature.
jatin meswani Nov 14, 2015

I think few of the incidences are clearly deplorable but linking death of three intellectuals to Modi government is too much. Also Bihar election showed that Modi,s deviation from development path to polarisation strategy is not working. The good part of the recent wave of return of awards created pressure on the government and is good for democracy but at the same time it is creating wrong image of india as intolerant country which is absolutely not true.
Sujeet Bauri Nov 14, 2015

The performance of the present government requires major reforms which are stagnated by consistent protests disrupting the Parliamentary sessions by INC.
Sujeet Bauri Nov 14, 2015

Most of these Award returnees are INC patronized or are directly or indirectly related to the INC.
Sujeet Bauri Nov 14, 2015

The prohibition of cow slaughter is one of the Directive Principles of State Policy contained in Article 48 of the Constitution. The Constitution was drafted under INC majority when BJP was not even born.
7 of the Indian states where cow slaughter is banned is ruled by INC, our author's party.
2 out of the 7 states where cattle slaughter is not banned comes under BJP government.
Sujeet Bauri Nov 14, 2015

The government's absolute majority is paralyzed by the majority of the opposition parties in the Upper House, which includes the party of the author. INC has 68 against BJP's 48 in the Upper House. Most amendments in the Constitution has to pass through the Upper House too. The Upper House witnessed the whitewash of the Monsoon Session by the the INC which our esteemed author represents.
j. von Hettlingen Nov 13, 2015

Cows are sacred in India! However, since Narendra Modi took office the cow has become a political animal. Shashi Tharoor compares the "unholy politics" of Hindu nationalists to the religious autocracy of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, before the US invasion in October 2001.
In recent weeks people had been slain for allegedly breaking a religious taboo. Hindus make up of 80% of the country's population. The fanatics see the slaughtering a cow or eating beef as a sacrilege. Tharoor says the "toxicity of the assaults" has less to do with the disrespect for "the holy cow", but more with the "illiberal" government. Hindu nationalists have become intolerant and chauvinistic, which "reveals a serious problem with the country's trajectory under Modi."
The Anglo-Bengali scholar and polemicist Nirad Chaudhuri had once said about the "wretched BJP types" as Hindu fascists, who called themselves "cultural nationalists," and spoke of "an ancient Hindu ethos," without any idea about "Sanskrit," and "their own history." Their leading organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is the ideological fountainhead for the family of Hindu groups that includes the country's ruling party, BJP, whose mission is said to battle for India's soul. Critics accuse them of having an agenda to build a militaristic state with a culturally homogeneous Hindu population, that seeks to defend the Indian tradition and culture against the influence of Muslims, foreigners etc.
When Dwijendra Narayan Jha, a respected historian of ancient India launched his book in 2002, he came under attack, because he questioned "the myth of the holy cow." But no way was the extent of intolerance and restriction on freedom of expression as formidable as in recent years. Tharoor says he embraces the ethos of true democracy and observes the “live and let live” principle, while considering food choices as a matter of an individual's choice.
Although the cow "has long had a place in Indian politics", it was far from holy. The country’s constitution "includes a provision explicitly urging a gradual movement toward full prohibition of cow slaughter – a ban that has already been implemented in most states." Yet there are no cow-goddesses, or temples to cows, that have featured in India's anarchically all-inclusive polytheisms.
Matthew Kilburn Nov 11, 2015

"Emboldened by the BJP’s absolute majority, imposing their particular view of what India should be"

Welcome to politics, including the entirely non-Indian and non-bovine varieties. Almost the entire point is to seek to obtain power to implement the policies you view to be beneficial and desirable. If a sufficient majority of the Indian population wants to prohibit the consumption of Beef, that is hardly an 'unjust' law. And the idea that Butchers will be put out of work is little different from the people we put out of work when we outlaw anything that might support a profession.

If Indians want to protect cows, let them. Just control the consequences for thoee who break the law to something a little more reasonable.
Vijay Ivaturi Nov 10, 2015

Mr Tharoor again wears an opposition Member of Parliament hat while expressing his views. Problem with Indian politicians is in their unidirectional view on current events. They just present one side of the story - either supporting the government of the day or against it.
The part he gets right is with economy. PM Narendra Modi has wasted his mandate in past 18 months. If not were the low global oil prices, things would have been lot difficult for Indians by now. Hollow programs like Swachh Bharat, Make In India, Smart Cities and Bullet Train are leading us nowhere.

But then, Mr Tharoor goes around takes the predictable route in this article.

1.2 billion people, 18 months of BJP rule - 2 persons are murdered in what is definitely a hate crime. Now, how can you generalize the entire governance model by citing 2 incidents. That way, US is one of the most unsafe country for children since 20+ kids are killed due to gun violence inside their schools each year.
Delhi police did not call up a BJP leader before "raiding" the Kerala house. They made a mistake by entering the premises on such flimsy grounds.
Shiv Sena is responsible for the reprehensible ink attacks. But they are also the same folks who are against the so called beef ban.
I do not have any personal take on cow slaughter or beef eaters. But consider this - excluding Northeast States, only West Bengal and Kerala are the states where cow slaughter is allowed. All other states do not allow cow slaughter. States have already decided what their population should eat. It is not a new thing.
Hence I feel the recent incidents of violence are due to deteriorating law and order situations in various states. Governments of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana and J&K should be made accountable.
Modi is an easy target - but you are hurting your own country by going after the wrong target.
Prabu Siddharthan Nov 10, 2015

Well written but he seems to have missed to mention such incidents have been happening in India since independence, often devoid of any political involvement. No party not even congress(to which shashi is member of) can claim innocence as every political party has exploited such violent incidents to polarize people for votes. The basic problem lies with selective freedom of speech and expression in India where anything slightly politically incorrect is almost impossible to be written or conveyed. The so called liberals in India are no Voltaire. Often in bed with Congress and extreme left ideology, they have single handedly destroyed true sense of individual free speech. Shahsi would do better to write about lack of Individual right to express in India rather than just play his part as a politician by blaming the opposition.
Michael Public Nov 10, 2015

Nobody tell them what is happening to the cows here in America.
P. Kamath Nov 10, 2015

Shashi Tharoor has summarized and described extremely well the nature current ruling govt. in India. Sometimes it is hard to believe how cabinet of BJP govt. where most of the ministers don't even possess a college degree can run the business of the state. They are equally proven ignoramuses about the eating habits of Indian people's over millenniums. For example, Upanishads are some of the holiest sacred literature of Hinduism, hymns and philosophical discourses in "Brihad Aranyaka-Upanishads" advise pregnant women to eat beef so that they may deliver strong babies !
The BJP administration seem to spend more energy to ban the beef than build toilets in India. What a pity.
jagjeet sinha Nov 10, 2015

The role of religious fundamentalism in State Governance and Sovereign Economics must remain prohibited.
Wherever it be - Europe, Asia, America and Arabia - fundamentalist forces are always sectarian.
Quotas become the bedrock of State Governance and Sovereign Economics.

The manner in which the sacred cow has been unleashed is already proving detrimental to the BJP.
There is hysteria being brandished on State Governance across the land.
The underlying narrative is driven by even greater fundamentalist forces operating globally.
Twin global sectarian forces appear diametrically opposed to Hinduism, BJP, Modi, and The Cow - in that order.

For nearly seven decades, a Dynasty has deliberately derailed India's Sovereign Economics.
Marginalized the Heartlands, distorted the Economic Geography.
Leaving the Majority no choice but Migration.
The Heartlands figured it out and launched an earthquake in May 2014.
That demolished the Dynasty to 44/543 seats.

The author is considered brilliant in understanding the global forces that cause earthquakes worldwide.
While the author leaves not one occasion to harp on Hinduism, he is not able to see the Sectarianism Dynasty bred.
Caste divisions were the central focus of Dynasty's decimation of India's majority, instead of religion.
The purpose politically of breeding and exacerbating Caste based Sectarianism is blatant.

The question uppermost is why the author is not able to see the obvious.
Religious fundamentalism cannot be condoned - and BJP extreme elements are wrong.
However, there are principally Two Global Religious fundamentalist forces that have kept Dynasty in power for 7 decades.
In all his brilliance, the author's inability to see through raises questions on his partisan credentials.

http://prosyn.org/d9KQwW0/zh;

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印度：神圣的牛和不神圣的政治

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