On 7 November 1966, a group of Hindu protestors, led by ascetics, naga sadhus and backed by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Jana Sangh (aka Jan Sangh), approached the Indian Parliament to protest to criminalize cow slaughter. The incident resulted in a riot which ended with a death toll of 7 people and hundreds were injured. The total damage was estimated at about 1 billion rupees by city officials; numerous vehicles were destroyed, along with numerous shops.
The episode was the culmination of a long-term movement by the Hindu Right to protect the cow, a traditional symbol of reverence in Hindu society. A meeting in late 1965 involving lobbying groups, naga sadhus and many religious dharma acharyas and influential Hindu religious orders initiated a year-long program of demonstrations and picketing, culminating in the planned march to the Parliament. Jan Sangh was a participant in the march. The march attracted hundreds of thousands of people for that peaceful march outside the parliament.
The protest was targeting the key leaders of then government. The police responded with tear gas and cane clubs, but their resistance proved futile. As waves of demonstrators armed with tridents attacked the police and pelted them with stones, a policeman was stoned to death. Police were slow to respond, but at around 1:30 pm, they engaged in rifle fire and mounted a charge with lead-tipped clubs. While the charge was successful in dispersing the immediate mob, it caused fatal injuries, and having failed to succeed in breaching the Parliament gates, the mob merely scattered to attack other less-protected areas of Delhi. Houses of prominent legislators from the ruling party (Indian National Congress), including that of K. Kamaraj, were broken into. Passengers were forced out of vehicles before being set on fire, high-profile government buildings were ransacked, and random arson was indulged in.
Two weeks later, influential saints began their hunger strikes in protest; however, fissures in the front began to appear, and Gandhi chose to incorporate a Parliamentary Committee to analyze the feasibility of imposing a ban on cow slaughter. The front was consistently outvoted, the nominees eventually resigned, the committee never produced a report, and the politicians successfully shifted the focus of national politics away from the issue. The episode had significant effects on the national polity for many years. This was one of the few breachings of parliament, along with the 2001 Indian Parliament Attack.
Background
Cow slaughter and religion
The scope, extent, and status of cow slaughter in ancient India has been a subject of intense scholarly dispute.
Marvin Harris notes the Vedic literature to be contradictory, with some stanzas suggesting ritual slaughter and meat consumption, while others suggesting a taboo on meat eating; however, Hindu literature relating to cow veneration became extremely common in the first millennium A.D., and by about 1000 A.D., vegetarianism had become a well accepted Hindu tenet. D. N. Jha, Romila Thapar, Juli Gittinger et al. assert that cows were neither inviolable nor revered in the ancient times; the contemporary sacredness was a result of multiple factors including the development of Ahimsa philosophy during the Upanishad spans and increasing influence of Brahminism. There have been rebuts.
The "protection of the cow" policy has commanded huge political significance in the subcontinent in precolonial spans; the Mughal emperor Akbar had banned the killing of cows, and cow slaughter was treated as a capital offense in many Hindu and Sikh-ruled states.
Cow protection and national politics
The first organised cow protection movement was started by Kukas of Sikhism, a reformist group, during the British Raj in the late 1800s, which framed cows as a "sign of the moral quality of the state". Their ideas soon spread to Hindu reform movements, with Arya Samaj playing a tremendous role in converting this sentiment into a national movement and extensively lobbying for criminalizing cow slaughter. The first Gaurakshini sabha (cow protection council) was established in the Punjab Province in 1882. The movement often manifested as brazen Anti-Muslim riots claiming thousands of lives across the country, especially on the occasions of Islamic festivals of sacrifices. The Cow riots of 1893 were the most intense civil disturbance on the Indian subcontinent since the Indian Rebellion of 1857.