Sant Gopal Das takes on the Haryana government for failing to protect cows and to keep its promise to provide grazing land.
THE BHARATIYA JANATA PARTY (BJP) IN Haryana has been extremely enthusiastic in making promises on matters bovine. One of the commitments the party made in the run-up to the Assembly elections in 2016 was about developing grazing lands with government grants in order to protect cows. Other promises included a world-class cow research centre and a milk revolution in the State. The punishment for cow slaughter would be the same as that for manslaughter, said BJP State president Ram Vilas Sharma while releasing the party’s manifesto.
One animal activist-cum-conservationist from the State is determined to remind the BJP repeatedly of its promises. For over four years, Gopal Das from Panipat, who has the prefix “sant” or saint to his name, has been waging a relentless campaign to restore common grazing lands, which, he said, was the most non-violent way of protecting the bovine species. Since June 2, he has been on a hunger strike protesting against the BJP’s apathy towards cow protection. He has been arrested time and again and shifted to hospitals in and outside the State.
But on August 3, he and his supporters did the unthinkable: they placed a dead bull at the venue of a meeting in Rohtak that was being chaired by BJP national president Amit Shah. Incarcerated since then, Gopal Das seems unflappable. “That was the only way I could highlight the problem of stray animals that were falling prey to road accidents. They had me arrested,” he told Frontline from his bed at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi.
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