ABSTRACT
Bovine politics and cow protectionism have taken centre stage in India’s political landscape under Modi. Proceeding from an analysis of the significance of bovines and bovine symbolism to Hindu nationalist politics, this chapter analyses how cow protectionism unfolds in a dual sense: Through extra-legal violence and stricter legislative frameworks. The two, in combination, take forward the Hindu nationalist political project of turning India into a Hindu state. Importantly, the chapter shows how any such account of the political moment of Modi’s authoritarian populism would be partial unless coupled with an equally incisive interest in the economic counterpart with which it is inextricably intertwined. Unravelling the political economy of India’s beef agro-industry, we find a profound restructuring underway: Propelled by Modi’s neoliberal economic policies, an informal bovine economy largely in the hands of classes of labour in the countryside increasingly faces aggressive usurping competition from a rising formal agro-industry that is centralised, capital intensive, and firmly controlled by dominant class interests. This scenario, it is argued, starkly illustrates the contradictory dynamics of capital accumulation and class underlying Modi’s authoritarian populism.
