MUMBAI, India -- At one of Asia's largest slaughterhouses, there are more police officers than cattle. The stalls where butchers clean and quarter chicken, sheep, goats and pigs buzz with activity, while the section reserved for bulls sits barren.
A nearly month-old ban on the slaughter of cattle in one of India's largest states has put thousands out of work and created new problems for struggling farmers as conservative Hindu politicians act to protect the bovine, regarded in their religion as sacred.
At the sprawling Deonar slaughterhouse in the suburbs of the commercial hub of Mumbai, also known as Bombay, in Maharashtra state, 2,000 cattle traders, transporters, butchers and others have lost their jobs. Across the state, an estimated 1 million people who work in the cattle industry could see their livelihoods threatened in a year in which a drought has already devastated farming.
Shakeel Ameen Qureshi, who works as a cattle trader along with his three brothers, said he hasn't made a penny in the three weeks since the law went into effect. He used to earn about $15 per day.
"My wife and kids ask when I return home whether I earned something. What am I supposed to answer?" said Qureshi, who was among more than 1,000 people protesting the ban during a sweltering afternoon in the heart of Mumbai last week.
"We can't do anything else to earn a living."
Across India, the rise of conservative Hindu politicians, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, has revived a long-standing battle over the status of the cow in this multifaith nation of 1.2 billion people.
To Hindus, who make up nearly 80 percent of the population, the cow is sacred, and many Hindus eschew eating beef or any other animal products. Yet India also has the world's second-largest beef-export industry, driven largely by the beef substitute buffalo, which has no religious value.
Many minority Muslims and Christians, as well as low-caste Hindus, consume bull meat because it is a cheap source of protein, nearly half the price of chicken or lamb.
Maharashtra, India's second-most populous state, banned the slaughter of cows four decades ago, but the new Bharatiya Janata Party-led state government has extended the prohibition to bulls and steers. Buffalo -- the major source of the "beef" advertised on restaurant menus in Mumbai -- are exempt from the ban.
The state's chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, said the new law "is not driven by any hidden or communal agenda" and argued that farmers would be able to make use of the animals.
A cow or steer "can become an alternative means of livelihood for a farmer," Fadnavis told the Indian Express newspaper.
Critics of the law say it hurts farmers who cannot sell their aged cattle for slaughter.
"Now nobody will buy the animal, and the farmer will have to look after it even when it becomes useless. It will add to his expenses," said Vijay Dalvi, a labor activist who helped organize the Mumbai rally.
"This is clearly a majoritarian decision taken by the state."
In Maharashtra, possessing beef is punishable by a fine of $160 and up to five years in prison. Critics noted that that was longer than the maximum three-year prison term India allows for a sexual harassment conviction.
The northern state of Haryana, also Bharatiya Janata Party-led, followed suit with even stricter laws, making cow or bull slaughter punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of more than $1,600.
Rightist Hindu groups that back Modi say they want to extend the ban nationwide.
Beef remains legal in a small number of Indian states, including coastal Goa, which is also led by the Bharatiya Janata Party but has a large Roman Catholic population.
"In Goa [religious] minorities are 39 [percent to] 40 percent. If it is part of their food habits, why and how can we ban it?" the state's chief minister, Laxmikant Parsekar, said.
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board, an advocacy group, cited the beef ban as one reason Muslims are "increasingly feeling insecure" since Modi rose to power in May.
The ban in Maharashtra has disproportionately affected Muslims, who are active in the cattle slaughter industry. Sheik Ismail Qureshi, a butcher, worried that he would soon run through his savings, and school tuition fees for his four children are due soon.
"The school keeps telling me that the kids will be expelled or won't be allowed to appear for exams if I don't pay their fees. I don't know what am I going to do."
SundayMonday on 03/29/2015