Cow Slaughter Laws and Anti-minority Violence in the States of India

• In Event: Religion and Political Violence

Abstract

A majority of Indian states prohibit the slaughter of cattle, the strictest laws being found in Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. Cow protection laws have also become harsher in India over time. In this paper, I theorize that as cow slaughter laws increase in severity, they encourage attacks upon beef-consuming and beef-producing minorities by creating a culture of vigilantism in the states where such laws exist. This article empirically tests this proposition, along with alternative hypotheses, using a time-series, negative binomial analysis of the Indian states from 2000 to 2020. The analysis finds that states that enforce anti-conversion laws are indeed statistically more likely to give rise to violent persecution against minorities than states where such laws do not exist. The statistical analysis is supplemented with a brief case study of Gujarat. The findings of this paper carry potentially important ramifications for our understanding of the state of democracy in India.

Author

• Nilay Saiya, Nanyang Technological University