Haryana to license cow protection groups to aid police

New Delhi: Just days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised vigilante cow protection groups that have targeted Muslims and low-caste Hindus suspected of slaughtering cows, an Indian state said it plans to license the groups to help the police enforce state cow protection laws.

The government of Haryana state, in northern India, will begin with members of the state’s most prominent cow protection group, Save the Cow, said Bhani Ram Mangla, the president of the government’s Commission to Serve Cows, in an interview on Thursday. The commission is part of the Ministry of Animal Husbandry.

Reports of attacks on members of religious minorities by vigilante cow protection groups, known as gau rakshaks [cow protectors], have increased in India, with six such attacks in a four-week span last year. The groups have attacked Muslims and, more recently, low-caste Hindus suspected of slaughtering cows, which are considered sacred in Hinduism, the dominant religion in India.

Mangla said the state had begun collecting photos and phone numbers of members of Save the Cow. Once the groups are verified, the government can “entrust them with any responsibility”, he added.

“They cannot take the law in their hands, but will help inform police on whereabouts of smugglers or wherever cows may be getting slaughtered,” Mangla said. “Police will then take over.”

The targeting of Dalits, the lowest caste in Hinduism, has prompted a wave of protests, and could complicate efforts by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to win coming elections in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab.

Modi said in an address on Saturday that the vast majority of the groups were troublemakers masquerading as cow protectors. He ordered state governments to gather “dossiers” on the groups, but stopped short of calling for legal action against them.

Officials in Haryana said Modi had alerted them to the infiltration of the cow protection movement by “members of opposition parties or antisocial elements,” and said they hoped that the licensing arrangement would halt it.

“He was lashing out against such elements who are trying to give the BJP a bad name,” Mangla said.

Gau rakshaks are known for prowling the streets at night, rounding up suspected cow smugglers, rescuing cows and often administering their own retribution on offenders. Last month, cow protection vigilantes brutally attacked four Dalits over cow slaughter rumours. Last year, a Muslim man, Mohammad Ikhlaq, was beaten to death in response to rumours that he had slaughtered a cow and eaten beef. A preliminary investigation found that the meat retrieved from Ikhlaq’s home was goat.

In a report last year, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent federal commission, criticised the BJP for Ikhlaq’s death, saying that party members have used suspected violations of laws banning beef consumption to “inflame Hindus to violently attack Indian Muslims.”

Haryana was one of the BJP’s earliest electoral victories after Modi won resoundingly in the general elections in 2014, and he campaigned heavily in the state. The Commission to Serve Cows was set up in 2010, but it became more active in 2014, when Mangla became its president. Haryana has also set up a police task force with 15 officers in each district to detect cow smugglers, Mangla said.