The "untouchables" behind India's cow carcass protests

[Recursion]

http://scroll.in/article/812329/your-mother-you-take-care-of-it-meet-the-dalits-behind-gujarats-stirring-cow-carcass-protests

On July 18, in the small town of Surendranagar, Gujarat, a group of Dalits led a march to the District Collector’s office and proceeded to dump cow carcasses outside the collectorate. They were protesting a brutal assault on four Dalits by cow-protection vigilantes in the village of Mota Samadhiyala in south Gujarat on July 11.

The protests electrified India. Till then, the media and political reaction to the July 11 assault had been lukewarm. On July 18, the morning of the protest, the Times of India, Ahmedabad’s headline was about Raghuram Rajan – there was no mention of the Dalit assault on page 1 at all. On July 19, the morning after the protest, the paper ran the Dalit assault on its front page. A day later, even the state administration woke up, with Gujarat's Chief Minister meeting the victim’s families at Mota Samadhiyala.

For all the impact, the march was led by three unassuming people. Two of them – Nathubhai Parmar and Maheshbhai Rathod – are local social workers and one, Hirabhai Chawda, is a businessman who trades in the by-products of dead cows. The fact that they planned and executed this unique protest serves to illustrate a new and rising Dalit assertiveness in Gujarat, a state that still displays some of the worst instances of social apartheid seen in India.

...

Chawda explained how various industries depend on Dalits picking up dead cows. The fat is sold to soap factories in Ahmedabad, bones to bone china cup manufactures as well as gelatine manufactures and the leather to traders from Chennai and Kolkata. “This madness around cows will affects my business as well as lakhs of Dalit livelihoods,” said Chawda.

[obliviously]

1. cows were meant to be eaten

cow spelled backwards is woc. I wish they had used a k for the first letter but hey, I'm good with this.
Now if you will excuse me I'm going after a burger.