Panun Kashmir slams calls for repealing beef ban law in Kashmir

Jammu: Panun Kashmir, an outfit claiming to represent displaced Kashmir Pandits, on Monday said the call for repealing beef ban law in Kashmir was akin to rejection of coexistence in Kashmir.

"We state with emphasis that the cry for repealing of beef ban law in Kashmir is one more declaration of the rejection of coexistence in Kashmir," the outfit's chairman Ajay Chrungoo told reporters here today.

"How can member of other communities live in such an atmosphere in Kashmir where voices for repealing beef ban is up," he said.

Outfit's convenor Agnishakher said, "since cow constitutes the sanctum sanctorum of the core of Hindu religious and civilisation consciousness, its slaughter is an expression of a behaviour as heinous as the world has witnessed about IS in recent times."

"Why is it that only now the political class in Kashmir Valley is seeking the repealing of this law? Doesn't it signify that fundamentalisation of this political class is almost complete now?" Agnishakher asked.

He said that for the Hindu community protection of cow is their "religious duty".

"We want to state it very clearly that for Hindus of the state, protection of cow is a religious duty as well as a religious right. It is an inalienable part of our religious freedom. We will not allow any body to trespass on this right," he said.

The beef ban law in the state has been an expression of a "deeper secular consensus" between the communities, Agnishakher said.

"That is why nobody in the state ever thought of this law as a restriction and precisely for this reason this law survived right from the period of monarchy in the state to the present democratic times," he added.