At the end of March, 2017, the state of Gujarat in India
extended the punishment for slaughtering cows from seven years in prison to
life-imprisonment. The penalty for transporting beef was also raised to a
maximum of 10 years, from three. The severity hinges on religious assumptions presumed
to be beyond questioning or reproof.
Vijay Rupani, the chief minister of Gujarat, provided an
explanation. “To Indians, the cow symbolizes all other creatures. The cow is a
symbol of the earth, the nourisher, the ever-giving, undemanding provider.”[1]
So the cow stands for not only all animals that live on Earth, but also the
planet itself. To kill such a symbol is tantamount, I suppose, to killing that
which nourishes us. Of course, were every cow alive killed, the other creatures
of the world would go on, as would our planet, so the emphasis here is on a symbol. Interestingly, the viability
of the symbol is thought to save “the
whole world from both moral and spiritual degradation,” Rupani added.[2]
From a rational standpoint, the claim that people would lead immoral lives in
India were cows not protected suffers a lack of causation. Empirically
speaking, whether people are ethical, such as at Enron, Authur Andersen, Wells
Fargo, and Uber, bears little or no relation to whether one food-source is used
or protected.
A person who slaughters a cow for food could spend the rest
of his or her life in prison. Prime facie, the punishment can readily seem so
excessive that a disrespect for human life may be implied. Even adding in the
matter of a living symbol does not alter this point. In fact, the implication
is that a symbol is more important than the quality of a human life. For a
symbol to take on a life of its own at the expense of actual human beings
suggests that the very notion of a symbol has been misunderstood. The mistaken
assumption of causality between the protection of cows and the lack of moral
and spiritual degradation can be taken as an indication that the very notion of
symbol has been warped.
If I am correct in my assertion that the religious and moral
assumptions are tenuous (i.e., too extreme), then this case illustrates the
danger of superimposing law on top of religious belief. The danger springs from
the vulnerability of the latter to a false sense of infallibility. Even the
perception of excess can be blocked, and the excessiveness in the law is
similarly not caught. Put more generally, the human mind is vulnerable when it
comes to religious assumptions, and this fault-line can run through public
policy resulting in much harm. It is precisely the allowance for radically
disproportioned harm to other human beings that should be the red flag
indicating that something has gone very wrong. That this criterion is not the criterion is, I submit, the fault of
us all.
1. Nida Najar and Suhasini Raj, “Indian
State Expands Penalty for Killing a Cow to Life in Prison,” The New York Times, March 31 2017.
2. Ibid.
