Where’s the beef?: the return of cow vigilantism in Burma

A 2015 article titled “With Official Help, Radical Buddhists Target Muslim Businesses” published in the Irrawaddy Times as well as Myanmar Now traces the rise of Buddhist cow vigilantism in Burma, specifically in the Irrawaddy delta region. Muslims in the Irrawaddy Delta region depend heavily on the cattle trade/slaughterhouses for their livelihoods but in 2013 (and possibly earlier), Muslim entrepreneurs trying to renew their licenses to slaughter cattle found themselves unable to do so. Ma Ba Tha (also known as the association for the Protection of Race and Religion), a Burmese Buddhist nationalist party known for its anti-Muslim rhetoric, had bought the licenses to slaughter cows from the local government to prevent their slaughter. Instead, the organization sent the cattle to Bangladeshi Buddhist refugees in Arakan state, the frontlines of the Rohingya genocide. The campaign against cow slaughter is carried out through both formal and informal means: in the form of boycotts, license buying, and a push for legislation to ban the slaughter and consumption of beef. 

Muslim families reliant on cattle slaughter have found their livelihoods rapidly depleted in the face of Ma Ba Tha’s campaign against cattle slaughter. Many members of the Muslim community also argue that the campaign not only infringes upon their livelihoods but also their freedom of religion: cow slaughter is an essential part of Eid al-Adha celebrations.

Embedded within this article are many complex layers of Burmese history and politics, but I want to focus on how cows are becoming increasingly personified by Ma Ba Tha. Ma Ba Tha expresses its anxiety over the loss of Burmese Buddhist culture through concern about the extermination of cattle. In this ultra-nationalist rhetoric, cow slaughter is tantamount to the slaughter of Burmese Buddhists. In many ways, this article is about the anthropology of cattle.

Finally, another theme I want to focus on the idea of food as a conduit for enacting violence.  Right around the time this article was published, Western media began to report more regularly on the decades-long genocide and oppression of the Rohingya, one of the country’s many Muslim minority groups. These articles have tended to focus on state violence in the form of murder as well as formal legal methods of boundary-making against the Rohingya. I chose this article to bring this form of violence, violence through regulating the diet, into the conversation. I hope to explore the role of food in creating the other in Burma by reading more about the history of the campaign against cow slaughter, a movement that has its roots in Burma’s colonial past. 

Image source: Coconuts - Yangon (https://coconuts.co/yangon/news/protecting-cows-buddhist-tradition-revived/)

Article link: https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/with-official-help-radical-buddhist…