India deploys 30,000 troops along BD border to stop cattle smuggling

India, home to some 300 million cattle, has deployed 30,000 Border Security Force (BSF) personnel along Bangladesh border to stop cattle smuggling. The BSF troops are now guarding the border this year as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led government wants to stop cattle from crossing illegally into Bangladesh. Since the BJP-led coalition assumed office in June last year after winning the national elections in May, 2014, the rhetoric on cow protection and the beef ban has increased. Majority leaders and activists of all tiers of BJP, which is closely linked to the Hindu revivalist RSS, wants to save cow that they regard as ‘sacred animal’. The BJP-led alliance has given the troops guarding India's eastern borders a new mandate – stop cows from crossing illegally into the Muslim-majority neighbour. According to Indian media reports, almost every night, troops armed with bamboo sticks and ropes wade through jute and paddy fields and swim across ponds to chase cattle, and smugglers, headed for markets in Bangladesh. Days after advocating a nationwide ban on cow slaughter, Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday asked BSF jawans deployed along the Indo-Bangla border to put a complete halt to smuggling of cattle to Bangladesh so that people there give up eating beef. One Indian newspaper reports quoted the minister as saying; "I am told prices of beef in Bangladesh have gone up by 30 per cent recently due to heightened vigil by BSF against cattle smuggling.
"You further intensify your vigil so that the cattle smuggling stops completely and prices of beef in Bangladesh escalates 70 to 80 per cent more so that people of Bangladesh give up eating beef," he said while addressing jawans of BSF at a border outpost. According to official statistics, about 1.7 million cattle heads were smuggled to Bangladesh from India in 2014. The Indian home minister at that time also stressed that India would like to further strengthen relations with Bangladesh. Newspaper reports, quoting RSS spokesman in India’s West Bengal state, Jishnu Basu, said, "Killing or smuggling a cow is equivalent to raping a Hindu girl or destroying a Hindu temple."
The crackdown on cow smuggling is one of the clearest signs yet of how Indian policies, increasingly influenced by Hindu nationalist ideology, are having an economic impact on neighbouring countries as well as the sizeable Muslim minority at home. Newspaper reports said about 2 million head of cattle are smuggled into Bangladesh annually. The $600 million-a-year trade has flourished over the past four decades and is considered legal by Dhaka.
But since Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)’s cose ally BJP came to power in India over a year ago, the rhetoric on cow protection has increased and the cow smuggling dicreased. The government also adopted stricker laws to protect cow. Critics say tougher anti-beef laws discriminate against Muslims, Christians and lower-caste Hindus who rely on the cheap meat for protein. Butchers and cattle traders, many of them Muslim, say the push threatens thousands of jobs, according to a news agency.