HELD SRINAGAR: Lawmakers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party tried to assault an opposition member in a state parliament Thursday over eating beef, as debate rages in India over intolerance of religious minorities. Television footage showed several Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators, who consider cows sacred, pushing and shoving Abdul Rashid, a Muslim, in the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly for holding a provocative “beef party”. “No amount of condemnation can be enough for what happened today,” opposition leader Omar Abdullah told reporters outside the assembly in Srinagar. “Trying to beat up a member, this is the first time I have ever seen something like this in any house,” Abdullah, whose party walked out of the chamber over the attack. “Do I assault everyone who eats pork or alcohol?” Rashid served beef kebabs at the “party” this week in protest against a ban on killing and eating cows in India’s only Muslim-majority state. Rashid told AFP that about 10 to 14 BJP members “just pounced on me as soon as I entered the house”, saying he had feared for his life. Footage showed legislators rounding on Rashid, trying to hit him as others held them back. Meanwhile, Indian media reported that senior UP minister Azam Khan has sought the intervention of United Nations to look into the “miseries” of minorities in India. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Khan also accused the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) of planning to convert “secular and pluralistic India” into a “majoritarian theocratic nation as Hindu Rashtra”. “Fascist forces are attempting to create a divide in the society by launching a hate campaign against Muslims and Dadri incident is an example of this,” Azam told reporters here while releasing the letter in Lucknow. On the other hand, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed for religious unity after days of growing tensions over a Muslim man’s murder by a mob for supposedly eating beef in Hindu-majority India. The Hindu nationalist premier has been under growing pressure to break his silence over the incident and defuse a row raging over a feared rising intolerance towards Muslims and other religious minorities. Without referring specifically to the attack, Modi said the nation would only prosper “when Hindus and Muslims unite and fight” against poverty instead of against each other. “The country has to stand united. Harmony, brotherhood and peace will lead us to development,” Modi said at an election rally for the upcoming polls in Bihar state in eastern India.
