In
an insecure democracy like ours, cows have a value no greater than the pile of
social rubble they leave behind.
If
only we are able to winnow the offal of false ideology and feast on the
delectable cuts.
We
won’t. We love our controversies. We are blind to all but the vision through the
prism of rationality intentionally tempered by
religion.
There’s
a game we are playing these days. It’s called Cow Crush. One person lost his
life, but that’s besides the point. The game is larger than the individual. It
has riveted our attention for the last one week. The media caters to the
players. The players play to the social media gallery. Information is perceived
to be exchanged. Opinions are assumed to be formed.
The
game goes on. It began in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh and till time of writing has
progressed to Varanasi , strangely, also, in Uttar Pradesh.
The
rules of the game tell us: Don’t look for facts. Like identify who owned the
Dadri cow. Where was it culled, if at all? How did part of it end up at a
certain home? Who was the eye witness to the animal’s fateful journey?
What
the rules mean: We are merciful people. We are secular people. For us to show
our mercy and secular instincts we need an occasion. The occasion needs a
victim. So there is a victim. This is a generosity we indulge in with impeccable
periodicity as we play the game.
There’s
fairness all around. The victim’s family is compensated with more than they
could ever earn in generations. The victim’s kin are given their moment under
the glare of camera lights. Each utterance of theirs is dished out as a eulogy
to our mutual co-existence.
The
play unfolds as leaders decide to usher in peace in and around the victim’s
home. They come in pairs. One day it was a Hyderabadi gentleman and a hospital
owner from Uttar Pradesh. Another day it is a buffalo-lover from Uttar Pradesh
who went to the extent of ordering the police to search for some ungulates
stolen from his farm house and a person from eastern Uttar Pradesh who will kill
for peace.
No,
that’s not enough. Not enough play yet in the game. So, we look for angels. We
find a youth who saved a cow from a well in Lucknow . We are not bothered by the fact that
the youth was a good Samaritan. We focus on his community background to
propagate that a cow-eater had turned into a cow-saver. In distant Mumbai, our
endeavours dish out yet another miracle: a woman of a particular community in
dire straits gives birth to a healthy child in front of a place of worship and
shockingly, would be naming the child after the residing deity.
The
victim can rest in peace. For now.
For
the last one year or so, this game has gained many supporters. It is played with
much more vigour and intensity. It is no longer satisfactory if you merely like
a cow. Either you disrespect the cow or you protect it. That is how the opposing
players are identified, their ideologies defined by their attitude towards a
quadruped.
It
is inevitable that the game has raised its pitch, we are told. It is inevitable
that the game is played out to the full. It is inevitable the outcome is a
foregone conclusion, we are also told.
Where
two rival parties argue that something is inevitable is to argue for the death
of democracy. It is to surrender our right to choice. It is to shut down our
functions of free thought.
Time
for change is when change becomes inevitable, someone said, and not before. I
have the optimism of an ostrich. Is the game past that inevitability?
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