A journalist declared Wednesday’s ‘Not In My Name’ protest at Jantar Mantar a “Flop Show” for low turnout without even going there. It was like a film critic giving ½ a star to a movie without watching it! I prefer not to indulge in the binaries of success or failure when it comes to protests. To hope for the success of a protest is human but to go ahead with it in the face of a certain defeat is citizen.
Every one of us who went to Jantar Mantar or any other venue in more than 11 cities across the country on 28 June is a citizen. And if we were able to compel the right-wingers to bitterly criticise our protest and force the prime minister to break his long-studied silence and condemn mob-lynching in the name of cow, I guess we have achieved reasonable success.
But can we sit on this success? The short answer is – No. We have to build on it and I am too naïve to preach anyone on how to do that. An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching, said Gandhi. Therefore, in the following paragraphs, I would not suggest anything which I haven’t already done.
On the Legal Front
The first thing we should do is file petitions or Public Interest Litigations (PILs) in the high court of every state where there is a complete ban on cow slaughter and consumption of beef. Barring 3-4 states, such bizarre laws exist in all the states of India. If such a law exists in your state, please file a petition in your state’s high court.
Just imagine the kind of big bang it would have when 15-20 writ petitions would be filed within a month in various high ocurts across India!
Apart from the threats of assault or social boycott you will receive, another side effect of this petition would be: The real character of your state government would be revealed. Spoiler alert: The likelihood of it stinking of hypocrisy is extremely high.
For instance, while Manish Sisodia eagerly joined Wednesday’s protest and said that “what society eats or wears is as per the needs of society” to gain some political mileage, inside Delhi High Court, his government has been dodging the court’s order to clarify their official stand on beef ban laws in Delhi for the past 10 months.
This is the level of their evasiveness when my writ petition challenges the constitutional validity of only the ban on possession and consumption of beef and not of the ban on cow slaughter.
I am not saying that just by getting beef ban laws repealed we would be cured of these malignant cow terrorists, but it would send a clear signal to these fanatics that their sentiments or ideology has no legal backing. Martin Luther King Jr said in 18 December 1963 at Western Michigan University:
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me.
If I am permitted to suggest a logical extension to this strategy, what holds good for the states must also hold good for the Centre. That is, we simply can’t let Modi government impose a de-facto ban on cattle slaughter all over India by cunningly regulating access to cattle markets.
We must file a petition in the Supreme Court of India against the blatantly unconstitutional changes brought in the rules under Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act, 1960 – the most prominent one being that now cattle can’t be sold or bought for slaughter via cattle markets.
On the Social Front
One of the messages we conveyed by coming together to say ‘Not in my name’ is that our identity, ideology, orientation, religion, caste, class or profession doesn’t muzzle our voice. I may be a practicing Hindu but that doesn’t prohibit me from raising my voice in support of Muslims being targeted by Hindu extremists.
I may be a Jain by birth, but that doesn’t stop me from raising my voice against the beef-based divisive politics of a Jain (Amit Shah).
This message needs more assertion by our consistent actions. The way we came out on the roads against the targeted mob lynching of Muslims and Dalits, we should also come out against the state abetted suicides of poor farmers, or state-sponsored atrocities against tribals in the name of Maoism or state-induced unemployment and economic devastation in the name of demonetisation or GST.
We should also come out on the roads when Aadhaar is shoved down our throats or when political funding is made opaque or rampant land grabbing is legalised and other such cases where no direct human tragedy is involved.
Of course, one can’t possibly have a well informed opinion on everything and we also don’t have a supply of infinite time and energy. With due regard to these limitations, we have to widen the spectrum of our voice so that it tunes not just with one or two familiar frequencies but with new frequencies as well which would otherwise die out if not amplified.
(The author, a student of law at Delhi University, is the lead petitioner in the petition challenging the constitutionality of laws banning possession and consumption of beef in Delhi. He tweets at @gauravjain26. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)