Mob Attack, Fueled by Rumors of Cow Slaughter, Has Political Overtones in India

A local Hindu priest was asked to alert villagers from his temple loudspeaker.

Soon, about 1,000 men had gathered by the transformer. There was no sign that a cow, a revered holy symbol for Hindus, had been slaughtered. Nonetheless, the men proceeded through zigzagging alleys to the home of the suspected cow killer, Mohammed Ikhlaq, one of the few Muslims living in this village about 30 miles east of New Delhi.

Suddenly their home was swarming with men. Mrs. Ikhlaq heard someone shout, “Kill them.”

Upstairs, the mob bludgeoned her husband with her sewing machine and smashed her son’s head with a brick. Then they dragged Mr. Ikhlaq down 14 cement steps and out to the main road by the transformer, where he was left for all to see.

Mr. Ikhlaq was declared dead early Tuesday morning, hours after the attack; his son remains in critical condition. But in interviews last week, more than a half-dozen members of Save the Cow expressed little remorse for what happened at the Ikhlaqs’ home. Instead, they blamed Mr. Ikhlaq for inciting the mob’s fury by slaughtering and eating a cow — an allegation dismissed by the Ikhlaq family and the police, who have filed murder charges against 10 men.

“It was not our intention to kill him,” said Vichitra Kumar Tomar, a leader of Save the Cow who was not among those charged. “Our intention was to punish him, to slap him or beat him. Just a few slaps. But not to leave him dead.”

Members of Save the Cow said they were motivated to raise the alarm last Monday because of their religious devotion. “We are more attached to the cow than our own children,” Inder Nagar said.

There is also a powerful political motivation behind their activism.

Many leaders of Save the Cow here are also prominent local organizers in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., which is vying to oust the socialist party that rules Uttar Pradesh, the vast northern state with more than 200 million residents, including the 20,000 in this village. Mr. Tomar, 24, for example, is the general secretary of the local B.J.P. youth wing. Mr. Nagar, 33, is the state secretary of the B.J.P. youth wing.

“This is a fight between the cow caretaker and the cow murderer in the state,” he said. “Had the administration done their job at protecting our cows well, these men would not have been forced to take the law in their hands.”

Save the Cow and B.J.P. leaders here have also roundly condemned the decision by the police to bring murder charges. In their view, the death of Mr. Ikhlaq was at most the unintended byproduct of a chaotic, highly charged situation of his own making. “He slipped and his head hit the road and he died,” Mr. Tomar said, adding: “These things happen. It’s a mob.”

Mr. Modi’s culture minister, Mahesh Sharma, who represents this area in the Indian Parliament, went so far as to tell The Indian Express that Mr. Ikhlaq’s death “should be considered as an accident.”

At least two states have adopted or tightened bans on the slaughter and consumption of beef since Mr. Modi was elected in 2014.

Some trace this shift to Mr. Modi, who warned during his campaign that his opponents in the Congress Party would seek a “pink revolution” to vastly expand the slaughter of cows. In speeches, he angrily condemned “the widespread murder of our cows.”

As of Sunday morning, Mr. Modi had yet to make any public comment about the attack on the Ikhlaq family — an uncharacteristic silence for a leader who makes frequent use of Twitter. Indeed, Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim leader, pointed out that Mr. Modi took time last week to tweet condolences to a celebrated Indian singer on the death of her son.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Center for Policy Research, a top Indian think tank, accused Mr. Modi of tacitly encouraging intolerance and Hindu mob violence by failing to speak out against it. “The blame for this has to fall entirely on Modi,” he wrote in The Indian Express. “Those who spread this poison enjoy his patronage.”

How did they know Mr. Ikhlaq slaughtered a cow? A trail of cow blood led from the transformer to the Ikhlaq home, they insisted. (No such trail was found, police officials said.) How could they be sure the Ikhlaq family even eats beef, which itself is not illegal here? They pointed to meat found in the Ikhlaq family refrigerator. (Investigators said the meat appears to be from a goat, although forensic tests are still being done.)

In the meantime, the group is focused on lending moral and political support to the 10 men who have been accused of murder. According to The Times of India, one of the 10 is the son of a local B.J.P. leader.

“They are totally innocent,” Mr. Tomar said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/world/asia/mob-attack-over-rumors-of-cow-slaughter-has-political-overtones-in-india.html?_r=0