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On 7 November 1966, a group of Hindu protestors, led by ascetics, naga sadhus and backed by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Jana Sangh (aka Jan Sangh), approached the Indian Parliament to protest to criminalize cow slaughter.[1] The incident resulted in a riot which ended with a death toll of 7 people and hundreds were injured.[2][3] The total damage was estimated at about 1 billion rupees by city officials; numerous vehicles were destroyed, along with numerous shops.[4][5]

The episode was the culmination of a long-term movement by the Hindu Right to protect the cow, a traditional symbol of reverence in Hindu society. A meeting in late 1965 involving lobbying groups, naga sadhus and many religious dharma acharyas and influential Hindu religious orders initiated a year-long program of demonstrations and picketing, culminating in the planned march to the Parliament. Jan Sangh was a participant in the march. The march attracted hundreds of thousands of people for that march outside the parliament. Political figures including Bhupesh Gupta suspected clear-cut involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[6]

The protest was targeting the key leaders of then government. The police responded with tear gas and cane clubs, but their resistance proved futile.[7] As waves of demonstrators armed with tridents attacked the police and pelted them with stones, a policeman was stoned to death. Police were slow to respond,[5] but at around 1:30 pm, they engaged in rifle fire and mounted a charge with lead-tipped clubs.[7] While the charge was successful in dispersing the immediate mob, it caused fatal injuries, and having failed to succeed in breaching the Parliament gates, the mob merely scattered to attack other less-protected areas of Delhi.[8][7][5][9][10] Houses of prominent legislators from the ruling party (Indian National Congress), including that of K. Kamaraj, were broken into.[2][11] Passengers were forced out of vehicles before being set on fire, high-profile government buildings were ransacked, and random arson was indulged in.[7][12]

Two weeks later, influential saints began their hunger strikes in protest; however, fissures in the front began to appear, and Gandhi chose to incorporate a Parliamentary Committee to analyze the feasibility of imposing a ban on cow slaughter. The front was consistently outvoted, the nominees eventually resigned, the committee never produced a report, and the politicians successfully shifted the focus of national politics away from the issue. The episode had significant effects on the national polity for many years. This was one of the few breachings of parliament, along with the 2001 Indian Parliament Attack.

Background

Cow slaughter and religion

The scope, extent, and status of cow slaughter in ancient India has been a subject of intense scholarly dispute.

Marvin Harris notes the Vedic literature to be contradictory, with some stanzas suggesting ritual slaughter and meat consumption, while others suggesting a taboo on meat eating; however, Hindu literature relating to cow veneration became extremely common in the first millennium A.D., and by about 1000 A.D., vegetarianism had become a well accepted Hindu tenet.[13] D. N. Jha, Romila Thapar, Juli Gittinger et al. assert that cows were neither inviolable nor revered in the ancient times; the contemporary sacredness was a result of multiple factors including the development of Ahimsa philosophy during the Upanishad spans and increasing influence of Brahminism.[14] There have been rebuts.

The "protection of the cow" policy has commanded huge political significance in the subcontinent in precolonial spans;[15] the Mughal emperor Akbar had banned the killing of cows, and cow slaughter was treated as a capital offense in many Hindu and Sikh-ruled states.[16]

Cow protection and national politics

The first organised cow protection movement was started by Kukas of Sikhism, a reformist group, during the British Raj in the late 1800s, which framed cows as a "sign of the moral quality of the state".[15] Their ideas soon spread to Hindu reform movements,[17] with Arya Samaj playing a tremendous role in converting this sentiment into a national movement[18][19] and extensively lobbying for criminalizing cow slaughter.[5] The first Gaurakshini sabha (cow protection council) was established in the Punjab Province in 1882.[20] The movement often manifested as brazen Anti-Muslim riots[21][22] claiming thousands of lives across the country, especially on the occasions of Islamic festivals of sacrifices.[23][22][24] The Cow riots of 1893 were the most intense civil disturbance on the Indian subcontinent since the Indian Rebellion of 1857.[25]

Post-independence, the insertion of a clause about protection of cows into the Directive Principles and large-scale migration of Muslim populations into Pakistan led to a large reduction in riots.[26][5][27] However, with the accumulation of political power in the hands of conservative Savarna elites, the Hindu Mahasabha and other allied organisations saw even more opportunity to actively solicit a total ban on cow slaughter. The overtly secular stances of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (who threatened to resign if such a bill were passed) foiled the efforts.[5] Tensions began to re-emerge in the 1960s, when a new generation of Muslims born after independence and who were less aware of the trauma of religious violence in India of the 1940s, reached adolescence and began to assert their rights, whilst Nehru began to lose his firm grip over the Indian sociopolitical scenario.[26][5]

All Party Campaign

After Nehru's death in 1964, a lobbying group set up by business magnate Seth Dalmia, Murli Chandra Sharma of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, M. S. Golwalkar of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for the purpose of cow protection, began to actively engage in open political campaigns.[5] The topic soon penetrated into popular sociopolitical discourse,[28] and the group gradually added Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha, Akhil Bharatiya Ram Rajya Parishad, Vishva Hindu Parishad, and other Hindu parties. All stakeholders were subsequently invited to a meeting at Delhi in late 1965, which saw three of the four principal Shaivite shankaracharyas, dozens of mahants, and other ascetics from different religious orders promise to play integral roles in a nationwide campaign to mobilize the masses.[5] Swami Karpatri was chosen as the leader, and he advocated for a program of demonstrations and picketing, leading up to a march on Parliament in November 1966, which was approved.[5][29] The Shankaracharya of Puri also decided to undertake a fast until death unless cow slaughter was banned across the country; other ascetics supported his proposed agenda and some offered to court arrest, shall the need arise.[5][30]

Picketing started outside the residence of Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda in August 1966; as a patron of the Bharat Sadhu Samaj, he was widely seen as a figure sympathetic to their cause.[5] In October 1966, a procession in Washim, Maharashtra, demanding a nationwide ban on cow slaughter led to a riotous situation; police fired on the rioters, killing 11 people.[31] There was a discussion about the issue in the Union Cabinet, which refused to concede to popular sentiments; however Home Minister Gulzarilal Nanda recommended that states might choose to introduce a ban at their discretion.[31] This episode served as an immediate trigger for more demonstrations.[5]

On 6 November, preparations were highly visible, with posters plastered across the city and high-profile business houses sponsoring the meals of the marchers.[32] A total bandh of all shops in Delhi was planned;[32] Bhartiya Jan Sangh had joined in the rally at the last moment, and the front was now named Sarvadaliya Gorasksha Maha-Abiyan Samiti (SGMS; 'Committee for the Great All-Party Campaign for the Protection of the Cow').[5]

Mob Attack and Police firing

On the morning of 7 November, a few hundred thousand people, predominantly from the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha, and Arya Samaj, had assembled from far-off places at an open space near the Parliamentary Complex.[2][3][8] A vast majority of them were ash-smeared, trident-wielding, mostly Aghori Sadhus.[5] Christophe Jaffrelot noted it as the most popular mass movement since independence.[33]

Proceedings started around noon, and the environment was reportedly 'relaxed, almost festive' per a report by The New York Times, with the virtues of cows being extolled;[5] the first speaker was Swami Karpatri.[10] Soon afterwards, Swami Rameshwaranand, a Lok Sabha legislator[34] of Jan Sangh,[4] from Karnal, Punjab[9] who had earlier been expelled from the house for 10 days for a continual failure to abide by parliamentary decorum whilst urging for a ban on cow slaughter, rose to the podium.[8][5] He leveraged his expulsion, asking the mob "to teach a lesson" by forcing the Parliament to close down,[8][35] while other hard-line leaders served as accompanying provocateurs.[5] Jana Sangh leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee appealed to the Swami to withdraw his call and urged the demonstrators to maintain peace, but was not heeded.[10]

Thus invited, the mob went on a rampage, crying "Swami Rameshwaranand ki jai",[10] and breached the barricades; the police responded with tear gas and cane clubs, but their resistance proved futile.[7] As waves of demonstrators armed with tridents attacked the police and pelted them with stones, a policeman was stoned to death. Police were slow to respond,[5] but at around 1:30 pm, they engaged in rifle fire and mounted a charge with lead-tipped clubs.[7] While the charge was successful in dispersing the immediate mob, it caused fatal injuries, and having failed to succeed in breaching the Parliament gates, the mob merely scattered to attack other less-protected areas of Delhi.[8][7][5][9][10] Houses of prominent legislators from the ruling party (Indian National Congress), including that of K. Kamaraj, were broken into.[2][11] Passengers were forced out of vehicles before being set on fire, high-profile government buildings were ransacked, and random arson was indulged in.[7][12]

The riot ended at around 4:30 pm with a death toll of eight and hundreds injured.[2][3] The total damage was estimated at about 1 billion rupees by city officials; numerous vehicles were destroyed, along with numerous shops.[4][5] A curfew was imposed for 48 hours but withdrawn the next morning;[32] the army was deployed for the first time,[5] and a law concerning unlawful assembly was imposed for an indefinite time span.[2][11][8] About 1,500 demonstrators, including over 500 ascetics and prominent leaders of Hindu Nationalist parties and SGMS, were arrested.[36][37][38][5]

The Lieutenant Governor described the rioting as highly organised;[32] intelligence agencies had failed to predict the situation.[8] The extent of the violence was the most significant since the partition riots, and M. N. Srinivas commented that the episode solidly convinced him that the Hindus of North India had not evolved into modern people.[5] A few days later, Balraj Madhok, Rameshwaranand, and other prominent functionaries of RSS and Jan Sangh were arrested on charges of stoking the riots.[38][35][39] Political figures including Bhupesh Gupta suspected clear-cut involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the agitation.[6]

Vajpayee condemned the riots and blamed undesirable elements for the violence, saying that it had harmed a pious cause.[10] There was widespread discontent against Nanda, who was believed to be sympathetic to the rioters, forcing him to resign;[36][35][40] Prime Minister Indira Gandhi acquitted him of all blame before the Parliament and temporarily held the portfolio herself before choosing Yashwantrao Chavan as a replacement.[37][39][41]

Aftermath

Beginning on 17 November, Sadhus started courting arrest, as planned. On the 20th, Prabhudutt Brahmachari and the Shankaracharya of Puri began hunger strikes; others soon followed.[5] Gandhi took a hardliner stance, refusing to 'cow down to the cow savers' and detained the fasting sadhus to shift them out of public view; however, the fasting continued along with popular mobilization by cow-slaughter activists.[5][33] Whilst her stance was commended across liberal media and supported by the Communist Party and others,[5][42] failing health of the Shankaracharya and the death of two less-prominent fasters followed.[5]

Soon, fissures started appearing within SGMS.[5] A religious faction led by Swami Karpatri split away around December 1966 to fight elections around the locus of cow protection, to the discontent of Gowalkar.[5] Within a couple of weeks, the fourth Shankaracharya and other Vaishnava religious orders subsequently criticized the front for placing Shankaracharya's health in jeopardy.[5] On 24 January, a seriously ailing Shankaracharya criticized the BJS for pandering to electoral politics and failing to protect either Hinduism or the cow.[5]

Gandhi used this time to set up a joint parliamentary committee composed of animal husbandry experts and politicians across the divides (including from the SGMS); their agenda was to examine the 'feasibility' of a 'total ban on the slaughter of the cow and its progeny' and deliver a recommendation within a time frame of six months.[5] The committee was to be chaired by Retd. Justice Amal Kumar Sarkar (along with two Congress chief ministers, two Congress Ministers of State, four central bureaucrats, and three nominees of SGMS—the Shankaracharya of Puri, Golwalkar, and R. P. Mookerji, elder brother of Syama Prasad Mukherjee), and the offer was accepted by all parties, with minimal negotiations.[5] In the meantime, Gandhi once again recommended on 5 January 1967 that states enact their own bans on cow slaughter.[5] Shankaracharya broke his fast; it had lasted 73 days and was longer than any other hunger strike in recorded Indian history.[5]

Jan Sangh failed to leverage the cow-protection episode in any major manner from an electoral sense; their seats increased from 14 to just 35 in the 1967 Lok Sabha elections and Congress lost many seats, with the popular vote share dropping by about 4%; Jan Sangh had managed, however, to successfully challenge the Congress hegemony in urban Hindu areas, especially the cow belt.[33][3][43][5]

The committee started its work after the elections. Shrewd planning by Gandhi had filled the committee with trusted secularists, federalists and people with an economic interest in the beef trade.[5] The two factions often collided with a near-complete lack of any common ground. Outfoxed and outmaneuvered, the three members of the SGMS eventually resigned in July 1968.[5] Whilst the committee continued, the issue rapidly lost momentum in national politics.[5][44] The committee was finally dissolved in 1979, having never submitted a report.[9]

Legacy

Overall, the agitation propelled the Hindu Right into the foreground of national politics for the first time; simultaneously, Gandhi's successful negotiation helped establish her image as a resolute leader who later had the tenacity to lead a weakened Congress after the 1969 split.[5] The episode also played a significant role in Gandhi's choosing to shift away from the staunch secular ideals displayed by her father, embracing the Hindu way of life and enabling communal politics.[5]

Congress (R) went on to choose the cow-and-calf symbol during the 1971 Lok Sabha elections.[5] On the other hand, after years of failure over issue of cow protection and a failure to mobilize the lower castes to their cause, the Hindu Right chose to shift their primary focus from cow protection to the demolition of the Babri Masjid.[5] RSS and VHP commemorate the event every year.[45]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Jaffrelot, Christophe (1999). "The Mixed Strategy". The Hindu nationalist movement and Indian politics: 1925 to the 1990s; strategies of identity-building, implantation and mobilisation (with special reference to Central India). Penguin Books. pp. 205–209. ISBN 0-14-024602-9. OCLC 255173890.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "(dated November 8, 1966)". The Hindu. 8 November 2016. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Daniyal, Shoaib (28 August 2016). "Looking back: The first Parliament attack took place in 1966 – and was carried out by gau rakshaks". Scroll.in. Archived from the original on 5 November 2016. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  4. 1 2 3 "India Calls On Army To Halt Bloody Riots". The Record. New Delhi. AP, UPI. 8 November 1966. p. 8. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Copland, Ian (April 2014). "History in Flux: Indira Gandhi and the 'Great All-Party Campaign' for the Protection of the Cow, 1966–8". Journal of Contemporary History. 49 (2): 410–439. doi:10.1177/0022009413515535. ISSN 0022-0094. JSTOR 43697306. S2CID 154959158.
  6. 1 2 Bhupesh Gupta. Eminent parliamentarians monograph series. Lok Sabha Secretariat. 1990. p. 62.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "'Save-the-cow' mob in Delhi rampage". The Sydney Morning Herald. Delhi. 8 November 1966. p. 1. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Malhotra, Inder (8 November 1966). "Holy Men Stir Up Riots in Delhi". The Guardian. New Delhi. p. 1. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Ramesh, Jairam (9 November 2016). "The very first attack on Parliament". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Guha, Ramachandra (2019). "War and Succession". India after Gandhi the history of the world's largest democracy. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-297385-6. Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  11. 1 2 3 "The Spokesman-Review – Google News Archive Search". 8 November 1966. Archived from the original on 13 March 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2017.
  12. 1 2 "Hindu Mobs On Rampage In New Delhi". The Times. New Delhi. AP. 8 November 1966. p. 1. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ Marvin Harris (1990), India's sacred cow Archived 29 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Anthropology: contemporary perspectives, 6th edition, Editors: Phillip Whitten & David Hunter, Scott Foresman, ISBN 0-673-52074-9, pages 201–204
  14. ↑ Gittinger, Juli L. (2017). "The Rhetoric of Violence, Religion, and Purity in India's Cow Protection Movement". Journal of Religion and Violence. 5 (2): 131–150. doi:10.5840/jrv201751540. ISSN 2159-6808. JSTOR 26671533.
  15. 1 2 Peter van der Veer (1994). Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India. University of California Press. pp. 90–91. ISBN 978-0-520-08256-4. Archived from the original on 31 March 2015. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  16. ↑ John R. McLane (8 March 2015). Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress. Princeton University Press. pp. 276–283. ISBN 978-1-4008-7023-3. Archived from the original on 4 December 2019. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  17. ↑ Barbara D. Metcalf; Thomas R. Metcalf (2012). A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press. pp. 152–153. ISBN 978-1-139-53705-6.
  18. ↑ Freitag, Sandria (October 1980). "Sacred Symbols as Mobilizing Ideology: The North Indian Search for a "Hindu" Community". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 22 (4): 597–625. doi:10.1017/s0010417500009567. S2CID 67853505.
  19. ↑ From Plassey to Partition, a History of modern India, Śekhara Bandyopādhyāẏa, p. 240, ISBN 81-250-2596-0.
  20. ↑ The Making of an Indian Metropolis, Colonial governance and public culture in Bombay, 1890/1920, Prashant Kidambi, p. 176, ISBN 978-0-7546-5612-8.
  21. ↑ Shabnum Tejani (2008). Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History, 1890–1950. Indiana University Press. pp. 43–49. ISBN 978-0-253-22044-8.
  22. 1 2 Gene R. Thursby (1975). Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India. BRILL Academic. pp. 76–88. ISBN 90-04-04380-2.
  23. ↑ Meena Menon (2012). Riots and After in Mumbai: Chronicles of Truth and Reconciliation. SAGE Publications. pp. 22–37, 55–58, 73–82. ISBN 978-81-321-1935-7.
  24. ↑ Nitish K. Sengupta (2011). Land of Two Rivers: A History of Bengal from the Mahabharata to Mujib. Penguin. pp. 347–348. ISBN 978-0-14-341678-4. Archived from the original on 10 December 2019. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  25. ↑ Mark Doyle (2016). Communal Violence in the British Empire: Disturbing the Pax. Bloomsbury Academic Publishing. pp. 157–161. ISBN 978-1-4742-6826-4.
  26. 1 2 Ian Copland; Ian Mabbett; Asim Roy, Kate Brittlebank and Adam Bowles (2013). A History of State and Religion in India. Routledge. pp. 237–239. ISBN 978-1-136-45950-4.
  27. ↑ Copland, Ian (2 October 2017). "Cows, Congress and the Constitution: Jawaharlal Nehru and the Making of Article 48". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 40 (4): 723–743. doi:10.1080/00856401.2017.1352646. ISSN 0085-6401. S2CID 149181607.
  28. ↑ "Cow-Based Politics". Economic and Political Weekly. 2 (2). 5 June 2015. Archived from the original on 23 December 2019. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  29. ↑ Jaffrelot, Christophe (2001). "The Rise of Hindu Nationalism and the Marginalisation of Muslims in India Today". In Shastri, Amita; Wilson, A. Jeyaratnam (eds.). The Post-Colonial States of South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 146. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-11508-9_7. ISBN 978-1-137-11508-9. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  30. ↑ Noronha, Ernesto (1994). "BJP: Cow as a Political Symbol". Economic and Political Weekly. 29 (24): 1447–1448. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4401327.
  31. 1 2 Muralidharan, Sukumar (5 June 2015). "The Many Faces of Indira Gandhi". Economic and Political Weekly. 53 (3): 34. Archived from the original on 12 May 2019. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  32. 1 2 3 4 "Sadhus Slaughter Sadachari". Economic and Political Weekly. 1 (13): 530–531. 1966. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4357202.
  33. 1 2 3 Jaffrelot, Christophe (1 August 2013). "Refining the moderation thesis. Two religious parties and Indian democracy: the Jana Sangh and the BJP between Hindutva radicalism and coalition politics". Democratization. 20 (5): 879. doi:10.1080/13510347.2013.801256. ISSN 1351-0347. S2CID 144174913.
  34. ↑ "Members Bioprofile". loksabhaph.nic.in. Archived from the original on 23 December 2019. Retrieved 23 December 2019.
  35. 1 2 3 "Holy men in new march". The Age. New Delhi. AAP-Reuters. 9 November 1966. p. 5. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  36. 1 2 Malhotra, Inder (9 November 1966). "Mrs Gandhi dismisses Minister". The Guardian. New Delhi. p. 1. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  37. 1 2 "Sacred Cows Uproar Breaks Up Parliament". The Sydney Morning Herald. Delhi. 12 November 1966. p. 3. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  38. 1 2 "Leaders of riots seized". The Sydney Morning Herald. Delhi. 10 November 1966. p. 3. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  39. 1 2 "Extremists held by police in India". The Age. New Delhi. AAP. 10 November 1966. p. 4. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  40. ↑ Slee, John (12 November 1966). "India Govt. learns grim lesson". The Age. New Delhi. p. 4. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  41. ↑ "India Police Head Fired After Riots". The Times. New Delhi. AP. 10 November 1966. p. 18. Retrieved 23 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  42. ↑ Gupta, Bhabani Sen (March 1968). "A Maoist Line for India". The China Quarterly. 33: 10. doi:10.1017/S030574100000374X. ISSN 1468-2648. S2CID 154879089.
  43. ↑ Singh, V. B. (1971). "Jan Sangh in Uttar Pradesh: Fluctuating Fortunes and Uncertain Future". Economic and Political Weekly. 6 (3/5): 311. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4381552.
  44. ↑ Chandra, Bipan (11 February 2008). India Since Independence. Penguin UK. p. 237. ISBN 978-81-8475-053-9.
  45. ↑ Rai, Siddhartha (31 October 2016). "Holy cow: RSS, VHP to revive 1966 gau rakshaks' movement". India Today. Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
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