‘Rumours of a monster petition’: cows, community, and sovereignty

By 1882, reports had begun trickling in from various government officials that there was a plan by the Gorakshini Sabha (Cow Protection Society) to prepare a ‘monster petition’ for submission to the government, demanding that ‘kine killing’ be stopped.Footnote ⁷ (The term ‘monster petition’ was in currency among British colonial officials, having first emerged in 1891 to describe a petition with over 30,000 signatures by Australian women to parliament demanding the franchise. And in 1894 Gandhi initiated a ‘monster petition’ from South Africa with 10,000 signatures to be sent to the viceroy Lord Ripon protesting against the proposed disenfranchisement of Natal Indians.)

Memorials were circulated in the urban centres of Bombay and Calcutta, in the rural hinterland as well as the small princely protectorates. The number of signatories to this ‘monster petition’ was unprecedented: for instance, reports from Rajasthan suggested that a particular memorial had gathered 350,000 signatures, while other cities like Shimla reported gatherings of 200 people where everyone committed to sign the petition.Footnote ⁸ There was also a successful subscription of funds to support this petition, with Indian merchants and ruling princes contributing generously. In some towns the petitioners were successful in getting the local authorities to place a ban on cow slaughter; in others they persuaded or coerced Muslims to give up the practice of sacrificing cows. The Department of Thuggee and Dacoity, effectively a department that monitored criminal activity across state borders, also closely followed this petition, which begs the question, why?

To understand the anxieties the petition generated, we have to turn to the origins of the Gorakshini Sabha. In 1881, the Arya Samaj, a popular Hindu reform movement based in Punjab, set up the first Gorakshini Sabha with the aim of bringing an end to cow slaughter in India. Its founder, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, authored a pamphlet titled ‘Gaukarunanidhi’ which made the case for cow protection and presented an action plan for establishing local societies for the ‘protection of cow and agriculture’.Footnote ⁹ These societies, which were also called Gorakshini Sabhas, like the original, began to emerge in Punjab and the Gangetic plain. Their stated aim was to prevent cattle from ‘passing under any circumstances into the hands of those who will either sacrifice them or slaughter them for food’.Footnote ¹⁰

Central to the Gorakshini Sabha's claims was that the colonial state, which it clearly identified as a foreign one, was unwilling to meet its demands to protect cattle. In a society where food operated as a powerful semiotic device, condensing relations of production and exchange as well as regulating social contact, the fact that the British were a beef-eating race was very visible.Footnote ¹¹ The British Indian Army, for example, was the largest single consumer of beef in colonial India. The colonial state had long been resistant to the idea of banning cow slaughter. Requests by Indian rulers, who allied with the British and allowed them to station troops in their states, that horned cattle should not be slaughtered on their territories were rejected as an ‘impossible requirement’.Footnote ¹² For instance, when the police in Saran, Bihar, stepped in to protect the cattle being sold to the district army commissariat, the protesting crowd chanted anti-British slogans. As Yang notes in his study of the Saran violence, the cow question divided not only communities that had long experience of one another (Hindu from Muslim) but also communities that were relative strangers (Hindu from British).Footnote ¹³

Faced with the state's reluctance to protect cattle, the cow protection movement sought to create institutions that would. They required that every local household contribute the equivalent of the cost of a chutki (pinch) of their daily food. These contributions were used to build and maintain cow refuges, where rescued cows could be kept. There was a strong element of moral compulsion requiring people to participate, for instance, the rules issued by the cow protection committees stated that not contributing the chutki was a sin equivalent to that of eating the flesh of the cow.Footnote ¹⁴ Their pamphlets detailed a list of offences, which included setting a cow loose, taking a cow to the government pound, non-subscription to the local Sabha, castration of an ox, and selling a female buffalo (Asian domestic water buffalo or Bubalus bubalis) or any cow to an unknown person. The sale of cows to butchers or to low-caste groups like the Nats, Dosabhs, Chamars, and Banjaras who were engaged in the leather trade was expressly forbidden. By effectively drawing up private legislation that was clearly modelled on the colonial legal codes, the movement therefore sought to project a caste-Hindu identity that was framed in opposition to the practices of the British, Muslims, and Dalits.

The movement's success was noted with alarm by the colonial government who saw this as a challenge to its authority. The meetings of the Gorakshini Sabhas were attended by thousands and through collective action they were able to discipline the local communities. As a district magistrate from the North West Frontier Province described it,

People who breached the cow protection rules were subjected to social boycott, no services were performed for their families, their daughters were sent back from their matrimonial homes, and they faced economic ruin. There were cases of physical coercion as well, especially in the case of Muslims, who often found themselves surrounded by a mob until they made an oath that they would no longer engage in cow sacrifice. Coercion could soon translate into violence. In 1893 alone, a hundred people were killed in communal violence over cow slaughter in towns as far apart as Junagadh, Oudh, and Rangoon.

This mobilization has been located within the teleology of early nationalism and communalism.Footnote ¹⁶ While the Indian National Congress in this period never made cow protection an official goal, John McLane suggests that its demand for representative government, at the time when the cow protection movement was demanding a legislative ban on cow slaughter, appeared to blur the distinction between the two groups.Footnote ¹⁷ A further blurring and contradiction arose from the fact that several Congress members also belonged to cow protection societies. Gorakshini Sabha meetings often doubled up as a forum for Congress propaganda and vice versa. For instance, the Nagpur Gorakshini Sabha was allowed to hold its meeting in the Congress pavilion, and government informants in Punjab reported that signatures were being collected for Congress petitions for legislative reform on the ‘pretext’ that it would end cow slaughter.Footnote ¹⁸ The viceroy Lord Lansdowne noted that this involvement could turn the Congress from ‘a foolish debating society to a real power’.Footnote ¹⁹

Why did cow protection become such a powerful political platform? The colonial state's ostensible religious neutrality underscored the impossibility of getting it to protect the cow for religious reasons. Conversely, attempts made by the state to regulate cow slaughter, by permitting it on the occasion of Eid, for example, made it more visible and resulted in violence.Footnote ²⁰ The state's refusal to protect the sacred cow both highlighted its failure to represent the interests of the community/nation and created a political role for the community, either through petitions or through direct action. The cow came to stand in for the community, as can be seen from the various images and pamphlets that were circulated. Popular lithographic images depicting the 84 major Hindu gods inside the cow being threatened by a dark man with a sword were widely distributed. The cow thus began representing the greater Hindu community, and the demon that threatened it could be represented as either Muslims or even the British.Footnote ²¹ These images did not circulate in isolation. As Sandria Freitag has shown, cow protection meetings would see the circulation of the cow protection rules, the signing of public petitions, and the public display of images that drew a connection between the mother cow and the imagined nation (i.e. those who drink her milk).

The Sabhas constituted tribunals, which took cognizance of offences against cows and stepped in to create a parallel regulatory order. For instance, Sita Ram Ahir was found guilty of selling a cow to a low-caste butcher. The tribunal first ordered that he buy back the cow at a loss, which he did, and then found him guilty and fined him. His refusal to pay the fine was punished with 24 days of ‘outcasting’ (being expelled from his caste/community).Footnote ²² Mimicking the conventions of state trials, which reported criminal cases as offences against the Queen Empress, the cases before the Gorakshini Sabhas were recorded as offences against the ‘Gau Maharani’ or the ‘Cow Empress’.Footnote ²³ The figure of imperial authority of the Great White Queen was replaced with that of the sacred cow.

The late colonial state received hundreds of individual petitions asking for the ban or the regulation of cow slaughter, but it is not clear whether they were ever presented with the rumoured ‘monster petition’. Although the state remained largely dismissive of the particular claims made in the petitions, the process of petitioning itself generated considerable anxieties. This was not just a matter of cow protection, but about creating an entire regulatory order outside the framework of the colonial state.

The term ‘monster petition’ remained prevalent in nationalist politics until the end of the First World War and was continually deployed by Gandhi. The object of these petitions was partly to make a claim about representation to the colonial state in the absence of the franchise, but also, primarily, to initiate a process of gathering signatures which led to the mobilization of communities.Footnote ²⁴

Imperial constitutionalism and bovine litigation

This move towards petitioning and the creating of parallel enforcement structures was not inevitable, as early anti-cow slaughter activists had attempted to solve the problem through the mechanisms of the colonial state. They had tried to lay charges under s.295 of the Indian Penal Code (hereafter IPC) against those accused of cow slaughter. This particular section came under the chapter ‘Offences Against Religion and Caste’ and was part of the colonial government's attempt to manage disputes between communities. Section 295 reads,

In 1881, Iman Ali and Amiruddin, two Muslim residents of the Tilhar municipality of the United Provinces, were convicted by a magistrate under s.295 of the IPC for the offence of killing a cow on a public highway. The magistrate held that the accused were aware that killing a cow would be considered an insult by their Hindu fellow subjects and fined them Rs 25 each. The case came before the High Court in revision over the question of whether the cow could be held to be a ‘sacred object’. There was considerable confusion over whether the IPC protected the cow. The majority judgment, authored by Chief Justice Edge and joined by the three other British judges, struck a cautious note, holding that ‘sacred object’ had to be read ejusdem generis with the ‘place of worship’ and could not have been intended to apply to an animate object like the cow. Justice Brodhurst clarified that the word ‘destroyed’ clearly applied to an inanimate object, for if the intention had been to include animals, the legislature would have used terms like ‘kill’ or ‘maim’.Footnote ²⁶ The Allahabad High Court ruling was widely criticized by the press, and on 22 January 1888 a large meeting was held at the Allahabad Town Hall which resulted in a resolution to petition the government to incorporate the cow within the category of ‘sacred objects’ in s.295.Footnote ²⁷ While the historians of the cow protection movement all recognize that the movement grew in strength after the failure of the Allahabad High Court to protect the cow as a ‘sacred object’, they undervalue the importance of the ‘failure’.Footnote ²⁸ The Allahabad decision is seen as a turning point in the turn from the politics of petitioning to the politics of the street.

However, this impression is a result of the literature's almost-exclusive focus on attempts by Hindus to protect the cow. Archival sources show that from the late nineteenth century there was an increase in litigation before colonial courts by Muslims asserting their right to slaughter the cow. As Hindu cow protection societies sought to make their claims in the sphere beyond the state, Muslims who sought to conserve their right to sacrifice the cow re-engaged with colonial institutions. This litigation came from a heightened awareness of the rights to religion that Muslims enjoyed under the British Crown. The claim to a ‘right’ to slaughter cows was not one graciously acknowledged by the administration; bureaucrats often expressed their exasperation at the insistence on ‘rights’ when a compromise ending the local practice of cow slaughter seemed a likely solution to a law and order problem. As Dennis Fitzpatrick, the lieutenant-governor of Punjab complained, ‘I have had one single Mussulman after me for months, who quotes constitutional principles at me and wants to know why I won't upset an order of the District Magistrate refusing him leave to kill cows in a place where no one else wants them to be killed.’Footnote ²⁹ Muslim voices began questioning the decisions by local magistrates, which they interpreted as giving in to the demands of the cow protection movement.

Muharram Ali Chisti, editor of the Urdu daily Rafiq-i-Hind, attempted to analyse why cattle slaughter, which had been practised in India for 1,300 years, was suddenly causing riots.Footnote ³⁰ In Chisti's view, before the Raj, native Hindu rulers had put down the practice with a strong hand while native Muslim rulers had allowed it, thus the weaker party always obeyed the stronger and no riots ever occurred. Why then was there agitation when the regime was under ‘a people who were neutral in regard to religious and race prejudices towards the people of India’? Chisti argued that the cause lay in the increase in the Hindus’ power and the change in their behaviour arising from this consciousness of their strength. The Hindus began with expressing their feelings in harmless ways, such as purchasing cows, building cow shelters, and delivering speeches, but when these failed to have an effect, they started riots, hoping that violence would compel the government to end cow slaughter. Chisti highlighted the ambiguity the British had created over the situation. The Muslims in British India believed that the British constitution accorded them full liberty in religious matters, while the Hindus were coming to believe that the government could be compelled to frame new laws if pressure was brought to bear on them. Chisti pointed out an attempt by a Hindu member of the Legislative Council to ban the sale of beef in India, which had been rejected as absurd but might, ‘owing to the altered condition of the present age’, be regarded as reasonable. Chisti was remarkably prescient in his analysis.

A vocal group of Muslims believed that they had a right to practise their religion, which included the rite of cow sacrifice, in British India. The assertion of that right remained a challenge, given the obvious reluctance of the government to enforce such a right and the absence of an enforceable constitution. The civil litigation process became the natural venue for attempts to establish such rights. As an intelligence officer noted, ‘People are asking themselves why should we not do this and why should our neighbors be allowed to do that, and they always find the pettifogging legal practitioners and professional agitators at their elbow to help them think out the question and some party newspaper available for discussing it.’Footnote ³¹

So what options were available to a Muslim who wanted legal recognition of a right that he believed he had by virtue of being a British imperial subject? First, he could argue the common law right which guaranteed a man enjoyment of his property, provided he caused no nuisance to his neighbour. Secondly, he could argue that cow killing was a customary practice protected by the promises of the British Crown. Finally, he could rely on the newly enacted Civil Procedure Code and get the court to declare his particular right and thus protect it from encroachment.

It is important to note that these rights, including the right to enjoy one's property, were no different from the rights enshrined in classical liberal thought. Yet the right being urged under these categories by Muslim litigants—to practise cow slaughter—appeared not to be shared equally by all subjects. Instead, it was confirmed due to a particular set of circumstances and had to be proven in every individual case. For instance, one man's success in obtaining recognition for a customary right to cow sacrifice did not guarantee the rights of Muslims in the next village.

In the early cases of this sort, the Muslim plaintiffs had to rely on the recognition of a customary right. For instance, the Allahabad High Court recognized the right of a widow to offer a cow in sacrifice in the interior of her house, notwithstanding an order from the local magistrate prohibiting sacrifice in the locality, provided it took place within the inner quadrangle of her house and the outer doors of the house were kept closed for the duration of the sacrifice.Footnote ³² Even when the courts recognized a more general right to slaughter cows, they held that no right could be claimed if it prompted riotous demonstrations or created animosities, ruling that even if the slaughter took place on one's own land, it could not be done in an exposed way.Footnote ³³

The reliance on custom had its own pitfalls. In 1903, some Hindus from Behta Goshain village in the United Provinces petitioned the district magistrate to pass an order prohibiting the slaughter of cattle in the village. In his order, the magistrate noted that Hindus outnumbered Muslims in the village and that cow slaughter was not a practice common to the area. Several Muslims ‘feeling aggrieved at the prohibition of the exercise of what they conceived to be their legal rights’ instituted a civil suit. The lower court initially admitted the suit, recognizing that there was a right of a substantial nature that was denied (as opposed to a right that affected mere dignity or privilege), but dismissed the suit on the grounds that the Muslims had failed to establish that there was a custom of cow sacrifice in the village. In the appeal to the Allahabad High Court, the Muslim plaintiffs argued that, irrespective of custom, every subject had a right to perform all lawful acts upon his own property, and therefore the killing by Muhammadan subjects of their own cows on their own land could not be unlawful.Footnote ³⁴

The Allahabad High Court in the Shahbaz Khan case held that it was indisputable that, within certain limitations, the slaughtering of cattle by Muslims was not illegal. They located this view in the legal right of every person to make use of their own property, provided that they did not cause injury to others or break the law. One could not limit this right because it hurt the ‘susceptibilities of others’. The court rejected the assumption that the burden of proof lay upon Muslims to prove the existence of a custom that allowed them to slaughter cattle. The Allahabad High Court decreed that the plaintiffs had the right to slaughter cows for daily consumption, for festivals, and as sacrifice, provided that in the exercise of this right they did not commit a nuisance. They also passed an injunction restraining the Hindu defendants from interfering with these rights.

This decision became a valuable precedent that was used to check attempts by local officials to arrest Muslims for cow slaughter under s.107 of the IPC on the grounds that permitting the act to proceed would occasion a breach of peace or public tranquillity. The courts held that for this provision to apply, it would have to be proved before the magistrate that a wrongful act was being committed. They rejected the contention of government advocates that a ‘wrongful act’ would include acts that were legal but believed to be immoral.Footnote ³⁵ The courts explained that it would be very difficult to distinguish right and wrong from a moral standpoint, especially when dealing with communities who had different moralities.

The possibility of litigation disrupted other forms of political mobilization. The compromise agreement emerged as the political solution to keeping order between communities in a locality and was often endorsed by the local administration. In Ghazipur in 1908, representatives of some of the local Hindus and Muslims signed a pact whereby Hindus undertook to stop playing musical instruments or blowing conches during festivals to avoid giving offence to Muslims, while Muslims declared that there would be no dispute regarding the slaughter of cows. Several Muslims were persuaded to make their thumb impressions on a document which stated that they would not create any quarrel, disturbance, or litigation (emphasis mine) in connection with the sacrifice of cows.Footnote ³⁶ Although the Hindu district magistrate held that this document restrained their right to litigate, the High Court was to rule that this was mere nudum pactum with no legal force. This case of Sheikh Muhammad Yakub arose, in fact, from several Muslims from the same locality, identified as ‘Jolahas’, implicitly repudiating the ‘pact’ by initiating a suit, under proper advice, declaring their right to kill cows. The court, while demurring from pronouncing their right to slaughter cows, stated that the district magistrate could not show due cause to prevent them from carrying out the act.Footnote ³⁷ Plaintiffs often contended that the compromise document was not a representative agreement.Footnote ³⁸ As a result, attempts by prominent men in the locality to resolve the issue, or coerce community leaders into a compromise, could be disrupted through the litigation process. Most protagonists were well aware of this and attempted to get people to surrender their right to litigate on the question.

It is worth considering whether civil litigation can be considered a form of petitioning. Classically, a civil suit seeks to enforce the right of one private party against another, which is defined in law. However, the cow slaughter litigation rarely relied on statutory law but sought to formalize and recognize rights rooted in ‘custom’ or the British ‘constitution’. The forms of litigation mirrored that of petitioner, with the litigant identified as the petitioner who ‘humbly prayed’ for relief. While the ‘monster petition’ was about generating numbers, civil litigation in response could be initiated by single parties.

In the heightened communal atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s, litigation itself emerged as a form of political mobilization. In the absence of legislation or a constitutional right, groups of both Hindus and Muslims sought declaratory decrees from high courts, particularly when petitioning the local administration failed. In 1914 the petitioners in one such case had made a previous application to the deputy commissioner for permission to sacrifice the cow. When Hindu residents filed objections, they withdrew the petition and filed a civil suit asking for a declaration of an injunction under s.42 of the Specific Relief Act.Footnote ³⁹ The court, while acknowledging the right of the plaintiffs, refused them relief, stating that there had been no actual violation of the right, since the commissioner had not denied them permission.Footnote ⁴⁰

Hindus and Muslims both began to engage in a form of competitive litigation. This often took the form of representative suits under Order I, Rule 8 of the Civil Procedure Code whereby a large body of persons who were interested in a matter could bring an action as a group. In 1931, the Hindus of Rathaura village in the United Provinces brought a successful representative suit for a declaration that their community was entitled to worship and blow conches and ring bells.Footnote ⁴¹ The following year, seven Muslims from the same village brought a representative suit for a declaration of the right of the Muslim community to slaughter cows and sell beef in the village.Footnote ⁴² This competitive litigation caused ‘disturbances in the village’ and several of the litigants were arrested and jailed. The administration attempted to effect a compromise whereby the Hindus would undertake to abstain from music and the Muslims would promise that, according to custom, cows would not be slaughtered in the village. The local munsif refused to record this compromise as a civil suit under Order 23, Rule 3 of the Civil Procedure Code since it was not one which adjusted the rights of all parties who signed. He argued that it could not affect the rights of the parties who did not sign. In subsequent litigation the majority of the High Court held that since all the parties to the suit had not signed it, the compromise agreement could not be accepted. In a concurring opinion, Chief Justice Shah Suleiman, the most senior Indian judge at the time, warned that the court was not prepared to admit ‘that a few individuals either posing as leaders or recognized by the executive authorities as leaders of a community can by their agreement bind the whole community to which they are members’.Footnote ⁴³ Thus ways of resolving the cow protection question outside of the state framework, through intimidation or consensus, could be broken by appeals to the court. The representative suit under the Civil Procedure Code mimicked a petition by gathering signatures and indexing claims.

An alternative rights framework was articulated through the process of civil litigation, whereby groups of Muslim litigants were able to establish and reinforce a specific right to religious practice rooted in common law, property rights, and imperial citizenship. However, this right would stay secure for only as long as the executive chose not to occupy the field. With independence, partition, and the electoral dominance of the Congress, matters would change.

Constitutionalizing the cow

There is no mention of cow protection in the original draft of the Indian constitution. The drafting committee considered, and rejected, the proposed clause on the subject, on the grounds that it dealt with a matter of policy and not constitutional principle.Footnote ⁴⁴ Indeed, the slogan of cow protection gained little traction with the modernist impulses of leaders like Nehru and Ambedkar. However, on the eve of independence, with partition impending, there was a vast popular outcry for a law on cow slaughter. Referring to the ‘emotional wave sweeping the country’, Gandhi told a prayer gathering that he was being flooded with telegrams demanding that cow slaughter be stopped. He was urged to persuade Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel to enact cow protection laws.Footnote ⁴⁵ Rajendra Prasad, the chairman of the Constituent Assembly, reported that he had received some 50,000 postcards, between 25,000 and 30,000 letters, and many thousands of telegrams demanding a ban on cow slaughter.Footnote ⁴⁶

These petitions and postcards ranged in form and content, from an intermediate agriculture student in Agra campaigning against the mechanization of agriculture, to lengthy petitions in flowery Hindi from an association of cloth merchants in the Central Provinces, to staccato telegrams that read ‘On unique auspicious occasion of our Indian freedom we pray cow slaughter ought to be strictly prohibited forever, Regulate gomata convey blessings for your long life’.Footnote ⁴⁷ A typical petition by 30 concerned citizens began by stating the importance of cows for the agrarian economy, laid down the sort of penal regime that would be required to stop cow slaughter, and concluded with the claim that the British had allowed cow slaughter so as to keep Indians weak and that the Indian government must reverse this.Footnote ⁴⁸

Both the scale and the language of the petitions indicate that this was a product of a concerted campaign to exert pressure from below upon the new national government to regulate cow slaughter. To those who had been involved in the cow protection movement for years, it seemed that their moment had come: Independence would finally enable Indians to use the mechanisms of government to protect Gaumata (cow mother). An important marker of Independence would be the protection of the cow, something that the British colonial regime had failed to do and which the Muslim-majority republic of Pakistan was not going to do.

It is worth noting that while these letters were classified as petitions, they often read as demands. For instance, in a letter to the Constituent Assembly titled ‘Mahatma Gandhi ke Naam Khula Patra’ (‘An open letter to Mahatma Gandhi’), the writers praised Gandhi's contribution to making the values of Hinduism apparent to the world and then noted that the constitution being written was ‘a game of madmen, and there is not one who knows the difference between truth and lies’.Footnote ⁴⁹ Others, while not insulting the Constituent Assembly, were peremptory, along the lines of ‘End cow slaughter upon the declaration of the republic’. The volumes of correspondence received by the Constituent Assembly from the ordinary public remains to be studied, but even a cursory glance reveals a strong sense of entitlement.Footnote ⁵⁰ While many retained the obsequious opening and closing sentences that marked colonial petitions, their requests were directly put, reasons sparsely given, and there was a clear expectation of being heard. While the Constituent Assembly debates discussed below elucidate why the cow was important, either for affective, religious, or economic reasons, for many of the petitioners this was entirely self-evident. They were talking to a state that knew them and thus they did not need reiterate the reasons for protecting the cow.

Gandhi, a long-time votary of cow protection, had resisted the demand for enactment of a law. He stressed the pluralist nature of India and the need to take constructive action to protect the cow, for instance by feeding it better, making it carry lighter loads, and donating to cow shelters. However, the popular sentiment in favour of legislation emboldened several Constituent Assembly members from North India to critique the draft constitution. The cow protection lobby initially attempted to move an amendment which would have made cow protection a fundamental right that could be judicially enforced through the courts. To critics who argued that fundamental rights could only be enjoyed by human beings, R. V. Dhulekar forcefully replied,

Ambedkar persuaded the group to offer the amendment as a directive principle of state policy instead. Unlike the earlier amendments, which declared an absolute ban on cow slaughter, the amendment moved by Thakur Das Bhargava on 24 November 1948 justified the ban in terms of economic interests. It was proposed that the amendment would be added to Article 38 which, in the draft constitution, provided that ‘the state shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as its primary duties’. To this Bhargava proposed adding:

The amendment consisted of three parts: the advancement of agriculture on scientific and modern lines, the improvement of cattle breeds, and the ban on cow slaughter. The reference to the economic value of the cow to justify the ban on cow slaughter was not new. Even in the late nineteenth century pamphlets by the cow protection movement had emphasized the centrality of the cow to Indian agriculture and of milk to the human diet.Footnote ⁵³ This economic argument grew more prominent in the 1930s, as economists, scientists, and planners waxed eloquent on the economic benefits of milk and milk products, cow dung, and cow urine, and stressed the need to protect cattle wealth as a national resource.Footnote ⁵⁴ By Independence, there was a shift in the location or scale of such economic arguments to that of the national economy. It was a shame, Bhargava declaimed, that India had to import food from abroad when the country could be self-sufficient. Bhargava portrayed cattle as a national resource that was being mismanaged due to indiscriminate slaughter. He drew an analogy between cattle slaughter and the other great project of Nehruvian modernity, the building of dams. To utilize water properly, the state had to construct dams and change the course of rivers. Similarly, to improve the health of humans and cattle, it was essential to check cow slaughter.Footnote ⁵⁵ Thus, the establishment of a self-reliant modern republic was placed on the bowed shoulders of cattle. Several members noted with alarm a fall in the numbers of India's cattle population during the Second World War, making the ban on slaughter a question that needed to be dealt with urgently.Footnote ⁵⁶

Majoritarianism and appeals to cultural homogeneity went hand in hand with the economic arguments. Professor Shibban Lal Saxena asserted that the Constituent Assembly should not leave out something ‘that thirty crores of the population’ wanted merely because it also had a religious aspect.Footnote ⁵⁷ Seth Govind Das reminded the Muslim members,

Perhaps most powerfully, the cow's claim to legislative protection was made in the name of a national culture that would separate the Indian republic from the colonial state. Govind Das linked cow protection with the question of the name of the country, the national language and script, and the national anthem. ‘Unless the Constituent Assembly decides these questions according to the wishes of the people of the country, Swarajya would have no meaning to them,’ he asserted.Footnote ⁵⁹ Bhargava refused requests from South Indian members to address the house in English, insisting that he wanted to ‘speak in Hindi, which is his own language about the cow’.Footnote ⁶⁰ For a vocal group of Hindus, Independence meant the protection of national wealth, the righting of historical injuries, the embracing of a unique civilizational ethos, and a break from a foreign regime that aided or was, at best, indifferent to cow slaughter.

Where did that leave the Muslim members of the House? The economic reasoning had proven powerful and led the Assembly to prefer Thakur Das Bhargava's amendment which protected useful cattle—‘milch cattle, cattle of child bearing age, young stocks and draught cattle’—to Seth Govind Das's broader definition which included ‘all cows, bulls, bullocks and young stock of the genus cow’. However, the ‘national economy’ angle changed the debate. As long as cow protection was demanded as a religious right of Hindus, it could be countered by the assertion of the equal religious right of Muslims to sacrifice the cow. These rights could then be negotiated in the local context through the courts, as they had been throughout the colonial period. However, once the question of cow protection was incorporated into the constitution by way of amendment, it was linked to the question of the national economy and, accordingly, had to be decided at the national level. Therefore the entire arena for the debate changed and the old system of locally won rights could now be transformed.

The position of Muslim representatives in a post-partition Constituent Assembly was fraught and they were under considerable pressure to assimilate. Muslims made up 8 per cent of the Assembly, and the Congress's chief opposition comprised 28 members of the Muslim League who had not migrated to Pakistan. The loyalties of the Muslim members were constantly questioned.Footnote ⁶¹ Despite this, the Muslim League members challenged the ambiguous rationale behind the ban on cow slaughter.Footnote ⁶² Mohd. Saadullah, the erstwhile premier of Assam, noted that he had every sympathy for those people who wanted cow killing stopped for religious reasons, stating ‘I therefore do not like to use my veto when my Hindu brethren want to place this matter in our Constitution from the religious point of view.’ Saadullah, however, protested the economic rationale, noting that uneconomic cattle with low milk yields were actually a burden on the land and pointed out the various professions, such as tanners and hide merchants (also practised by many lower-caste Hindus), that were dependent on processing dead cattle. Allowing unproductive cattle to live would actually weaken the breed. Saadullah also protested against the attempt to position Muslims as beef-eaters, stating that thousands of Indian Muslims did not eat beef and that the cow was as important to Muslim agriculturists as it was to Hindu ones. By pointing to Hindus who ate beef and Muslims who did not, Saadullah argued that this was an economic question, not a cultural one. Just as many Hindus lived off the trade of dead cows and found beef a cheaper food option, Muslims often desisted from cow slaughter due to the economic value of their cows.Footnote ⁶³

Scholars are divided on whether to read the use of economic arguments as merely strategic, utilized to elide Hindu majoritarian impulses.Footnote ⁶⁴ While some argue for such a reading of the economic rationale as a ‘cover’, others have challenged the compartmentalization of ‘religion’ and ‘economy’. Cassie Adcock stresses the difficulty of defining the boundaries between religion and economy, and argues that economic concerns were inextricably linked to the concept of dharma on which cow protection arguments were based.Footnote ⁶⁵ The discursive intent behind the arguments is important, of course, but this article focuses on the impact these had on the people who now had to live under the regulatory regimes such arguments legitimized. Irrespective of whether the economic argument was strategic or inextricable, it would have serious consequences.

Framing the cow slaughter ban in economic terms caused significant confusion for Muslims. Prior to Independence, the understanding was that Queen Victoria's Proclamation of 1858 guaranteed them the right to religious freedom, that ‘none be in anywise favoured, none molested or disquieted by reason of their religious faith and observances’. In a petition to the viceroy, protesting against a proposed ban on cow slaughter by the Mysore State Legislation, a delegation of Muslims had relied on this understanding to argue that such a legislation ‘would be a direct violation of the religious rights and traditions of the Muslim community, and opposed to the Magna Carta issued by Queen Victoria’.Footnote ⁶⁶ Post-Independence, this firm reliability of a known order vanished. Thus, Zairul Hasan Lari insisted the Constituent Assembly make the cow protection provision clearer and remove ‘all ambiguity or doubt’, and said that if the constitution would absolutely ban cow slaughter, then ‘let it be prohibited in clear, definite and unambiguous words’. He appealed to the Assembly to ‘let there not linger an idea in the mind of the Muslim public that they can do one thing, though in fact they are not expected to do that’.

The arguments of the Muslim League members were ignored and Article 48 was incorporated into the final constitution. It provided that ‘the State shall endeavour to organize agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle’.

A constitution for butchers: writ petitions and destabilizing regulations

Nehru and the central government resisted demands for an all-India ban on cow slaughter, often sheltering behind the defence that this should be done by the states as agriculture fell under state jurisdiction in the new constitution. However, local municipalities and state legislature across northern and central India felt empowered under Article 48 to enact new laws and regulations that brought about an absolute ban on cow slaughter and, in some cases, criminalized the sale of cows or possession of beef. Between 1949 and 1955, nine out of 14 Indian states enacted strict laws banning cow slaughter.

In early 1956, 12 writ petitions were filed before the Supreme Court of India challenging the constitutionality of the Uttar Pradesh Cow Protection Act of 1955, the Bihar Preservation and Improvement of Animals Act of 1955, and the C. P. and Berar Animal Preservation Act of 1949. The petitioners were 2,500 Muslim men belonging to over a hundred villages across the states of Bombay, Madhya Pradesh (both contained territories of the former Central Provinces), Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar. In doing so the petitioners were exercising newly granted remedies under Articles 32 and 226 of the Indian constitution, which allowed them to challenge any law or administrative order before the courts that were believed to violate fundamental rights. Judicial review was expressly included in the constitutional text not just to provide remedies for the breach of fundamental rights but also to open up the actions of the entire executive to scrutiny. The original draft of the constitution had revoked the immunity of the government for writs only to the extent that they violated the fundamental rights provisions. Dr Ambedkar introduced what he described as a ‘small but consequential amendment’ which provided that nothing in the clause revoking governmental immunity could be construed as restricting the right of any person to bring action against the Government of India.Footnote ⁶⁷ As I describe elsewhere, the inclusion of constitutional remedies led to thousands of citizens disaffected by the policies of the new state—ranging from municipal sweepers to maharajahs—to approach the courts under the writ jurisdiction.Footnote ⁶⁸ The popularity of the courts arose both from the nature of the remedies available as well as the speedier hearings accorded to writ petitions in a system rife with endemic delays.Footnote ⁶⁹ Charged at a flat fee, the writ petition was also a much cheaper remedy than most forms of civil litigation where the court fee was proportionate to the value of the property under dispute.

The petitioners in the Hanif Qureshi case made four constitutional claims challenging the validity of the three acts. They alleged that this legislation, particularly the clauses that placed an absolute ban on cow slaughter, infringed their fundamental rights under Article 19(1)(g) of the constitution to carry out their respective trades as butchers, hide curers, bone and gut dealers, and exporters of cattle. A total prohibition on their trades could not be a reasonable restriction in the interests of the public as contemplated under the constitution. They argued that the law violated the right to equality guaranteed under Article 14, as it discriminated between butchers who slaughtered cows and those who slaughtered other animals. They argued that it forbade them from carrying out their legitimate trade or business, thus depriving them of their property without compensation and violating Article 31 of the constitution. Finally, they argued that the total ban also violated the fundamental rights guaranteed to the petitioners under Article 25 of the constitution, which promised ‘freedom of belief’, by not permitting the sacrifice of a cow on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr.Footnote ⁷⁰

The Hanif Qureshi decision has been interpreted through the traditional lens of Hindu–Muslim conflict, which deems that Muslims lost a significant right which they had enjoyed in colonial India. Empirically, this may well be true, but what is often missed is that the 2,500 petitioners in the case were not invested in making and winning the argument on the freedom of religion, nor were they particularly interested in securing the right to qurbani (sacrifice) during Eid. This difference between the ‘religious conflict’ framing and the reality of the petitioners’ aims and interests is prominent if we compare the petitioners’ presentation of themselves in the writ petition with the Supreme Court's way of recognizing—‘reading’—such presentation and the petitioners themselves.

In the petition submitted to the court, the petitioners ‘respectfully sheweth’ that they are ‘members of the Qureshi community and they are also citizens of India’. They identify the Qureshi community as numerous and ‘an important section of the Muslims of this country’. The petition then goes on to list the various professions in which members of this community are engaged, such as the butcher's trade and subsidiary undertakings like the supply of hide and skin, tanning, curing hides, glue making, gut merchants, blood dehydrating, and so on.Footnote ⁷¹ The Supreme Court, in its judgment, on the other hand, identifies the petitions as ‘citizens of India, and Muslims by religion, [who] mostly belong to the Qureshi community and are generally engaged in the butcher's trade’. The reversal of the order of phrases is crucial, since the court sees the petitioners as Muslims first and Qureshis incidentally, whereas it is their Qureshi identity and their professions that are most significant for the petitioners. The reference to their faith is only present to emphasize their dominant role among Indian Muslims.

It is significant that the legal challenge to the cow slaughter laws came from the Qureshis and no other Muslim groups. Although applications to intervene in the case were put forward by Hindu groups, no petitions were filed by other Muslim groups. The absence of religious scholars and Muslim politicians was telling. The ban on cow slaughter during Eid was inconvenient for poor Muslims, and humiliating to Muslims in general, but, given the changed political dynamics in North India, traditional Muslim representatives were inclined to be accommodating. The Qureshis, however, could not afford the luxury of such accommodation. The ban on cow slaughter hit them hardest. When cow slaughter was banned in the Central Provinces, over 200 butchers were left without jobs. One butcher facing economic ruin reportedly killed himself by jumping into a well; others demanded alternative employment from the government.Footnote ⁷² There was a great diversity among the litigants who went to court to challenge cow slaughter bans in colonial India. In almost every case filed after Independence, the petitioners self-identified as butchers, were marked by their names as Qureshis, were found slaughtering the cow for food,Footnote ⁷³ or were in possession of beef.Footnote ⁷⁴

The Qureshis are a sub-caste of Muslims in North India involved in the meat trade. They are indexed as socially and economically ‘backward’ in most surveys, but they are an incredibly well-organized caste, with a formal organizational structure dating back to the 1920s. The All India Jamiat-ul-Quresh was founded in 1926 by Qureshis from Meerut and Delhi to improve the position of the community, and it is similar to other community-based organizations that were set up at that time. Unlike other caste-based or communal organizations, for the Qureshis the linkages between caste identity and livelihood were very strong, making the community active interveners in questions about the meat industry. The twelve petitions in Hanif Qureshi were clearly influenced by the Jamiat-ul-Quresh; indeed, the organization is referred to in the first paragraph of the petition as one that looks after the interests and welfare of the community. Several office bearers of the state's Jamiat appear as individual petitioners. A year before the filing of the petition, during the course of the debates over the U.P. Cow Protection Act, the 29th All India Jamiat-ul-Quresh conference was held in Bombay. The lead speaker was M. N. Lakhanpaul, the president of the All India Guts Manufacturers Association, who addressed the 700-odd delegates on the need to redress their grievances through persuasion and a ‘spirit of understanding and friendliness’.Footnote ⁷⁵

Clearly, the desire to ‘redress their grievances through persuasion’, coupled with their extraordinarily effective organization, was instrumental in getting 3,000 petitioners to file before the Supreme Court. The petitions were submitted within months of a national meeting and had a wide geographic representation. They were filed before the Supreme Court in Delhi, invoking its jurisdiction under Article 32, rather than before the respective high courts of each state, clearly marking this as a national campaign. Writ petitions are filed by individuals to register their individual grievances. Therefore, to make a case for the harm caused to the community by the ban on cow slaughter, the Qureshis had to appear in substantial numbers before the Supreme Court.

The Qureshis’ economic woes were centre stage and the first half of the petitions were devoted to their business positions and role in the economy. They asserted that they were a very important part of the country's economic and social life, and played a crucial role in the people's food supply and in meeting other essential requirements. As the petition from Rampur noted, the butchers among the petitioners used to slaughter around 150 cattle per month prior to the Act coming into force. These, they emphasized, were buffaloes, bullocks (castrated male bulls), and old bulls and heifers. The average price of these animals ranged from Rs 30 to Rs 50. It was rare for a fertile milch cow to be slaughtered as it was worth between Rs 300 and Rs 500. They outlined the interconnectedness of transactions by noting that meat was sold to Muslims and the guts and hides were sold to gut and hide merchants respectively. Haji Amjad Ali, a hide merchant, explained that after buying the hides from butchers and curing them with salt, he would export them to the cities of Bombay and Madras where they would be tanned. The Qureshis submitted that the impugned cow protection acts, in particular the provisions that banned cow slaughter absolutely, was a ‘hostile and discriminatory piece of legislation’ directed against the Muslim community, in particular the Qureshis.

The above argument, emphasizing economic hardship, practical concerns for the national economy, and the freedom of trade and profession, was not successful in court, as the judges were unable to understand who the Qureshis were. The judges argued that the dictionary meaning of a butcher was the ‘slaughterer of animals, dealer in meat’. It was a familiar occupation, they reminded the public, memorably included in the ‘homely phrase, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker’. The profession of the butcher, they opined, could not be linked to a particular animal. The court found in all cases that the petitioners could slaughter some variety of animal, therefore they held that there was no total prohibition of the rights of butchers to carry on their trade and occupation.

Misreading Muslims

The Qureshi case is frequently cited in discussions of freedom of religion, thus effacing the caste and professional identity of the butchers and only highlighting their religious identity. The fixation of the final reported text of the judgment makes it easy to ignore the number of petitioners and the geographical range they represented, aspects that are hard to miss if you look at the actual petitions in addition to the judgment.Footnote ⁷⁶ The argument rooted in religious freedom was possibly the most successful strategy up until this time and dated back almost a century. Litigation on the eve of Independence made it clear that Muslims believed that they enjoyed freedom of religion under the British Crown and that this included the right to sacrifice the cow during Eid. Article 25(1) of the Indian constitution is that ‘subject to public order, morality and health, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion’.Footnote ⁷⁷ It was always expected that a challenge to cow slaughter would come from Muslims, because it affected their religious practices.

The Supreme Court famously held, through a close reading of Quranic and other sources, that the obligation to sacrifice a cow during Eid was not an ‘essential religious practice under Islam’.Footnote ⁷⁸ The court noted that the Hadiths held that it was the duty of every free adult Muslim to sacrifice during Eid. The sacrifice could be a goat per person or alternatively a cow or a camel for a group of seven. The court interpreted this to mean that Muslims had the option of sacrificing seven goats or a camel instead of a cow. Since there was an option, the sacrifice of the cow could not be said to be obligatory. The UP state government, represented by Harish Chandra Agrawal, the assistant superintendent of the Animal Husbandry Department, countered this by stating that many Muslims sacrificed other four-legged animals such as sheep, goats, and rams.Footnote ⁷⁹ The court accepted that there was wide divergence in practices of sacrifice, and noted that several Muslim rulers, like the Mughal emperors Akbar and Jahangir, the Bahmani sultan Ahmad Shah, and Nawab Hyder Ali of Mysore, had all prohibited cow slaughter in their realms. The court recognized that whereas a household of seven members could afford to sacrifice a cow, they might not be able to afford a sacrifice of seven goats; however, this would be an economic issue and not a religious one, and therefore was not protected by the constitution.

The decision was framed around the question of denying that Muslims were required to sacrifice the cow during Eid while recognizing Hindu sentiments against such sacrificial, or any other, slaughter of cattle. This dominant theme was emphasized in contemporary commentaries in both the legal sphere and in the general media. Bombay lawyer Rafiq Zakaria wrote in his legal column in the English daily The Times of India that the Supreme Court, in ‘one of the bulkiest judgments’ ever delivered, had ‘said that the sacrifice of the cow is not an obligatory overt act for a Mussalman to exhibit his religious belief and idea’ and that the ban on cow slaughter was not a denial of Muslims’ rights to ‘freely profess, practice and propagate religion’.Footnote ⁸⁰ Much of the progressive critique of the judgment has also centred on this theme, arguing that the judgment cloaked majoritarian impulses and did not accommodate minority religious identity.Footnote ⁸¹

However, the petitioners in Hanif Qureshi gave this argument comparatively little importance. The Article 25 (freedom of religion) challenge was the last of the four challenges in their petition and took up just a single paragraph (para. 24). There was little attempt made by the petitioners to substantiate this claim in the petition or before the court. The Qureshis were uninterested in getting permission to sacrifice the cow once a year on the occasion of Eid; what they wanted instead was to ensure the continuation of their livelihoods. However, it appears that this was not obvious to contemporary actors, nor has it struck later commentators. Chief Justice S. R. Das expressed his exasperation at the absence of material before the court to substantiate the claim that it was the religious practice of the petitioners’ community to sacrifice the cow:Footnote ⁸²

The political economy of the cow

What did succeed before the court was not an argument about fundamental rights to religion or profession, but one of policy, which was technically not within the court's jurisdiction. The Qureshis turned to the wording of Article 48 of the constitution and argued that it consisted of three different directives. The directive that sought to prohibit the ‘slaughter of cows, calves and milch and draught cattle’ was subordinate and ancillary to the provisions that came before it, namely, ‘organizing agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines’ and ‘preserving and improving the breeds of cattle’. The Qureshis argued that a complete ban on cow slaughter would be wasteful. To substantiate their argument, they referred to a circular issued by the central government that stated,

In order to demonstrate that the restriction of their rights that would result from the impugned laws would not be in the interests of the general public, the Qureshis pointed out that it deprived a large section of people of a cheap source of food (i.e. beef) and that these people had ‘suffered loss and hardship’ as a consequence of the disappearance of this source. They argued that the measure was uneconomic, given that a considerable number of cattle served no economic purpose and were a drain on the food supply. Attacking arguments that linked cattle to milk supply, they pointed out that an increase in cattle between 1945 and 1951 due to a reduction in cow slaughter had not led to a significant increase in milk supply. The number of cows had increased from 136,739,000 to 155,099,000 but the average yield of milk remained around 413 lb per annum. In fact, buffaloes accounted for 54 per cent of the milk supply and were not protected under the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar Acts. Milk supply depended on quality of cattle and not numbers, and in addition, cows were not the main source of milk in India.

The modernization of agriculture and the introduction of tractors—both goals pursued by the government and, as such, a part of many development policies—were reducing the usefulness of cattle in agriculture. A total ban on cow slaughter would also damage the leather trade, given that the hide obtained from dead animals was not suitable for high-quality leather goods. Further, the ban would effectively end several industries, such as gut making, glue making, and blood dehydrating which were dependent on the by-products of the cow.

Finally, Mohd. Siddiq of Rampur, who identified himself as a cultivator, alleged that he was experiencing considerable difficulty in protecting his crops from the ravages of hoards of uneconomic and abandoned cattle that were roaming the countryside, ‘unclaimed by any one and which could be destroyed by no one’. He complained that he had to now make arrangements to keep a watch, day and night, over his fields and pointed to several crops that had been damaged by rampaging cattle.

The Supreme Court was placed in a quandary over how to evaluate these claims. Unlike a trial court, or even the high courts, the Supreme Court was not a court of first instance. It did not have the powers to take evidence, listen to witnesses, or allow cross examination.

The economic analysis of the problem brought up two other uncomfortable facts. The court had been able to reconcile its position with the fact that the bans would in practice ‘cause considerable inconvenience and expense’ to the Qureshis as there were already precedents for the state blocking avenues of livelihood for hundreds of citizens without any compensation, as in the case of the nationalization of the bus transport system.Footnote ⁸⁴

However, the court could not ignore that beef or buffalo meat was a food item for a large number of people. The Report on the Marketing of Cattle in India showed, contrary to the government's claims that beef was not popularly consumed, that the annual demand for cattle for the purposes of food included 1,893,000 cows and 6,90,000 buffaloes.Footnote ⁸⁵ The court noted that beef was a common part of the diet of poorer Muslims, Christians, and members of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Here, the cow scored higher over the buffalo, as buffalo flesh is comparatively coarser and tougher than beef. The prices of beef were also considerably lower than goat and mutton: in 1950, for instance, the price for beef in Bombay was Rs 00.12 a pound compared to Rs 1.30 for mutton and goat. The counsel for the Qureshis pointed out that in the case of several boarding schools, beef was the only meat the school authorities could afford to supply to meet the needs of growing children. If the Acts were to be enforced, it would preclude such children from having ‘even this little bit of nourishment and amenity’. The court noted that the Memorandum of Human Nutrition recommended meat as a necessity rather than a luxury, particularly for people who were too poor to afford fruit or clarified butter.

Secondly, the court confirmed the Qureshis’ claim that the survival of a large population of non-productive cattle would place a burden on the scarce fodder and feed resources of the nation.Footnote ⁸⁶ The court relied extensively on the report of the Gosamvardhan (Cow Development/Increase) Enquiry Committee which had been appointed by the government of Uttar Pradesh to look into improving the number and quality of cattle in India.Footnote ⁸⁷ They even noted that the then-current estimates of available fodder, which showed shortfalls of between 13 per cent and 70 per cent, were made on the assumption that forest resources would be fully utilized, an achievement that was administratively difficult and monsoon-dependent. The court took seriously Mohd. Nasim's complaint about rampaging hordes of wild cattle. Given the shortfall in feed, and lack of economic benefits from old cows, it was unsurprising that many cows were abandoned by their owners. The court noted that ‘these old and useless animals roaming about at pleasure are a nuisance, a source of danger to the countryside . . . and a menace to crop production’. The government's proposed solutions were deemed unsatisfactory. The Supreme Court pointed out that the proposed costs for setting up and running camps for old and uneconomic cows had been estimated at around Rs 45,000 a year in 1949, while the camp could only hope to recoup around Rs 5,000 through the sale of cow products.Footnote ⁸⁸ Recent studies suggest that, taking into account the land required to produce the fodder (i.e. 4,000 acres of land for every 2,000 cattle), the cost to the state exchequer of maintaining one head of uneconomic cattle would be Rs 12.50. These studies noted with alarm that setting up the 91 gosadans (cattle shelters) that the state of UP required would cost the state Rs 19 per head of cattle. The Supreme Court declared that it would be shocking to spend Rs 19 a head to preserve useless cattle when the total national expenditure on education was Rs 4 per child. The lack of finances and fodder would mean that sending cattle to a gosadan would leave them to ‘a fate of slow death’.

Moreover, the court sarcastically noted, the schemes for gosadans relied on cattle owners voluntarily donating their cows. For unwanted and uneconomic cows to be effectively saved from slaughter, ‘the responsibility had to be shared by the individual, and the local community, and not merely within the exclusive means and competence of the state’. Such an expectation was ‘wishful thinking’, according to the court, at a time when farmers, irrespective of religion, were guided by profit.

The court noted that the absolute ban on cow slaughter recommended by the Gosamvardhan Committee relied on several conditions to succeed, including public enthusiasm and support, and the ability of the state to allocate more resources to this cause. Hindu milkmen had no compunction in selling a cow for Rs 30 when she was no longer productive, irrespective of her age. Often, to meet the criteria for permissible slaughter, Hindus would maim or injure the cow. Additionally, the Second Five-Year Plan stated that a total ban on cow slaughter would encourage the surplus cattle to multiply, thus defeating the purpose of improving the breed of cattle, as set out in Article 48. The Supreme Court noted approvingly that the states of Assam, Bombay, West Bengal, Hyderabad, and Travancore-Cochin had placed only a partial ban on cattle slaughter.Footnote ⁸⁹

The court was categorical in stating that maintaining useless cattle deprived useful cattle of nourishment, led to the deterioration of the breed of cattle, and provided a ‘wasteful drain on the nation's cattle feed’. Further, as secondary points, they noted that such a ban would cause a serious dislocation of kasais (butcher communities) and hide merchants, and deprive a larger section of people of their staple food and source of cheap protein. On this basis, they proceeded to strike out portions of the state legislations that could create an absolute ban.

The productive value of the cow: from popular petitioning to experts

Although the Qureshi judgment was seen as a victory for Hindu majoritarianism and a blow for Muslim rights, most cow protectionists viewed the judgment with horror. Lala Hardev Sahai, president of the Gohatya Nirodh Samiti, fulminated against both the Supreme Court and ‘western educated animal experts’ for acceding only to a partial ban.Footnote ⁹⁰ He made a two-pronged attack on the idea that unproductive cows could be killed. First, he challenged the credentials of the animal husbandry experts who claimed cows became unproductive after a particular age, pointing again to the benefits of dung. Secondly, he argued that to sell cattle, which had worked tirelessly ‘to fill our stomachs’, to ‘any Musla’ (a derogatory slang term for Muslims) was against Indian tradition and sense of obligation. Dubbing the partial ban a betrayal that would ensure that healthy cows continued to be killed, he appealed to those who cared for the national interest not to rely on the Supreme Court decision but to agitate against the ruling.Footnote ⁹¹ Nevertheless, successive attempts to prosecute butchers for cow slaughter failed because it could not be established that the cow that had been killed came from a prohibited category.Footnote ⁹² To certify a cow for slaughter, all that was needed was a certificate of unproductivity from a local vet. The 1960s witnessed mass agitations on the question of cow slaughter, leading, in 1966, to the Shankaracharya of Puri, a leading Hindu religious figure, undertaking a fast unto death unless the demand for a total ban on cow slaughter was implemented. Contemporary news reports suggest that 7,000 people across the country fasted for a day in support of the Shankaracharya.Footnote ⁹³ The response to the agitations was the setting up of a national technical committee to consider the question of a total ban on cow slaughter. Both the proceedings of this committee and subsequent litigation by cow protectionist groups centred on the question of the age at which a cow becomes uneconomic. Finally, in 2005, the Supreme Court, in a contentious decision, upheld an absolute ban on cow slaughter on the grounds that even after the cow stopped giving milk, it continued to produce dung and urine which were ‘as valuable as the Kohinoor diamond’.Footnote ⁹⁴ The court relied on a number of reports commissioned by BJP-run governments on the economic value of the cow. This marked the end of an almost three decades-long campaign by cow protection groups, which instigated court cases and scientific studies to establish the continuing economic value of cows. The wording of Article 48, the developmentalist goals of the Indian state, and the professional anxieties of the Qureshis reworked the cow protection question from one of national identity to one of economic value.