Cow Vigilantes Raided Muslim Homes, Lynched A Man & Tortured A Minor
– Article 14, 2024
India Emerges as Second Largest Beef Exporter in the World
– The Wire, 2024
In India today, the cow is no longer merely a plough animal or a religious symbol. The cow has become a political weapon. Under the guise of cow protection, lynchings and hate crimes have been targeting Muslims and Dalits. From 16-year-old Junaid stabbed to death in a train over the ‘suspicion’ of being a ‘beef-eater’, to elderly men beaten by mobs, such acts have become routine in the age of Hindutva. Across India, self-styled cow vigilantes operate with impunity, stopping cattle trucks, harassing drivers, and often demanding (not always) ‘protection money’. Those who resist are frequently assaulted or killed.
These lynch mobs are not just driven by misplaced religious zeal; they operate as extortionist gangs, mostly working closely with police and local BJP-RSS goons. Violence in the name of gaumata has been transformed into a low-cost, high-reward political racket, often protected by state machinery. The targets, almost always working-class Muslims or Dalits, are not just victims of communal hate, they are victims of a political economy that thrives on polarization and fear.
Karnataka, especially under its previous BJP government, witnessed a sharp rise in such cow vigilantism. The state enacted harsh anti-slaughter laws, granting sweeping powers to police and vigilante groups. The Congress, which came to power in 2023 promising to repeal the anti-slaughter legislation, seems unwilling to act. Their inaction has upheld the BJP’s saffron policies, revealing a deeper alignment when it comes to preserving Hindutva-oriented ‘cultural’ laws. However, in a rare twist, villagers in Belagavi district took matters into their own hands when a group of Sri Rama Sene activists attempted to harass a cattle transporter. The locals tied the vigilantes to a tree and thrashed them.
While this cow vigilantism grows, India is quietly becoming one of the top beef (bovine and water buffalo meat) exporters in the world. In 2024, India ranked as the second-largest exporter of beef globally. In 2023-24 alone the sale of over a million tonnes of buffalo meat (carabeef), earned over $3.74 billion (₹31,000+ crore) from buffalo meat exports. This is not the work of underground traders. It is an organised industry backed by government regulation, foreign demand, and large meat-processing units. A United States Department of Agriculture report said slaughter-ready bovine and water buffalo were reaching 41.41 million head in 2025, up from 40.96 million head in 2024.
This is the core contradiction: on one hand, Muslims and Dalits are lynched on suspicion of eating or transporting beef; on the other, the beef export industry is dominated by Hindu or Jain-owned firms. Many of them are closely connected to the BJP. The state uses the cow as a tool of communal polarization while facilitating large-scale meat exports for profit. The so-called protectors of the cow at home are partners in its consumption abroad, so long as there is money to be made.
This is not hypocrisy. It is the calculated logic of the Hindutva profit-making machinery. Cow protection laws are not about animal welfare or religious devotion; they are about control. They are used to criminalize Muslim livelihoods, to ‘discipline’ the working class, and to sustain a network of extortion by right-wing vigilantes. Meanwhile, the real profits of the cattle economy flow quietly upward, to corporate exporters and business elites with the right connections and the right caste.
Even the very idea that beef consumption is ‘unholy’ is a Brahminical imposition, one that erases the immense diversity of India’s food culture. Historically, beef has been a staple for many Adivasi, Dalit, Bahujan, Muslim, and even pre-Buddha Brahmin communities. It used to be cheap, protein-rich, and accessible. In a country where most of the marginalized population suffers from chronic malnourishment and anemia, this attack is not only cultural. The restriction or banning of beef has robbed millions of their only affordable source of meat. Today, even where beef is legally available, prices are high, and comes with a threat of being lynched.
The consequences of cow vigilantism have spilled across state borders too. Farmers from Bihar, Rajasthan, and other states who traditionally purchased cattle from Haryana and Punjab are now increasingly hesitant. The fear of attacks by vigilante mobs, especially when transporting animals through BJP states like Uttar Pradesh, has made interstate cattle trade a risky affair. This disruption has directly impacted agricultural activity, leaving many small farmers without the livestock necessary for ploughing and dairy, and resulting in significant economic losses.
We must confront this brutal contradiction head-on, and expose the double-faced politics that sacralize the cow for the poor and weaponize it against the oppressed, while turning it into export meat for the market. What is holy here is not the cow, but the profit. What is protected is not religion, but class and caste. The fight against cow vigilantism is not just a fight against hate; it is a fight against a reactionary, casteist, and capitalist structure that hides behind saffron flags and bleeds both people and animals for its gains.
