INDIA: India's Hindu nationalist-led coalition has postponed a controversial Bill banning cow slaughter across the country, after the move sparked angry protests in parliament, writes Rahul Bedi in New Delhi.
Cows are sacred to India's Hindu majority - over 200 million head of cattle freely roam the country's cities and villages - and ahead of crucial elections in five states later this year, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its hard-line allies have been desperate to prove their loyalty to the animal in order to garner votes.
They have long run an emotional campaign to institute a Bill banning cow slaughter and beef exports, but opposition MPs and even those from the federal alliance opposed it in the lower house of parliament earlier this week, saying there was no national consensus on the issue.
"This [move to ban cow slaughter\] has nothing to do with the concerns of the people," said political analyst Mr N. Bhaskara Rao. "It is aimed at elections and the BJP are trying one more trick in the book."
Five states are due to hold elections in November which are seen as a key test of Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee's 23-party coalition administration before next year's national elections.
The BJP shot to prominence on the back of a Hindu revivalist campaign, but it was forced into pushing sectarian matters like cow slaughter into the background after assuming power in 1999 under pressure from its coalition partners.
But Indian politicians are realising that keeping cows off crowded roads across the country is as formidable a task as keeping the sacred animal out of politics.
And though Congress and other opposition parties claiming to be secular and non-religious protested against the Bill banning cow slaughter, they were careful not to openly offend Hindu sentiments, for fear of repercussions in the upcoming polls.
During state elections earlier this year, Congress, led by the Italian-born Ms Sonia Gandhi, released posters accusing Mr Vajpayee of being a "closet" beef-burger eater. The party later distanced itself from the poster campaign, but Congress did manage to oust the BJP from power in northern Himachal Pradesh state.
"We are not opposed to legislation to protect cows, but we want this to be left to the state governments," Congress party spokesman Mr Priyaranjan Dasmunshi said. "People in different states have different dietary habits and certainly in the north-eastern states beef is regarded as an important source of protein," he added, careful to stick to the culinary rather than religious side of beef-eating.
The BJP administration is under pressure from its fundamentalist fringe to "tap" into Hindu sentiment by implementing recommendations by the National Commission on Cattle. If employed, the commission's suggestions - of banning the production of all leather goods and prohibiting the lucrative export of beef and veal to Gulf states - would have serious economic repercussions.