Gujarat Dalit activist sends 25 kg plastic "responsible" for cow slaughter to chief minister, insists, punish the guilty

Plastic from cow womb for Gujarat CM on display
at Surendranagar district collector's office

By Our Representative
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."

Memorandum and plastic being handed over
to district collector

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.
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.

Comments

India’s climate tech ecosystem in dire need of both early, growth-stage funding: Report

By Our Representative India’s climate tech ecosystem, which boasts over 800 startups, is in dire need of both early and growth-stage funding to leverage its full potential, according to a report by Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (Ventures) and MUFG Bank , Japan. Despite a robust initial funding landscape, with approximately two-thirds of climate tech startups receiving seed capital, growth-stage investments remain critically lacking.

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded reaction in the form of a link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah* The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual.

UNEP report on how climate crisis is impacting displacement, global conflicts, declining health

By Shankar Sharma* A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), titled "A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing," warrants urgent attention from our country’s developmental perspective. The findings, detailed in the report, should be a source of significant concern not only globally but especially for our nation, which has a vast population and limited natural resources.

Industries fueling climate crisis draining public funds in Global South: ActionAid

By Our Representative A new ActionAid report has exposed the alarming financial drain on the Global South, as climate-wrecking industries like fossil fuels and industrial agriculture receive over US$600 billion annually in public subsidies. The report, "How the Finance Flows: Corporate Capture of Public Finance Fuelling the Climate Crisis in the Global South", reveals that an average of US$677 billion in public finance is directed toward climate-destructive sectors each year, depriving crucial social sectors such as education.

75 years of revolution: How China moved away from ideals of struggle for human liberation

By Harsh Thakor* On October 1st, we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, a pivotal moment in the struggle for human liberation. From 1949 to 1976, China achieved remarkable social equality and revolutionary democracy, outpacing other developing nations in literacy, health care, agricultural output, and industrial production.

Will Bangladesh go Egypt way, where military ruler is in power for a decade?

By Vijay Prashad* The day after former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left Dhaka, I was on the phone with a friend who had spent some time on the streets that day. He told me about the atmosphere in Dhaka, how people with little previous political experience had joined in the large protests alongside the students—who seemed to be leading the agitation. I asked him about the political infrastructure of the students and about their political orientation. He said that the protests seemed well-organized and that the students had escalated their demands from an end to certain quotas for government jobs to an end to the government of Sheikh Hasina. Even hours before she left the country, it did not seem that this would be the outcome.

Overcoming extreme backwardness 75 yrs ago, China has 'risen to 2nd largest economy of the world'

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* On October 1, 1949, the revolutionary people of China established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) by defeating Western imperialism, Japanese colonialism, and Chinese feudal warlords who unleashed a ‘white terror’ on Chinese people, communists and revolutionaries.

Search This Blog