Hindu nationalist’s BJP targets Muslim meat traders in Uttar Pradesh

Read original article by Maya Prabhu on Al-Jazeera or read some of the key points below;

1. “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).”
2. “In Hindu parts of town, locals seem reticent about the slaughterhouse ban, maybe because it isn’t their issue”
3. “The government insists that only illegal abattoirs have been affected by their policy: the slaughterhouse shut-down, they say, is representative of a vigorous commitment to law and order.”
4. “Speaking from his office in the state capital Lucknow, Maulana Khalid Rasheed, imam of the famous Eidgah Aishbagh mosque, says: “It is not the fault of the people employed in the sector, but of the successive governments [of UP] that have failed to properly regulate the industry.”
5. “Ramesh Dixit, a political analyst and former professor of politics at Lucknow University, tells Al Jazeera: “The local [meat] trader is Muslim, and he’s being targeted.”
6. “It’s big business, says Dixit, and the government would rather see it in the hands of corporate enterprise. “The idea of government is to push these Muslims out of business; they want to make Muslims jobless. That is their design. That is why they want to victimise them, and terrorise them – all in the name of cows.”

Watch KJ’s video article of the story below;

https://youtu.be/54JUlWNSL-c