It is difficult to say who is influencing whom. But there is a subtle difference in the anti-beef campaign in India and Myanmar. In India, the government is seeking to ban consumption of beef and cow slaughter in many states. The BJP led government at the Centre is considered sympathetic to the move and some ministers like Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma has come out, all guns blazing, in support.
But in Myanmar, the campaign is led by a powerful Buddhist nationalist group Ma Ba Tha (or Association for the Protection of Race and Religion). For those not aware, this is a saffron organisation of die hard Buddhist monks who believe Islam is threatening Myanmar’s Buddhism. The Ma Ba Tha campaign prevented the Thein Sein government from granting temporary identity cards to a majority of Muslim Rohingyas in the Rakhine province, as a result of which many of them, including former legislators, lost voting rights.
Given a chance, those leading the Ma Ba Tha would like all Rohingyas pushed into the Bay of Bengal or in neighbouring countries like Bangladesh. The government of President U Thein Sein, strongly backed by the all-powerful Burmese army, is quietly boosting groups such as Ma Ba Tha to counter the electoral challenge from Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).
Ever since the NLD swept the 2012 by-elections, winning 43 of the 44 seats on contest, Thein Sein and his USDP has lived in fear of a repeat of the 1990 national poll verdict. That election was swept by the NLD which netted more than 80 per cent of the seats.
While Thein Sein is pushing for a national ceasefire with armed ethnic rebel groups that may boost over ground ethnic groups playing on regional sentiments and slice into the NLD kitty by winning most seats in minority regions, it is also encouraging the likes of Ma Ba Tha to trump the NLD in Burman dominated regions. No wonder, Ma Ba Tha’s outspoken spokesperson Bhadamta Vimala have recently asked his countrymen to back the government and not the opposition on 'all political issues'.
Apparently, this is to garner support and strengthen the government's hands in implementing four bills for “Protection of Race and Religion” which have been criticised by some as an assault on women’s rights. Ma Ba Tha has been a major proponent of the bills, saying the legislation is necessary to preserve Burma’s majority-Buddhist character. But NLD sees the ruling USDP’s connections with the Ma Ba Tha as ‘symbiotic’ – they are not surprised by the active government sponsorship to prop up groups playing on majoritarian xenophobia as a political tool to undermine the politics of democracy and liberalism.
It is in this backdrop that the Ma Ba Tha started to forcibly close down slaughterhouses which has hit many of these Muslim-owned businesses in Ayeyarwady Region. They are drawing inspiration from an anti-beef campaign led by 20th century influential monk Ledi Sayardaw who came up with the beef boycott movement as part of an anti-colonial struggle, arguing that the British were destroying Burma's cattle.
Hindu influence
Dutch anthropologist Gustaaf Houtman says India’s Hindu practice of venerating bovines also influenced Myanmar Buddhist traditions of respecting cows. In 1961, Prime Minister U Nu, a devout Buddhist, enacted a law that largely banned the slaughter of cattle. The law, which was later abolished when the military staged a coup in 1962, required Muslims to apply for exemption licenses to slaug-hter cattle on religious holidays.
Than Than Nu, U Nu’s daughter, told a local TV channel recently that her father never intended to discriminate against Muslims but banned killing cattle out of his own convictions. A vegetarian now, Than Than Nu says Myanmar's agrarian society depends 'so much on cattle' to argue against slaughtering them for food.
Ma Ba Tha’s anti-beef campaign is spreading across the Ayeyarwady Region just ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid. Unlike in India, the government is not stepping in with a legal ban. It is leaving it to the saffron stormtroopers to enforce it. Some analysts say the Burmese military intelligence used a lot of its hush funds to prop up this group up in the initial stages.
In a way, we are familiar with Pakistan’s ISI boosting the jihadi groups. Their Rohingya bashing was part of a campaign to generate majoritarian hysteria of Islamic domination in a country where Muslims are barely 5 per cent of the population.
Does this not resemble the kind of paranoia generated in India about being swamped by Muslims, all this hype about them having large families and breed more children – the kind of scare that grows out of misterpretation of the Census data!
While groups like Ma Ba Tha will try to deliver by generating anti-minority campaigns and blame the NLD for being 'soft' on them to help the military-backed USDP win polls, those pushing for the beef ban will surely distract voters from the many failures of the saffron brigade ahead of key poll battles like the one in Bihar or later in Bengal and Assam.
(The writer, an author, is consulting editor with Myanmar’s Mizzima News)