Gujarat Dalit activist sends 25 kg plastic which 'kills' cows to CM: 'Punish the guilty'

By Rajiv Shah
Gujarat's grassroots Dalit rights activist Natubhai Parmar -- who created a flutter by dumping a tractor full of dead cows in front of Surendranagar district office in 2016 following cow vigilantes beating up Dalits belonging to the Rohit community in Una on July 11, 2016 on suspicion of cow slaughter -- has stunned the state administration yet again. Now he has sent across 25 kg of plastic recovered from the womb of a cow to Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani to tell him: Plastics are the main cause of cow slaughter.
The cow vigilantes tied up four Dalit boys on an SUV with a chain, and paraded them for about a kilometre up to a local police station, caning them up all the way. The boys were beaten up on suspicion cow slaughter, even as their plea that they were skinning a dead cow, their hereditary occupation, was ignored. After a video went viral showing the incident, protests broken out across Gujarat, with Rohits pledging they would not skin cows any more.
Parmar, an activist with Navsarjan Trust, Gujarat's biggest Dalit rights organization, took this opportunity to tell the administration that Rohits were being forced to do this caste-based occupation, of skinning cows, and would not do it any more because of repeated harassment by the administration and vigilantes, which blamed them for slaughtering cows.

The cow protection exhibition

A year ago, on May 10, 2017, Parmar led a Dalit rally in Surendranagar, highlighting that cows dead because the ate plastic. A tractor carrying tens of kilos of plastic taken out of dead cows' womb accompanied the rally, insisting, those responsible for failing to take care of cows, setting them free as stray cattle, forcing them to eat leftovers on roadsides mixed with plastic, should be held responsible for cow slaughter.
Marking the first anniversary of the rally, on Friday, Parmar organized another rally, taking a 25 kg box, plastic taken out from a dead cow after skinning the animal, to be hands over to the chief minister. The box and a memorandum addressed to the chief minister were given to the district collector, who was told, even though the government claims to revere it as a holy animal, it does not take its proper care.
He told Counterview, "I was told I wouldn't be able to hand over the plastic to the chief minister, who is visiting here for a function. So we decided to hand over this to the district collector, meant as a gift to the chief minister."

The 12-point memorandum, a copy of which he gave to Counterview, said, the main reason why cows die is because of the state policy which led to disappearance of grazing land across Gujarat. While cow sheds or panjrapols were being closed down, the existing ones do not take care of unproductive cows, hence the animal is forced to go astray, eating whatever it gets on streets, including food mixed with plastics.

Memorandum, plastic being handed over to district collector

The memorandum to the chief minister said, "The government should x-ray dead cows to find out the reason of their death. If plastic is found, the responsibility of setting the cows go astray should be fixed, and those found guilty should be tried under the the state's law which seeks to punish those slaughtering cow."
The memorandum demands taking back grazing land handed over to industrialists, setting up special fodder ration shops for cows, setting up of special veterinary hospital in each Gujarat district by operating upon live cows and taking out out plastic from their womb, a complete ban on plastics, and so on.
Parmar's move follows a unique permanent exhibition on cow protection he has organized on the road leading to Wadhvan town off Ahmedabad-Gandhidham highway. The exhibit is an installation of sorts highlighted by a cow prototype with its stomach exposed, intestines choked with plastic. At the exhibit, swathes of blood and fluid are soaked in plastic, removed by kilos from dead bovines during cow skinning, all of it hung on bamboo rods.

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