“I get so angry at those who are into the gau-rakshak (cow protection) business. A gau-bhakt (cow devotee) is different, gau seva (serving the cow) is different. I have seen that some people are into crimes all night and wear the garb of gau-rakshaks in the day.”
When Narendra Modi said these words at his first-ever townhall with the capital’s citizens in August last year, there was much appreciation of the prime minister’s earnestness and frankness in calling a malaise for what it is. His words came in the aftermath of the beating up of four lower-caste Hindu youths in Una in Gujarat for allegedly skinning a dead cow.
A year earlier, elderly Mohamed Akhlaq was lynched by a Hindu mob in Dadri on the outskirts of the national capital for storing what was believed to be beef in his fridge at home. The Una mob not just attacked the four Dalit youths but videographed the incident and uploaded it on social media to declare their nonchalance.
There was much criticism of the Modi government letting loose a reign of terror on the minority communities through vigilantes of one sort or the other against people’s choice of food or drink or clothes or general social behaviour.
So when Modi spoke against such vigilantism it was music to the ears of the silent majority of Indians. It was hoped that those behind the vigilantism would pay heed to the prime minister and keep the lumpen elements at bay.
For some time thereafter it indeed looked like Modi’s words had the desired impact. Except for a couple of minor skirmishes in Haryana there was no serious incident involving the so-called saffron “fringe”. Then came the murder of Pehlu Khan in Rajasthan’s Alwar district. His crime, transporting cows. It was no use telling the mob that killed Khan that he was a dairy farmer whose job it was to look after cows and that he had legally bought the cows he was transporting. What is more, like the mob in Una, the thugs in Alwar also videotaped the beating and killing of Khan and put it out for the world to watch.
In a large country like India such incidents may happen once in a while, so you brace yourself for the unpleasant headlines. But what was most unpardonable and most unpleasant was the political reaction from Modi’s underlings. Rajasthan’s Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria, whose job it is to protect people from criminals, went on record to say that “both sides” were at fault. Pray, where are two sides in a murder? Did he mean that transporting cows to a dairy farm is a crime? And it is punishable by death? Is India going to be a country where cow will be protected but not human beings? By the way, Rajasthan is ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Modi’s own junior minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had the temerity to tell parliament that such a killing never happened. “Naqvi says this didn’t happen” was the main headline next day in The Indian Express which also published three video grabs of Pehlu Khan being kicked and beaten with iron rods by the Alwar mob. In Naqvi’s world seeing is definitely not believing.
As I said before, in a multi-cultural society of a billion-plus people, stray incidents can happen that could paint the whole populace barbaric. It is for the government and the law enforcers to see to it that swift and deserving punishment is meted out to the perpetrators of such crimes. Instead what we get is a government in denial more or even worse trying to justify what had happened.
If Prime Minister Modi is getting “angry” for such waywardness on the part of the “gau-rakshaks” that anger has not rubbed off on those below him. In other words, Modi’s words seem to carry no weight with his ministers or party when it comes to saffron agenda.
He can travel the world any number of times canvassing for India’s economic growth, host world leaders every other day if he so wished and win any number of elections, but if Modi cannot control the moral police and the murderous goons of his party, there is no way India is going to achieve any progress in real terms.

Shah-Vaghela meet
has tongues wagging
Political rivals, in general, have a habit of going at each other’s throats in public forums but at the end of the day, when the television cameras are switched off, they find time for each other and even lend a helping hand whenever the occasion permits.
A classic example of this was what Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agrawal told the Rajya Sabha in November last year. The occasion was the discussion on the demonetisation of high value currency notes. The opposition was up in arms against the draconian step. After the Congress Party’s Manmohan Singh laid into the government describing demonetisation as a “monumental disaster”, it was Agrawal’s turn to speak.
The Uttar Pradesh veteran gave an account of the serious issues faced by farmers in his state and highlighted the travails of the ordinary Indian who was spending several hours at the bank trying to exchange the few old notes in her possession. He wondered what had prompted the government to take such a drastic measure when the economy was on the road to recovery. He said he had heard that only five people were involved in the demonetisation decision and those five did not include Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
With Modi and Jaitley listening and much to the amusement of the entire house, Agrawal said: “I have reason to believe that it is true because if Mr Jaitley had been aware of it, he would have whispered it in my ear because we are good friends.”
Although said in jest, it revealed another side of high table politics which everyone knew existed but nobody acknowledged it as such - that there is a lot of camaraderie and back-slapping even among political rivals with apparently irreconcilable differences.
Much of the same plus something more was in evidence in the recent meeting between BJP president Amit Shah and leader of the Congress opposition in the Gujarat Assembly Shankersinh Vaghela.
It could have been described as just another meeting between two senior leaders but what set the tongues wagging was the fact that Shah was accompanied by state Chief Minister Ajay Rupani and his state party chief Jitu Vahgani. That was as high-powered as it can get for a meeting with an opposition leader in a state and a mere “courtesy call”, as the BJP would have us believe, did not warrant such entourage.
It was Shah’s first visit to Gujarat after his party’s massive victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and he was calling on Vaghela at his office in the state assembly. It could not have been for a photo-op or to share a pot of tea. There must have been something more to it.
Soon reports emerged that Shah had offered to accommodate Vaghela’s son, Mahendrasinh, in the BJP’s list of candidates for the assembly elections later this year. Vaghela himself was the undisputed leader of the BJP in Gujarat until Modi came along and displaced him. He then joined the Congress Party. It is not unknown that members of the same family have footholds in different parties and the Shah-Vaghela meeting looked headed in that direction.
Then came speculation in both Gandhinagar and Delhi that the 77-year-old Vaghela himself could be planning to cross over to the BJP. If S M Krishna, at 84, could switch from Congress to the BJP, why not Vaghela who continued to maintain his friendship with many BJP veterans? Modi was perhaps the only thorn in his flesh but every injury heals over time and political injuries are known to heal faster.
The rumours were so strong that Vaghela, in a bid to scotch them, had to fly to Delhi to meet party vice-president Rahul Gandhi and reiterate his allegiance.
But it is difficult to discount anything as long as Amit Shah is involved. The departure of Modi from the Gujarat scene has left the state unit of the party in a quandary. Modi’s replacement Anadiben Patel had to resign in ignominy and the revolt of the Patidars has not helped matters either. Anti-incumbency is said to be weighing down the BJP more than ever before.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of Arvind Kejriwal is reportedly gaining in strength in the state and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of Sharad Pawar as well as the Shiv Sena are gearing up for the polls with renewed vigour, leaving Shah to look for support from any quarter. There is no bad time for checking with old friends where they stand.