On December 18, 2024, a scuffle broke out between beef traders and a cow vigilante group in Margao’s South Goa Planning and Development Authority (SGPDA) market. A self-claimed cow protection group stopped vehicles unloading beef. The group claimed that the “rules” of “selling beef in Goa” were not followed in this case. This escalated into a fight in which three vendors and two members of the cow protection group were injured. FIRs were registered against both groups at the Fatorda police station.
This incident forced Goa’s beef traders to go on strike. Ahead of Christmas, the absence of this meat on the dining table angered Goan Catholics the most. This also struck the tourism economy during the festive season in one of India’s top holiday destinations. But viewed from a longer lens, this latest controversy over beef appears to be part of a continuous attempt to communalise Goa.
Banning beef has been the socio-political agenda for BJP (which has led Goa for three consecutive terms since 2012) and for its mother organisation, the RSS, all over India. But in Goa, the BJP and the RSS have altered their agenda. Here, the BJP government has allowed beef to be procured only from the Goa Meat Complex abattoir. Chief Minister of the State, Pramod Sawant, has taken a stand that this is for the “hygiene” of the gourmands. Goa’s daily consumption of beef is around 25 tons. Out of this, 10 tons of beef comes from neighbouring States, mainly Karnataka.
‘Extortion gangs’
Margao’s scuffle happened as the cow protection group objected to one of the trucks that brought the beef from Karnataka. Shaikh Shabbir Bepari, vice president of All Goa Beef Vendors Association said, “Cow protection groups are extortion gangs. They have nothing to do with either cows or religion. They demand money from us all the time.” Shabbir added that if the cow vigilante had any objection to the meat they brought in, they should go to police.
Senior advocate and activist Cleofato Almeida Coutinho called this disruption “economic terrorism against minorities and especially against Muslims. The festival season is the time when these communities earn some money. These so-called cow vigilantes purposely disrupt business during the season.”
But a member of a cow protection group from South Goa, Bhagwan Redkar, denied the charges. He said, “We did not attack the meat traders. There were doubts about the beef and we had come to just check.”He added that all the charges of cow protection groups asking for extortion money are false. “Let the police investigate these charges,” said Redkar.
This story was originally published in frontline.thehindu.com. Read the full story here.
