It seems that the BJP government’s decision to illegalise the sale of cattle for slaughter at animal markets has its roots in a PIL that quotes the five-yearly Gadhimai festival in Nepal, where thousands of buffaloes are taken from India to be sacrificed to ‘appease’ Gadhimai, the goddess of power.
The contradictions that emerge from cattle – here encompassing all bovines – slaughter rules in Nepal perplex many: despite being predominantly Hindu, animal sacrifice continues to be practised. Cow slaughter is explicitly prohibited even in Nepal’s new constitution since it is the national animal, yet the ritual sacrifice of buffaloes and the consumption of their meat is not frowned upon. There is also, in marked contrast to the Indian government’s blanket approach to cattle terminology, a lucid distinction between cows (both the male and female) and other ‘cattle’ species (such as buffaloes and yaks).
The emergence of this contradictory, often paradoxical, approach to cattle slaughter in Nepal is the result of a careful balancing act by the rulers of modern Nepal. The Shah dynasty and the Rana prime ministers often found themselves at a crossroads to explicitly define the rules of cattle slaughter. As rulers of a perceived ‘asal Hindu-sthan’, their dharma bound them to protect the cow – the House of Gorkha borrows its name from the Sanskrit ‘gou-raksha’ – but as they expanded into an empire, their stringent Brahminic rules came into conflict with des-dharma, or existing local customs, where cattle-killing was a norm. What followed was an intentionally ambiguous approach to cattle slaughter, an exercise in social realpolitik.
