Read original article by Maya Prabhu on Al-Jazeera or read some of the key points below;
- “For more than six weeks, no buffalo meat has been bought or sold in Meerut’s markets. Across Uttar Pradesh (UP), northern India’s fractious behemoth of a state, slaughterhouses have been closed down by a new government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).”
- “In Hindu parts of town, locals seem reticent about the slaughterhouse ban, maybe because it isn’t their issue”
- “The government insists that only illegal abattoirs have been affected by their policy: the slaughterhouse shut-down, they say, is representative of a vigorous commitment to law and order.”
- “Speaking from his office in the state capital Lucknow, Maulana Khalid Rasheed, imam of the famous Eidgah Aishbagh mosque, says: “It is not the fault of the people employed in the sector, but of the successive governments [of UP] that have failed to properly regulate the industry.”
- “Ramesh Dixit, a political analyst and former professor of politics at Lucknow University, tells Al Jazeera: “The local [meat] trader is Muslim, and he’s being targeted.”
- “It’s big business, says Dixit, and the government would rather see it in the hands of corporate enterprise. “The idea of government is to push these Muslims out of business; they want to make Muslims jobless. That is their design. That is why they want to victimise them, and terrorise them – all in the name of cows.”
Watch KJ’s video article of the story below;
https://youtu.be/54JUlWNSL-c
