NEW DELHI: With the going getting increasingly tough in the wake of the open squabbling in the BJP and poor response to the much hyped Ekatmata Yatra, the Sangh Parivar has resurrected the holy cow once again.

When the BJP top brass began derations at the three-day plenary session in Bombay over the weekend, another conclave of the same duration simultaneously gets underway in Delhi.

difference is while Advani and his party colleagues are going to wreck their brains to reckon with the issues of dissidence  Swadeshi and Enron, Ashok Singhal and his saffron bores hood are set to rediscover the cow and its potential to sustain an agitation.

Indeed the VHP has done its horned work well, it has produced an audio cassette propagating the importance of the cow and a perceived threat the animal is coming under.

The VHP propaganda literature for this purpose has stressed the religious, social, economic and environmental dimensions of the government’s beef export policy. Attic conference, scientific and expert views are going to be presented on the need for cow preservation. ‘What, however, has remained unstated is the cool calculation that months before the elections when nothing much is going for it, the Sangh Parivar might get a much needed boast by turning cow slaughter in to an emotive issue.

The Sangh strategists have recalled the “favorable impact’ of the 1966 ant slaughter agitation on the Jan Sangh’s electoral performance next year particularly in Uttar Pradesh. The Bharatiya Govansh Rakshan Samvardlian Parishad a VHP wing which rs organizing the cow conference, has announced its plan to spear head an ‘aggressive’ agitation from January to end cow slaughter and close down the mechanized abattoirs in the country. Typical of any RSS family show tie allied organizations have decided to throw their weight behind the cow protection campaign, The Swadeshi Jagran Manch, the RSS wing which shot into prominence following its Enron campaign, is beginning a padyatra from Sevagram near Nagpur on November 1510 Al Kaveer in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh.

Article extracted from this publication >> November 17, 1995