Letters: Gau raksha good for all?

Mitali Saran's article, "Happy 70th to us" (August 13), contains nothing but a litany of biased complaints against the Bharatiya Janata Party. She says, "Now we're staring at our ugly obsession with cows, temples..." and elsewhere that "Haryana raises and maintains a security force devoted to cow protection".

May I humbly ask her if it is a sin to get "obsessed" with cows and protect them? Is she aware of the phenomenon of cattle raiding and smuggling in India taking place even in places such as Vrindavan, where armed thieves are abducting cows for slaughter, with the connivance of the authorities, while locals are risking their lives trying to prevent the raids? Is she aware of how cattle stuffed are into railway bogies and smuggled to Bangladesh?

Against such a backdrop, is it not the elementary duty of a government to ensure the safety of the cattle from marauders? Contrary to her derisive observation that "the amount of serious time we're spending on cows and cow poop and cow piss makes me weep with laughter", it is the country that would have to "weep with misery" if the same poop and piss are ignored, at a time when it wants to encourage sustainable farming, prevent distress migrations of farmers and switch to renewable sources of energy.

Just because some zealots have taken the law into their own hands and indulged in brutality, does this mean the cause of gau raksha (cow protection) should be demonised and seen as something primitive? Should it be abandoned to pursue "obsessions" that are "progressive" in her view?

Saran should realise that protecting bovines benefits people of all religions. Preventing cow vigilantism is not to foolishly abdicate gau raksha, but to orient the practice towards being more humane and inclusive, sans any communal malice.

C V Krishna Manoj, New Delhi

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