April 3: The holy cow seems not to be so holy in Kerala, where the BJP is presenting a beef-friendly face in time for the April 12 Lok Sabha by-election in Muslim-majority Malappuram.
While the state BJP had so far distanced itself from the party's anti-beef national platform as the meat is popular with large sections of Kerala society, it is now openly vouching for beef.
BJP candidate N. Sreeprakash has assured Malappuram's 65 per cent Muslim and five per cent Christian voters that he would ensure "good quality beef" if elected, although with the rider that he is personally against cow slaughter.
Sreeprakash told reporters on Saturday that he would ensure that no abattoirs are shut down in the district.
"Since it (cow slaughter and beef-eating) is within the law, I will get clean slaughterhouses for good beef," he said.
"My Muslim brothers eat only halal meat, don't they? So I will make sure that halal meat is provided by opening modern and hygienic abattoirs in Malappuram."
His comments come at a time BJP chief ministers are shutting down even legal buffalo abattoirs (Uttar Pradesh) and introducing life terms (Gujarat) or threatening the death sentence (Chhattisgarh) for cow slaughter.
However, as in Kerala, the BJP has carefully avoided taking an anti-beef stand in the Northeast, where several states have large Christian and Muslim populations and beef is a familiar part of the diet.
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi had yesterday highlighted the "hypocrisy" and taunted the BJP, saying: "In UP, cow is mummy, and in the northeastern states it's yummy."
Kerala BJP general secretary M.T. Ramesh has endorsed Sreeprakash's position saying: "We have no issues with the food habits of the people of Kerala, who by and large consume beef."
Asked about the party's aggressive stand against cow slaughter in other states, he claimed that this was so only in states where cow slaughter was banned.
"Why should we have a problem when the law permits it (in Kerala)?" he told The Telegraph. "We'll see what to do when it is banned."
Bengal, Kerala and most of the northeastern states, including BJP-ruled Assam, allow unrestricted cow slaughter in practice, unlike the rest of India.
Just 170km away from Malappuram, however, a BJP politician is campaigning for the April 9 Nanjangud and Gundlupet Assembly by-elections in Karnataka by living in a cowshed with several cows at Nanjangud.
Former state BJP minister Suresh Kumar is trying to underscore his party's reverence of the cow as "holy mother". No BJP politician in Karnataka was willing to comment on the Kerala unit's stand on beef.
Cow vigilantes had lynched even a BJP worker to death in Udupi, Karnataka, last August, accusing him of smuggling cows. Police later said the man, Praveen Poojary, 28, was only a transporter.
A year earlier, a mob had beaten 52-year-old Mohammed Akhlaque to death near Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, following unsubstantiated rumours that he had slaughtered a cow and stored its meat.
In BJP-ruled Gujarat, four Dalits who skinned dead cows for a living were publicly flogged in Una last July.
The Malappuram seat has fallen vacant following the death of Indian Union Muslim League politician E. Ahamed. Sreeprakash is locked in a triangular battle with Muslim League nominee P.K. Kunjalikutty and CPM candidate M.B. Faizal.
