Backing Tharoor, Shiv Sena Says ‘Cows Safer Than Women in India’

Tharoor had slammed the Centre for the recent spate of mob lynchings in the name of cow vigilantism in India.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A day after Congress MP Shashi Tharoor launched a scathing attack on the government over the issue of mob lynchings, the ruling NDA’s ally Shiv Sena has followed suit.

While Tharoor had slammed the government by stating that cows were safer than Muslims in some parts of the country, party chief Uddhav Thackeray said that in India, “cows are safe but women are not.”

In an interview with the party mouthpiece ‘Saamna’, Thackeray said BJP's idea of Hindutva was fake, and criticised the government for failing to check cow vigilantism.

In the name of saving the cow, if you are shifting focus to whether someone is eating beef or not, then it is a sham. This is not Hindutva. I do not accept the idea of Hindutva that is being adhered to in the country. Our women are unsafe and you are protecting cows.

On 22 July, in an article for The Print, Tharoor slammed the Centre over a range of issues - from its claims of no major communal riots being witnessed in the country in the past four years to a minister garlanding lynching convicts.

“Following the BJP’s victory in the 2014 elections, a wave of Hindu triumphalism has swept the land. In its wake have come new laws to protect cows and vociferous demands for their strict enforcement. Gau-rakshak or cow protection societies have been revived, and many have taken it upon themselves to compel compliance,” the article read.

Tharoor’s comments come after a man named Akbar Khan was beaten to death by a mob, who accused him of cow smuggling in Rajasthan’s Alwar district on Friday, 20 July.

A 16-year-old Kashmiri Muslim boy was murdered for having hitched a ride on a truck that was transporting cattle. It seems safer in many places these days to be a cow than a Muslim.

Excerpt from The Print article written by Tharoor

Stating numbers from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, Tharoor further wrote that the government seems to believe it can issue statements with utter disregard for the truth and people will believe them.

(With inputs from The Print and PTI)