What Are the Liberals Saying About Beef Now

There can be no two opinions about the horrific act of a man being killed for allegedly possessing beef. But arguments in the beef controversy have not been consistently liberal

The beef controversy is a useful litmus test for India's liberals — and most do not look likely to pass it. While the lynching of a Muslim man in Dadri over his alleged possession of beef obviously needs no second opinion — it is a despicable act and a sign of growing intolerance in society — the broader contours of the debate over beef-eating needs closer analysis. To repeat, nothing our liberals have said on this controversy so far convinces me that they are truly liberal.

Before I actually get into the cow slaughter and beef-eating issue, it is useful to define a liberal clearly. A liberal is one who follows the Voltaire dictum — "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." The implied meaning of this phrase is that your liberality is best tested when you disagree with what is being said or done. It follows that liberals who speak up only when their biases are confirmed by passing events are essentially opportunistic liberals. A liberal conscience cannot work part-time.

So, I do not buy the argument that Indian liberalism has come under threat only after Narendra Modi came to power. So while I completely support Jawaharlal Nehru's niece Nayantara Sahgal when she argues against the growing atmosphere of intolerance in the country, one is also prompted to ask: Why did you pass up so many opportunities to return your Sahitya Academy award when they presented themselves over the years?

File image of protests against the beef ban in Jammu and Kashmir. PTI

That she accepted the award just two years after the 1984 Sikh massacre is one thing – maybe returning awards was not in fashion then – but why pass up repeated opportunities to do so even over the last 10 years? Was the 2012 Kokrajhar attack by Bodos that killed 77 Muslims not a good enough opportunity? Or the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots? Or the Canning riots in West Bengal where 200 Hindu homes were burnt down when a Muslim cleric was killed by unknown assailants? (Read this list of Indian massacres here and check how many are only to do with the rise of Modi.)

An Indiarubber conscience that wakes up only when a person you dislike comes to power is not a true liberal conscience. More important, should liberals be free to pick and choose the occasion when they will speak up? If I am a liberal only when my biases are in tune with my pet cause, can I be called a true liberal?

By this yardstick, why not call the Sangh parivar – which wants a uniform civil code, possibly to irritate Muslims – also a voice of liberalism since this is clearly a liberal cause? But on the Uniform Civil Code, all we get is stammer and stutter from faux "liberals".

Now let's get to the beef issue.

A true liberal would campaign against bans in general – which means the idea should be to remove the ban on cow slaughter purely for religious reasons – from the Directive Principles of State Policy. But Digvijaya Singh wants to cooperate with the BJP to bring a national law on cow slaughter.

I am not saying one should or should not ban cow slaughter, for there may be good and ethical reasons to ban not just cow slaughter, but many other kinds of slaughter of animals. But if your position is that we should not ban anyone from eating what they want, then you should argue against any ban on cow slaughter, too.

A liberal should also support the rule of law – and right now the law says that cow slaughter is illegal in 21 Indian states. Shouldn't they then campaign to get this ban abolished in the first place? No, they don't, because they want to use the beef issue only to target the BJP, and not to upset an entire religious-minded constituency. They will support irritating Hindus by holding beef-eating festivals, but will not do the same with pork – for obvious reasons.

The "liberal" argument then shifts to saying that the ban is only on slaughtering cows, and the sale and transportation of such beef. The "liberals" also ridicule the idea that states that do have a cow slaughter ban should not have testing labs to check if the meat being transported is cow meat or something else.

This again makes no sense. You can argue that the cow slaughter ban should be lifted, but can you say let the ban remain, but don't implement it by creating testing facilities for the same. Can we enforce food protection laws without testing labs? But we expect a cow protection law to be implemented without testing facilities. How will you know if the ban is being enforced if you cannot check and test what is being done clandestinely? Isn't this hypocrisy of the worst kind?

Another argument that is flawed is to say that if someone eats cow meat at home, the state has no right to intervene.

I agree with the privacy argument that no one should enter anyone's home to check what he eats, but if there is a law against cow slaughter and sale, and if someone is suspected of buying the meat, surely implementing the law would involve questioning the person about it?

I would like to illustrate this point by talking about the ban on the production, transport, sale and storage of narcotics. Can you enforce this ban without sometimes intruding – with proper legal warrants, of course – on someone's premises? Or should we say that when someone consumes crack or heroin at home or at the office, no one should mind it? The law does not say you can consume drugs in private.

The real issue involving liberals is this: if you are against bans, you must be consistent when opposing it. You can't choose cow slaughter as a special cause, and then say other kinds of bans – on say, the sale and consumption of liquor in some states – are fine.

What liberals should do is campaign for their causes and get illiberal laws changed and bans abolished – or at least rationalised. We can't say one ban is fine, and not another depending on where our private biases lie.

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Source: http://www.firstpost.com/ideas/pet-biases-in-liberal-packaging-how-the-beef-ban-controversy-exposes-our-elite-2460204.html

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