Muslims can live in India but they will have to stop eating beef: Khattar

Even as politics continues over the Dadri lynching case, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has stirred up another controversy by saying that Muslims can continue to live in India, but they will have to give up eating beef, a report said on Friday.

His exact comment, during an interview to Nirupama Subramanian and Varinder Bhatia, was: “Muslim rahein, magar is desh mein beef khaana chhodna hi hoga unko”.

The 61-year-old, who took charge of the BJP’s first government in Haryana a year ago, is a veteran member of the party’s ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

On the brutal violence in Dadri, the CM said that the murder of a 50-year-old Muslim ironsmith by a lynch mob was a result of “misunderstanding”.

On the night of September 28, Akhlaq Saifi, 52, was clobbered to death right outside his house in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh, because he allegedly had beef stored in his refrigerator.

“The victim made a comment about the cow hurting sentiments of people”.

He said the mob acted like a man would “after seeing his mother being killed or his sister getting molested”, his rage getting the better of him.

The “both sides” had committed wrongs, he said, adding that “it should not have happened”. “We have to understand why he did what he did”.

“Freedom of one person is only to the extent that it is not hurting another person”. He said giving up beef will not hurt the religious sentiments of either Muslims or Christians in India. Though he said that even if the person was committing an offence under the law for which he should be punishable, attention should be paid to why he did what he did. In the holy books of Islam and Christianity nowhere it is written that they should eat beef.

He counted the Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan legislation as one of the achievements of his one-year-old government.