At six thirty on Saturday morning, the quiet of the Church Road in New Patliputra Colony was broken by a chorus that went, “Gai hamari maata hai, yeh hamari dharma ka mamla hai”. (The cow is our mother, this is our religious issue: note the stress on ‘hamari’) A motely group of a dozen men aged around 26-35, were conducting a prabhat pheri through the ‘Christian sector’ of the colony, and bellowing the loudest in front of those houses situated near the Church. I write this after watching the incident from my front window on the first floor . Unfortunately, by the time I groped for my glasses and realized that I could get a photograph, the fellows had moved down the lane and turned a corner.

There it is: after the pre-poll surveys, naked and ugly polarization, fanned by the BJP and its fringe groups, to use the cow to catch votes. No matter if just around the bend of the same road, near the water tower, there lies a garbage dump where cows of all descriptions chew the toxic cud and are a public hazard. Instead of mouthing empty slogans affirming their kinship with the cow, why don’t such devoted sons spend their energies on ensuring that their ‘faith mothers’ don’t eat garbage off the roads?

Cow slaughter has been banned for decades in Bihar, so why are these fringe groups trying to rake up an issue which doesn’t exist? Not only are bullocks and bulls protected, but also she-buffaloes of the milch-bearing age (which have no religious significance). Why is the generic term ‘beef’ which is applied to the meat of all cattle being mistranslated into ‘gau-mans’ or ‘cow meat’?

“And why are these loud affirmations in support of the cow, never heard in Patna since independence, suddenly being shouted by some fellows from Nehru Nagar walking around in the cosmopolitan Patliputra Colony area?,” asks Tiwariji, a resident in New Patliputra since the 70’s.

“Look at the strategy,” said my neighbour, “On the surface they are just affirming that the cow is their mother and that it is part of their faith. But listen to the challenging tone and the aggressive body language. In the context of the killing at Dadri, this is an attempt at intimidation. It clearly says, ‘just wait, one day we’re going to raid your kitchens as well’.

Look at polarization do its work. My young friend Imran is only 20 , but sharp. “This is a larger strategy to knock out the Muslim butchers. Our few slaughter houses supply cheap protein, which is actually the meat permitted by the law. The English word is ‘beef’. The local word is ‘bada’ or big. It is not cow-meat, so why are these ‘cow protectors’ deliberately creating a confusion between ‘bada gosht’ and ‘gau-maans’? I think that it is a larger game-plan to declare everything illegal, shut down the butcher-shops and deprive meat-eaters a source of cheaper proteins, all in the name of sentiment.”

Another young friend, 22 year old Prem retorts, “I am an Hindu boy with lots of Muslim friends and Christians. I eat in their homes. I don’t ask what is in their fridge. I am sure they don’t have ‘cow-meat’ in their fridges. Buffalo meat, maybe. But they don’t make me eat it. If my Muslim friends begin saying, ‘We will not eat in your house because there is bacon or sausages in your fridge’, and Jain friends will say, ‘There is fish, honey, and onion in your fridge so we won’t eat anything’, what will happen to friendship? On important puja days and functions, I tell my friends clearly that I must be pure for the rituals, and all of them respect that. One more thing. My friends who are beef eaters do not eat cow meat. There is  no need to shout ‘cow is my mother’ in their faces.”

  Bihar, elections, Frank Krishner, polatisation