Cow Squads in 1970s to Lynchings Now: Bloody History of Rajasthan's Gau Rakshaks
From forced conversions in 1947 to lynchings now, a new book chronicles history of communal violence in Rajasthan.
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(This is an excerpt from Deep Mukherjee and Tabeenah Anjum's book From Dynasties to Democracy: Politics, Caste and Power Struggles in Rajasthan published by Pan Macmillan and released on 12 December. We have edited it slightly and added subheads.)
For someone who has been elected to the assembly only once, Gopi Chand Gurjar has left a disproportionately powerful mark on the political landscape of Rajasthan. Now in his early sixties, he has not held public office for more than twenty years, and his only term as an MLA in the Rajasthan assembly was from 1993–98.
A large photo of the godman Jai Gurudev hangs in his office, which is filled with literature and teachings by the controversial guru who was routinely seen with powerful people, including former prime ministers. When Jai Gurudev passed away in 2012, he left behind a Rs 4,000-crore empire and thousands of devotees, mostly from the Hindi heartland, especially Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. In Rajasthan, Jai Gurudev’s slogans ‘stop cow slaughter’ and ‘become a vegetarian’ are often found graffitied in public spaces.
Anti-Cow Slaughter Law and the Roots of Vigilantism
Gurjar believes he was sent to the assembly by his guru for a purpose that he has fulfilled, so he spends his days spreading the message of Jai Gurudev, handing out pamphlets to anyone who steps into his office. The ‘purpose’ he refers to is the enactment of The Rajasthan Bovine Animal (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act (RB Act) 1995 that prohibits the transportation of cows or bulls outside Rajasthan. Elected as a BJP MLA from Nagar constituency in Bharatpur in 1993, Gurjar claims his political career was cut short because then CM Bhairon Singh Shekhawat did not appreciate him arm-twisting the party into passing the RB Act.
Gurjar had managed to convince other BJP MLAs not to budge till the bill against cow smuggling was passed, asserting that the cow was a sentimental subject. The issue escalated to such a degree that the MLAs were willing to resign if their demand was not met. CM Shekhawat had no choice but to pass the law, although he ensured that Gurjar did not get a BJP ticket in the next elections. Content that he had fulfilled his purpose, Gurjar was unperturbed.
'From Dynasties to Democracy' is a new book by Deep Mukherjee and Tabeenah Anjum
Many years before Rajasthan became notorious for cow vigilantism and lynchings of people transporting bovines, Gurjar claims to have formed ‘cow protection squads’ in Alwar and Bharatpur districts, way back in the 1970s. Every time a suspected case of cow slaughter was brought to his notice, Gurjar would rush to the spot with his squad. He claims that his very name would strike terror into the Meos, who would tell each other, ‘Bhaago, Gopi Gurjar aa jayega! (Run or else Gopi Gurjar will come and get you!)’.
Meos at the Receiving End
Mewat, the region comprising parts of Alwar, Bharatpur and bordering regions of Haryana, is home to a large population of Muslims, colloquially called Meos. The region has a history of communal flare-ups, with the Meos often being targeted by Hindutva groups. In the wake of Partition, the Meo community was victim to one of the nation’s worst ethnic cleansings. Thousands of Meo Muslims were either killed or forcibly converted during bouts of communal hatred. N. B. Khare, a future head of the Hindu Mahasabha, who was the prime minister of the Alwar estate at the time of the mass violence against the Meos, is believed to have played a part in the gruesome event.
In response to a question raised in the state assembly on 3 November 1952, the then rehabilitation minister of Rajasthan, Amritlal Yadav, informed the House that a total of 2.41 lakh Meo Muslims had been evacuated from Alwar and Bharatpur during the Partition violence.
In the present times, cow vigilantism is a real threat to the lives of Meo Muslims. Pehlu Khan, Umar Mohammed, Rakbar Khan, Nasir and Junaid are just some of the Meo Muslims who have lost their lives in the last few years as a direct result of cow vigilantism. ‘After this bill is passed, our government will be known as “gaurakshak”. This day will be written in golden letters in the history of Rajasthan’s democracy,’ Gurjar had claimed in the assembly back in 1995 after the safe passage of the bill.
The appearance of the cow in the desert state’s politics has caused political rhetoric to often veer toward supporting vigilantism in recent years. ‘Maine khullam khulla chhoot de rakhi hai karyakartaon ko, maaron sa**** ko jo gokashi ... Bari bhi karwayenge, zamaanat bhi karwa denge (I have given a free hand to the workers, kill those [expletive] behind cow slaughter ... We will get you acquitted, get you out on bail, too),’ former BJP MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja from Ramgarh can be heard saying in a video in 2022. Known for his frequent anti-Meo Muslim statements, Ahuja routinely catches the attention of the media. His promise of ‘getting cow vigilantes acquitted’ rang with an ominous self-assuredness.
Rajasthan BJP leader and former party MLA Gyan Dev Ahuja has been caught on camera urging a crowd to "kill anyone involved in cow slaughter."
(Photo: The Quint)
Be it our Lynchistan documentary or our in-depth coverage on the killings of Pehlu Khan and Rakbar Khan, The Quint has reported extensively on hate crimes by cow vigilantes. We hope such killings never happen but we are committed to exposing these vigilante networks. Help us in this mission by support our Uncovering Hate project.)
The Lynching of Pehlu Khan
On 14 August 2019, a day before India was going to celebrate its seventy-second Independence Day, a large group of people gathered outside a court in Alwar district. The mood was celebratory. Men exiting the court premises emerged chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ – they had just been acquitted of all charges pertaining to the murder of Pehlu Khan. Local lawyers, dressed in their trademark black coats, soon joined the chorus as TV channel crews zoomed in to focus their cameras on the group. A few kilometres away, Khan’s twenty-seven-year-old son, Irshad, broke down while talking about the verdict. When he had left his village Jaisinghpur in Haryana’s Nuh district for the court hearing, he had been hopeful that his father would get justice. He was in disbelief at the turn of events, wondering what more evidence was needed – there was a video of his father being subjected to violent assault by the newly acquitted. Situated less than a hundred kilometres from New Delhi, Jaisinghpur was covered in darkness after a power cut, but Khan’s house was easy to locate – all one had to do was follow the long wails of the mourning family.
The grainy video of Khan, fifty-five, a Meo Muslim dairy farmer from Haryana, being assaulted near Behror on the Jaipur–Delhi highway had gone viral in April 2017, leaving the country stunned. Khan and his two sons were waylaid by a mob while they were returning to Haryana after purchasing cows from a government managed cattle market in Jaipur. Two days after being attacked, Khan succumbed to his wounds at a local hospital. Even as the attack on Khan resulted in massive outrage across the country and the then BJP government under Vasundhara Raje was slammed by activists, the political rhetoric emboldened the attackers. It is for this reason that the Pehlu Khan case is crucial to understanding the close relation between cow vigilantes and Rajasthan politics.
Shortly after Khan’s lynching, future Punjab governor Gulab Chand Kataria, who was the home minister in Raje’s government and an old RSS loyalist, reiterated the claim made by Hindutva groups that Pehlu Khan was a cattle smuggler. Five months later, the Alwar police gave a clean chit to all the six people whom Khan had named as his assailants in his statement to the police before his death.
A day after news broke that the CID-CB of the Rajasthan police had let the six men named by Khan go scot-free, Karwan-e-Mohabbat, a campaign against hate crimes, arrived in Behror – the town where Khan had been attacked. Om Yadav, one of the six alleged assailants, who had been ‘absconding’ until just a day ago, accompanied by members of local Hindu outfits, began furiously sloganeering against Karwan-e-Mohabbat.
Local police blocked the passage of the campaign, preventing them from reaching the spot where Khan had been attacked. Activist Harsh Mander, who was leading Karwan-e-Mohabbat, staged a dharna beside the busy highway, refusing to budge despite being heckled by the local protesters. ‘We won’t let you pay tribute to Pehlu Khan. Is he Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose or the men fighting at the borders that people would pay tribute to him?’ said one of the protesters as tensions ran high. The police finally took only Mander to the spot near the highway where Khan had been assaulted, and he sat there with folded hands, paying his respects to Khan.
In fact, after Khan died, he and his sons were booked under the RB Act – the same law that Gopi Chand Gurjar had helped pass in the assembly in 1995 – for cattle smuggling and his sons were chargesheeted.
In August 2019, all the men chargesheeted by the police for the murder of Khan had walked free, acquitted by the district court on the basis of benefit of doubt. But the court slammed the police for not taking the video evidence of the attack into account. The botched investigation process is further evident from the difference between the judgments delivered by the district court that tried the six accused and acquitted them, and the verdict of the Juvenile Justice Board ( JJB) that convicted two teenagers, who were minors at the time of the killing – the only guilty verdict handed out to anyone involved in the attack on Khan. The two teenagers convicted in the Pehlu Khan lynching case were sent to a special home for three years – the maximum punishment that the board could pronounce in such cases. The FIRs and chargesheets against Khan’s sons were subsequently quashed by the Rajasthan High Court in October 2019, which noted that continuation of proceedings would be tantamount to ‘abuse of process of law and would result in grave injustice’ to Irshad and Aarif.
The JJB in Alwar was scathing in its criticism of some doctors of the private hospital in Behror where Khan was first admitted. Notably, the hospital is owned by Mahesh Sharma, a BJP MP from Gautam Buddh Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. ‘Because every doctor has given different statements, it appears that the doctors of Kailash Hospital treated the body of deceased Pehlu Khan as a dummy, wherein injuries were arbitrarily decided and inflicted injuries were arbitrarily treated as minimal. Such statements by the aforementioned doctors also cast suspicion on their medical conduct,’ Principal Magistrate Sarita Dhakad said in her verdict. Subsequently, it also issued notices to four doctors of the hospital who had treated Khan. The judgement reads: ‘Therefore, doctors of Kailash Hospital Dr Akhil Saxena, Dr B. D. Sharma, Dr R. C. Yadav and Dr Jitendra Butolia should be issued a notice and their answers be sought that for the fulfilment of what objective they changed the reason for death from serious hurt to heart attack.’
Incidentally, in the Alwar court, the statements of these very doctors had a part to play in the acquittal of the six accused. Senior advocate Nasir Ali Naqvi, the counsel for Khan’s family in the Rajasthan High Court after the family petitioned for the withdrawal of the cow smuggling accusation against the Khan brothers, remarked on how the conflicting conclusions of the Kailash Hospital doctors and the postmortem report posed a significant challenge for them as prosecutors. The private hospital doctors were presented as their witnesses, but it was the defence that ended up benefitting from their testimonies.