Harsh Mander: The assault of four Muslims and the two sides of India’s meat economy

At the end of another harrowing journey of the Karwan e Mohabbat to meet four men lynched by a mob in Aligarh on May 24, I return with only one great solace. That they are alive.

Savagely injured, traumatised, terrified. But alive.

Except for this outcome, their story is the same as ones I have heard too many times during at least a hundred journeys of the Karwan e Mohabbat to the homes of people lynched. The account of lynching that recurs in a loop is of young men meting out numbing violence on petrified unarmed men. Of their ferocity powered by the visceral hate of those who lead the land. Of cynical extortion. Of a complicit police force. Of the acquiescing onlooker.

The four lynched men – Aqil, Arbaaz, Aqeel and Nadeem – were all in their 30s or early 40s. They were of the Qureshi clan, the caste of Indian Muslims whose traditional occupation for centuries has been the slaughter of animals for meat. The killing of cows is of course banned by law, but buffalo meat is licit in Uttar Pradesh.

Before the Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party government came to power, butchers were licenced to slaughter buffaloes in their abattoirs. This was an honest trade...

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