The domination of the news these days with matters pertaining to beef consumption of all things can seem like a bizarre curiosity to an outside observer. However in India the controversy surrounding beef is threatening to be a harbinger of destruction. A week after the lynching of a Muslim man whose family was suspected of eating beef in the village of Dadri, it is disheartening to note that the political climate of India has not relented from its increasingly inflammatory flirtations with communal agitation. Ministers and high ranking officials of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unabashedly persist with making statements that justify the actions of the mob, and the prime minister himself has only now made a token statement that has been generously interpreted as an indirect condemnation of the incident. In truth, while speaking at an election rally in Bihar he did not even bring up the lynch mob, rather just stated in a throwaway line that Hindus and Muslims should fight poverty rather than each other for the sake of prosperity. The rightwing BJP is in fact the chief architect of this milieu with its constant derision of India’s so-called ‘pink revolution’ (a reference to the colour of the meat) and calls for ending cow slaughter throughout the very diverse federation. This desire to implement a countrywide ban on beef disregards that a significant amount of Indians, namely Muslims, Christians, lower caste Hindus and non-believers, have no religious obligation to stay away from cow meat. The fact remains that beef exporting is a big industry in India (largely run by Muslims incidentally) and this call to end beef consumption throughout the country tramples all over the fundamental and economic rights of India’s minorities. In fact, to protest this very violation of the rights of minorities, a Member Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Kashmir named Sheikh Abdul Rasheed decided to hold a ‘beef party’ in the grounds of the State’s Assembly in a bid to symbolise that no court or parliament has the authority to control the diet of citizens, on religious or any other considerations. His penalty for holding this unorthodox protest was a violent beating at the hands of his fellow MLAs who were representatives of, unsurprisingly, the BJP on the house floor itself while a session was ongoing. This shocking and highly condemnable action of the outraged BJP MLAs unfortunately succinctly sums up the brutish tactics and shameful politics of the BJP in one fell swoop. If elected members of a State’s legislature can descend into acting like a mob of rabble rousers in flagrant disregard of the dignity of the institution, what hope can one have that they will govern their people any better? India’s founding party Congress, under the leadership of Nehru, imagined the country as a secular state that would unite its diverse population under the banner of love for the motherland. However, there has always a tension between the secular tendencies of the Congress and the rightwing Hindutva-espousing forces like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since the beginning, and the assassination of India’s spiritual leader Gandhi in 1948 by a far-right Hindu nationalist only served to emphasise this tension. Until the 1980s, Hindutva as a political movement remained on the margins, but that decade saw a number of political moments (like the famous Shah Bano case) that were deemed to be making the position of Hindus vulnerable in favour of ‘pandering to minorities’. In this climate, the BJP was created and came into its own as a credible rival to Congress in the politics of India by representing a less savoury aspect of Indian society with its commitment to hardliner Hindu nationalism. The tide that was unleashed by this religious politics led to the 1992 demolition of the Babri Mosque — an event which set off years of communal strife between Hindus and Muslims as attacks and counterattacks persisted. And this happened under the leadership of relatively moderate Vajpayee. Now the second phase of BJP, under the decidedly more firebrand Narendra Modi — infamous for his alleged role as a facilitating Chief Minister in the Gujarat Massacre of 2002 — is headed for what can be an even worse phase of religious conflict. When he was elected, many observers hoped against hope that being in charge of the Union would bring out a more tolerant and reasonable Modi but the evidence so far has failed to justify that hope. There is still time to step back from this dangerous and divisive path to prevent India from being engulfed in flames. *