Muslims must give up beef to live in India: Haryana CM Khattar

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar added that democracy has freedoms, but that such freedoms have limitations

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar sparked a fresh controversy on Friday when he said that the Muslim community needed to give up consuming beef in order to continue living in India, since the cow is an 'article of faith' for the Hindu majority.

"They can be Muslim even after they stop eating beef, can't they? It is written nowhere that Muslims have to eat beef, nor is it written anywhere in Christianity that they have to eat beef," Khattar said in an interview with the Indian Express.

He noted that the Bhagvad Gita and Saraswati are articles of faith in the Hindu-majority country and that the minorities must not violate their religious beliefs.

Branding the Dadri lynching case as an incident of 'misunderstanding', Khattar said that 'both sides' had committed wrongs.

"The victim made a comment about the cow hurting sentiments of people. I say that attacking and killing the person was also wrong. Those who were responsible for it could be prosecuted under several sections of the law," he said.

The 61-year-old leader added that 'democracy has freedoms, but those freedoms have limitation. Eating beef hurts the sentiments of another community, even constitutionally one cannot do this'.

"The Constitution says you cannot do something that offends me, I cannot do something that offends you," Khattar said. 

Meanwhile, the Haryana chief minister's office on Friday said Manohar Lal Khattar "absolutely did not say" to the Indian Express that "Muslims should stay but they will have to give up eating beef" because "the cow is an article of faith" for Hindus, while Muslims wouldn't "be violating their religious beliefs by giving up beef".

"Our CM didn't say anything like this, all he said was we should respect everyone... The newspaper which has posted this news piece has tried to put words in the Haryana CM's mouth," Jawahar Yadav, officer on special duty (OSD) to the Chief Minister, told ANI.

However, an audio recording of the interview posted by the Indian Express on its YouTube channel showed Khattar himself uttering the words in question.