Picture this scene out of Midnight Express, police surrounding a nervous man late at night on an airport tarmac. Pulling away his shirt, they find taped to his body . . . steaks. A beef mule. That could be the scene in Karnataka, India where the government is about to make the possession of beef a criminal offense. Presumably, possession of beef with intent to distribute will receive a higher sentence.
The Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill 2010, if enacted, will not only ban the slaughter of cattle, including “a cow, calf, bull, bullock, buffalo” but also criminalize beef possession. Defense counsel will be warning clients that they will go from the Porterhouse to the Big House if they fail to comply.
The debate was reportedly quite lively with Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa discussing the proven medicinal benefits of cow urine. Another predicted that, unless cows were given the added protection, the province could face a milk deficit and called on his colleagues to pass the bill for the children. (It appears that children in other countries like the United States are milk deprived).
While I understand the Hindu objections to eating beef, they may be playing with fire:
Source: Tehelka
Berliner: I am naive. I didn’t know there were already laws like this, and it never would have occured to me that they would be allowed. I underestimate the power of Hinduutva, I think. There seem to have been plenty of lynchings of untouchables associated with all this, the usual ultra-violent thuggery that one sees when the BJP et al get involved.
I think the Indian constitution is treated just as shabbily as the American constitution, but I’m no expert.
There is no cow level
@Yissil: Is this new ban in the state of Karnataka substantially different from the bans in, for example, Gujarat and in the Territory of Delhi, which, I think, hadn’t been successfully challenged on the federal level (but the ban in Gujarat was IIRC suspended for a few years due to a ruling of the state constitutional court)?
Does the Indian jurisprudence now view the prohibition of un-Hindi practices (beef and, in Gujarat, alcohol) as undeniably unconstitutional? Could you give a summery of the various anti-beef laws and their fates in the federal and state courts?
“I am he who is two all beef patties! You shall have no other McGod before me!”
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The above is intended as satire and in no way should taken as a serious religious, medical and/or dietary proposition.
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