The Assam Cow Protection Bill, 2021: Hindutva storm in a plate

The sweeping victory in the Assembly elections brought out a more hideous side of the Himanta Biswa Sarma led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Assam. The precarity of the people in one of the poorest states in the country and the big canvas of the suspension of almost all liberties of citizenship as a result of the pandemic is being used to a ‘T’ by the newly saffronised brigade. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s outcry and his standing with a more vigilante state rather than human rights and constitutional values of the country don’t bode very well for the state. The motor-mouthed head of the state has come up with statements of ‘full operational liberty’ to the police department, constantly decrying human rights and the question of life and liberty, that would make any free society cringe with despair.

In this context, the troika of cow, drugs, and women are used to drive the narrative home for the saffron brigade. The safety and protection of women and children, and a society free of drug abuse is something no one considers trivial. There have been specific laws, policies, and institutions for redressal. But to equate the three and see it in the same lines is what leaves the stench and stain over the milieu of Hindutva politics in Assam. 

The cow politics has cost the country dear and it has seen many crimes of lynching, extreme mob violence, and vigilantism and Assam also has contributed handsomely to the tally. Who could forget the lynching of Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan or the case of mob vigilantism on Shaukat Ali forcefully fed pork for selling beef in an eatery in the Biswanath town of Assam?