Modi’s Push for a Hindu Revival Imperils India’s Meat Industry<br />Three years into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s term, the two agendas<br />that were woven together in his 2014 campaign — economic development and Hindu cultural revival — are becoming more difficult to reconcile, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, which was India’s top meat-producing state.<br />In March, when the governing Bharatiya Janata Party named a far-right Hindu cleric, Yogi Adityanath, as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, among his campaign<br />promises was to shut down "illegal" slaughterhouses, a simple enough task in a country with dozens of overlapping laws governing the handling of meat.<br />Membership in the far-right vigilante organization founded by Mr. Adityanath, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, has expanded rapidly in the western part<br />of the state, with the organization adding 2,000 new members in the past two months, said Anoop Rastogi, who leads its Meerut chapter.<br />By SUHASINI RAJ and ELLEN BARRYJUNE 5, 2017<br />MEERUT, India — When Uttar Pradesh’s state government began a crackdown on unlicensed slaughterhouses<br />in March, Sanjay Chaturvedi, a local veterinary inspector, celebrated.<br />"Instead of using state machinery to shut down the industry in a roundabout way, why not shut it down openly?"<br />Far-right Hindu groups have long opposed the slaughter of cows, which are considered sacred in Hinduism.<br />Of the 10 slaughterhouses and meat-processing factories operating in March on the stretch of road he patrols in Meerut,<br />seven have shut down, putting much of the local population — 10,000 people, by his estimate — out of work.
