Church leaders have joined political parties and the Muslim community to condemn a call by Hindu groups to boycott halal meat during the traditional New Year celebrations in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. The state celebrated the Ugadi festival followed by Hosa tadukua, which is supposed to be a day of non-vegetarian feasting, on April 2-3. The call to boycott halal meat came close on the heels of Karnataka High Court’s ban on wearing the hijab in educational institutions and a ban on Muslim traders at Hindu temple premises and fairs.
Hindu groups actively campaigned last week to pursue majority Hindus to stop buying halal meat, saying that “as per Islam, halal meat is first offered to Allah, and the same cannot be offered to Hindu gods.”
Local media reported that Hindu activists assaulted a chicken shop owner and attacked a hotelier, leading to a few arrests, but their call went largely unheeded by the state’s Hindus.
Father Faustine Lucas Lobo, spokes-person of the Karnataka Catholic Bishops’ Council, said the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state had done nothing to address unemployment or arrest rising fuel prices and inflation and so wanted to polarize the electorate on religious lines. “Why only target a particular group considered as second-class citizens by the ruling governments in New Delhi and Karnataka?”
“The state is going to have its assembly elections next year, so the government is trying to convince Hindu voters that it is the savior of their religion and culture,” he told. “It is a well-planned tactic to corner minorities who they think do not vote for a Hindu party.”
He said that “it all started with the hijab controversy and now halal meat, then there were other issues like love jihad. It is all game plan for the forthcoming election, which it does not want to lose.”