Gau Wapsi: A Muslim Cattle Trader and the Cows He Loved

by Guest Mon Apr 24, 2017 8:31 pm

Jaisingpur, Haryana: Anguri Begum is blind. It spared her the pain of watching the video of Pehlu Khan, her only son, being lynched to death. But her heart knows and her unseeing eyes won’t stop their weeping. I watch helplessly; suddenly her slumped sparrow-like body begins to shudder, as if a fresh tremor has just struck its core. Women who gather around her say she is like this all the time now.

It is hard to write about the pain of other people. You feel like a voyeur, but you also bear witness to injustice. So I labour on. Khan’s wife, Zaibuna sits unmoving on a nearby charpai. She looks up as we enter the inner verandah where the women of the house gather. But she doesn’t see. What hits you is the aura of private hell that seems to envelop her entire body. I touch her arm gently, one human being to another. The spell breaks. It’s like she sees me for the first time. “Tadpa tadpa kar maara (They tortured him to death),” the wail bursts from her body. She covers her face with her dupatta. I put my arms around her and hold her sobs for as long as I can.

Khan’s eldest daughter, Abida, tells me her mother saw the video but not the entire sordid thing. She couldn’t because she broke down too soon. I mutter empty solace to Zaibuna....

The gau rakshaks are ‘self-styled vigilantes’ and there are legal provisions to deal with them. The question is what we do with a vigilante state, that is outsourcing its street politics to these groups? The political message they together send is what makes the families of Jaisingpur despair. Not only are Muslim cattle traders to be beaten and killed, they must also bear the moral blame for their own death. The farce enacted by the Rajasthan police leaves one speechless. The first legal salvo in this vile episode is not a FIR for the violence unleashed upon Khan and his fellow travellers, instead it is an FIR against Khan, Arif and Irshad under the Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act, 1995. This was lodged on April 2 at 2:42 pm, despite zero evidence that they were cow smugglers or intended to kill the cows. Evidence simply shows that they traded in cattle. Only the second FIR in the matter is against the cow vigilantes. This one is also dated April 2, but time-stamped 4:24 pm, nearly two hours after the first FIR, despite the immediate irrefutable physical evidence of bludgeoned human bodies.

As we leave Jaisingpur, we hear talk of cattle traders giving up the trade. A Muslim is scared to even own a cow, let alone transport it, we are told. What if someone storms into our house and says we have kept the cow for slaughter? If cows belong only to them, let them have their cows back, one man tells us. Others nod in grim agreement. Yes, we’ll return lakhs of cows. Call it gau wapsi.

https://thewire.in/125934/gau-wapsi-muslim-cattle-trader-cows/