India’s Parliament was in an uproar Wednesday after four men belonging to the low-caste Dalit community were beaten while trying to skin a dead cow in western India.
Lawmakers from the opposition parties shouted slogans while accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of failing to protect the Dalits, who belong to the lowest rung of Hinduism’s caste hierarchy.
Videos of the four being stripped and beaten with sticks by men claiming to be cow protectors in Gujarat state last week have gone viral and have sparked protests by Dalit groups across the state.
Hindus consider cows to be sacred, and the slaughter of cows is banned in many parts of India. Slaughtering a cow carries a punishment of up to seven years in jail.
Attacks against Muslims and Dalits accused of eating or smuggling beef have risen since Modi’s Hindu-nationalist party came to power two years ago.
Meanwhile, protesters from India’s low-caste community blocked roads and attacked government buses in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state on Wednesday in a third day of demonstrations over the flogging of four men accused of skinning a cow.
The four members of the Dalit community were last week tied to a car in Gujarat state, stripped and flogged with sticks by self-styled hard-line Hindu cow protectors who then published a video of the attack as a “warning” to others. The beatings sparked the most serious protests by Dalits in years in Gujarat, with seven youths trying to kill themselves in protest by taking pesticide in different parts of the state, an act that further inflamed tempers.

Source ; Arab News