I found the latest ‘Mango Jihad’ quite telling in its details. The call for the jihad — a wrong term — has come, again, from Karnataka, the state where issues like the hijab, ban on the participation of Muslim traders in temple festivals and the selling of halal meat among Hindus were first raked up.

The hijab issue found immediate resonance in Uttar Pradesh where the BJP was busy trying to pit 80 per cent against 20 per cent in the Assembly elections. Now that the party has succeeded in retaining the state, it is no longer interested in mango jihads, as the next Lok Sabha election in 2024 is far away.

That is not the case in Karnataka where elections are due in less than a year. There, the right-wing Hindu groups have been raking up communal issue after communal issue. It is new information for me that Muslims play a lead role as wholesale and retail traders of mango in the state.

The Hindu groups want the farmers not to sell their mangoes to the Muslim traders. In other words, they want to end whatever little monopoly or leeway the Muslims enjoy. 

There is no doubt that an overwhelming majority of the mango farmers are Hindus. The reason is simple. They own most of the agricultural land and mango groves.

The farmers sell the mangoes to whoever pays them the best price. Competition is the essence of business. In the instant case, it is the Muslim traders who give the best price. The best way to compete with them is to offer better prices to the farmers.

That is exactly how Mukesh Ambani built up a large base of subscribers for his new cell phone service. Subscribers of other mobile service providers like Airtel and Vodafone left in droves to become Jio subscribers.

Instead, the Hindu groups want Hindu farmers to boycott Muslim traders and accept whatever price the Hindu traders give them. Thus, they want to drive Muslims out of the business. They are not even ready for a competition.

It is surprising that the Karnataka government has not rounded up the hotheads who made such a demand in wanton violation of all the provisions of the Indian Constitution. All this is done with a purpose — to vitiate the atmosphere and reap political advantage in the coming elections. And with the connivance of those in power!

In any case, intolerance is increasingly becoming the order of the day. The controversy created over the halal meat issue is a case in point. It has been gaining traction with the “ban” imposed on the sale of meat in parts of Delhi. 

The right-wing groups, first, called for a boycott of halal meat during Varshadodaku, the day after Ugadi when most Hindus have a non-vegetarian meal. People forget the fact that in India, over 60 per cent of the population is non-vegetarian.

Taking his cue from the call in Karnataka, Mayor of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation Mukesh Suryan asked for the closure of all meat shops in his jurisdiction during the entire period of Navaratri from April 2 to 11, i.e., nine nights and 10 days. East Delhi Municipal Corporation Mayor Shyam Sundar Aggarwal also gave a similar directive. 

In his order to his commissioner, the SDMC mayor claimed that “devotees observe a strict vegetarian diet and forgo even the use of onion and garlic” during the Navratri festival. 

What’s worse, he said, “the sight of meat being sold in the open would make them uncomfortable. This will even affect their religious beliefs and sentiments”.

How conceited the mayor is can be gauged from the fact that Hindus have been celebrating Navaratri for centuries without any complaint about the sale of meat. 

Forget the argument that the settlers on the banks of the Indus who came to be called Hindus were beef-eaters, the fact is that an overwhelming majority of the people are non-vegetarian. The late AB Vajpayee enjoyed the Himalayan trout, which is my favourite too, though I cannot afford it. Chicken kebab was one of his weaknesses.

How can the religiosity of such people disappear when they see meat being sold in public during Navratri? In any case, meat is sold only in designated areas of the market and those who do not want to see it do not have to go there.

BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, who is the son of the former Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma — one more proof that dynasty is encouraged in the BJP — has gone one step ahead to demand such a ban all over the country. 

Reports have brought out the fact that many meat sellers in Delhi downed their shutters for fear of the right-wingers, although they are yet to receive an official order. It is like shopkeepers closing their shops during bandhs and hartals, despite the court proclaiming them as illegal. Who wants to risk one's property? 

The reason why the BJP leaders in Delhi were quick in responding to the call that originally came from Karnataka is not far to seek. Elections to the local bodies in the Capital are due. 

In fact, the BJP fears that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is likely to win these elections. This stems from two reasons. The success of the AAP in Punjab has bolstered the image of the party. There is a growing feeling among Congressmen in Delhi that they have become irrelevant.

In other words, even those who think that the AAP is the B team of the Sangh Parivar would have no alternative but to vote for the AAP if they do not want the BJP to control the civic bodies too. Thus the die is cast in favour of the AAP.

It will be a moral setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi if the AAP wins control of all the three municipal corporations in Delhi. That is why the BJP has come up with the stratagem of postponing the elections on the plea that it wants all the three municipal corporations in Delhi to merge into one as was the case earlier. 

With an electoral defeat staring the BJP in the eye, it wants to polarise the voters and found a convenient tool in the meat. What is overlooked is that the calls and demands for boycott are a negation of the Muslims’ right to do a legitimate trade like sale of meat. 

When they are forced to close their shops for nine days, thousands of people who are in this business lose their livelihood. Who will compensate them for their loss, particularly when they are not rich and have little resources to fall back upon? 

When the mayor in Delhi says that onion and garlic, too, are not used during Navratri, is he prepared to ban the sale of these vegetables? I can bet that he will not be able to do that because it will hurt the interests of the majority community. 

This year, Navaratri coincides with the beginning of Ramzan. How will the right-wingers react if Muslims in Kashmir were to ask for a ban on sale of all food items to the tourists between sunrise and sunset when Muslims don’t eat any food? 

It is the Dalit community which rears pigs and eat pork. Some sections of Christians also eat pork. The Muslims would be happy if pork is banned. Will the government agree to it? Food is a personal choice. If Modi was born in China, he would have eaten everything that moved. Why go that far? If the Delhi MP was born a Muslim, he would have been eating beef. Food habits of a person have much to do with the circumstances in which he grew up. It has little to do with belief.

Maithil Brahmins of Bihar are voracious eaters of fish and meat, whereas the Namboothiris in Kerala are, generally speaking, vegetarians. Does that mean that the latter is superior? In Bengal, almost everyone is a fish-eater. Food habits change from place to place and region to region.

There are communities which do not eat any food item like onions, potatoes, tapioca and yam that grow in the soil. Can they expect the government to enforce their preferences for food on the majority community? They cannot. 

People have the option to eat any food. Muslims eat only the halal meat because they claim that Islamic slaughter is designed to reduce pain and distress in the animal. The spinal cord is not touched. 

Severing of the head in one stroke is how jhatka meat is made. The Sikhs have their religious injunction against halal meat. The Bible has hundreds of passages in which references are made of food that can be eaten. 

In the book of Leviticus, there is a mention of clean animals the meat of which can be eaten and unclean animals the meat which cannot be eaten. Eating blood is prohibited. From that perspective, halal meat should be the more preferable meat for the Christians.  

Be that as it may, the fact of the matter is that nobody — neither Muslim nor Hindu — can distinguish between cooked halal meat and jhatka meat. This itself brings home the point how farcical the meat controversy is. I am reminded of an incident.

A group of journalists from Pakistan visited Chandigarh and Panchkula. Elaborate arrangements of food were made for them. I noticed that none of them ate the meat dishes because, I am sure, they were not sure whether they were halal or not. Of course, they relished all the vegetarian dishes.

Nonetheless, it is fair to demand that shops selling meat should display whether it is halal or jhatka. India is one of the world’s largest meat exporters. Almost all those who own the meat-processing industries are non-Muslim. 

The call for ban on sale of meat during Navaratri does not affect them. I had an occasion to visit a large meat-processing plant. It was owned by a Hindu whose son made every Indian proud. I noticed that everything from slaughtering to skinning to  cutting and weighing and packaging was mechanised. The tins were sealed and they had the halal stamp on them. Were any of the meat-processing units closed during the Navaratri days? 

Which is India’s largest poultry exporter? It is the Venkateshwara Hatcheries. Once I visited their farm at Manduvala, near Dehradun, and was stunned by the enormity of their operation. 

I felt pity for the chicks which are not allowed to move. They can just grow upwards and sidewards. They can’t even walk, forget running and flying to some extent like the local breed. Small wonder that the Manager of the farm — a Malayali — stopped eating chicken!

Nor does the government consider the foreign exchange received through sale of meat and meat products ‘haram’, which is the opposite of the word ‘halal’. 

The meat exported from India clearly mentions whether it is halal or jhatka. During the pre-independence days, separate tents existed for halal and jhatka meat eaters at the all-India Congress party sessions. Some Congress leaders brought their own food from home in order not to dine with people whose caste identities were not known.

I learnt this from the biographies of some Congress leaders like KP Kesava Menon. I thought those days were over with the end of the 20th century and the second millennium. 

We claim to have the largest pool of scientists in the world but before we send a satellite into space or try a new rocket system, we send parts of them for a special puja. 

We bought the latest jet fighter from France but it made its maiden flight to India only after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh tied a consecrated green chilli on a protruding object near the cockpit. 

We claim to be a secular country where whatever the Hindu right-wingers say is now the law. We celebrate when a person of Indian origin becomes vice-president in the USA but we won’t take action against those who demand that Muslim mango traders be boycotted. What a fall!

ajphilip@gmail.com