Sir — Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks tough and cow vigilantes act tough. The stern and ‘statesman-like’ prime ministerial warning went unheeded, when, within a couple of hours, another man was lynched the same way. The leader who spoke of “pink revolution” appears to be short of the moral authority to rein in the cowards. His invocation of Mahatma Gandhi and Acharya Vinoba Bhave at the Sabarmati Ashram has not carried much conviction. The dichotomy cannot be starker — the Prime Minister is unable to convince cow vigilantes of the wrongness of what they do or instill a fear of the law in them or dissuade them from lynching. He must not let the country slide into the perils of mobocracy.
It is said, though not established, that cow vigilantes have an ideological connect with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). They either receive signals from it or they are egged on by them to commit the barbaric killings. Cow protection has become an excuse to target people of a certain faith against whom the Hindutva zealots are prejudiced. The source of the problem resides in the fact that the BJP is burdened by an ideology that does not allow room to accommodate others.