Opinion | Cow Politics In India Needs One Honest Law, Muslim Clergy Wants Closure

A question that should have been settled by a national policy is instead repeatedly reignited by state notifications, festival timing, vigilante anxieties, communal signalling.

The renewed controversy over cow slaughter in West Bengal in the run-up to Eid-al-Adha has once again revealed a paradox in the country’s raging beef debate. For some, the issue is not merely whether a particular animal may be slaughtered, or whether a particular community may exercise a customary practice, but a deeper issue and a combustible social question to remain suspended between law, faith, economics, and political theatre.

The newly formed Suvendu Adhikari-led government in West Bengal has now moved to strictly enforce the West Bengal Animal Slaughter Control Act, 1950, making a “fit-for-slaughter" certificate mandatory for bovines and prohibiting public slaughter even where certification is obtained. The notice, issued ahead of Eid-al-Adha, requires civic and veterinary clearance and applies to bulls, bullocks, cows, calves, and buffaloes. The Calcutta High Court has refused to stay the government’s notification, observing that cow sacrifice is not an essential religious practice in Islam and that the notification was implementing earlier court directions.

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On paper, this is a matter of enforcement. In practice, it has become another opportunity for polarisation. The Bengal government says the move is aimed at curbing illegal slaughter and cattle smuggling, not targeting a community. Opposition voices have called it an interference in minority practices. Dairy farmers, including many Hindus, have warned of economic distress because the Eid cattle trade is part of the rural livestock cycle in several districts.

This is precisely the problem. A question that should have been settled by a clear national policy is instead repeatedly reignited by state notifications, festival timing, vigilante anxieties, and competitive communal signalling.

The Muslim position isn’t new.

The most overlooked truth in this debate is that many Muslim clerics and community leaders have, for decades, supported a national resolution on cow slaughter. In 2019, writing for the Observer Research Foundation, I and my illustrious co-author had argued that........

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