India’s battle over buffalo meat
May 16, 2017
Muslim meat traders say they are being targeted as the Hindu nationalist BJP closes slaughterhouses in Uttar Pradesh.
Meerut, India – On a midweek afternoon in Meerut’s centuries-old Gudri Bazar, a buffalo meat trader called Gufran Farooq displays the blade of a cleaver against his palm. There are no bloodstains, he points out: the knife is far too clean. So is the marble counter-top, the kheema (meat) grinder, and the S-shaped hooks hanging from the bar above.
“The situation is serious,” he says. “Everything in my life has come to a standstill.” He nods towards the lane, which lies strangely quiet between the shuttered shopfronts. “The stray dogs are getting thin.”
For more than six weeks, no buffalo meat has been bought or sold in Meerut’s markets. Across Uttar Pradesh (UP), northern India’s fractious behemoth of a state, slaughterhouses have been closed down by a new government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
