Two days after Pakistan served ‘beef masala’ as part of the relief package to the earthquake victims of Nepal, a blame game has begun in Islamabad with the government saying the supplies were being taken care of by the Pakistan Air Force and that the government had no information about it.
Nepal, a Hindu-majority country, treats cows as sacred and there is a blanket ban on slaughtering the animal. On Wednesday, Indian doctors at Kathmandu’s Bir Hospital told Mail Today that packets of ‘beef masala’ were sent as part of relief aid to the temblor survivors.
The doctors from Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital and All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi are members of a 34-member medical team sent to Nepal for treating the survivors. “When we reached the airport to collect the food items from Pakistan, we found packets of ready-to-eat meals, including packets of ‘beef masala’. There were other food items too,” Dr Balwinder Singh told Mail Today.
Perplexed, the doctors chose to have food from a hotel instead. “We did not touch the Pakistani aid,” Dr Singh said. The incident may now trigger a diplomatic acrimony between the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) member countries.
“Most of the local people are not aware of the contents. When they understand, they avoid it,” said another doctor on the condition of anonymity. He added: “Pakistan has hurt Nepal’s religious sentiments by supplying the masala. Shockingly, it did not care about the sensitivity of the matter.”
RSS attacks Pakistan for beef relief
Senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue Dattatreya Hosable hit out at Pakistan for sending the beef masala. “RSS condemns this highly insensitive act of Pakistan. The Nepal government must look into this affront. Pakistan is fishing in troubled waters. This cannot be allowed to go on,” he told Headlines Today.
According to Hindu belief, eating beef is a religious offence since cow is a sacred animal and treated on a par with one’s mother. In Nepal – for long the world’s only Hindu state – the first royal order officially prohibiting cow slaughter stated that the punishments for the crime were death and confiscation of all property of the offender.
The first Civil Code of Nepal, the Muluki Ain of 1854, stated: “This kingdom is the only kingdom in the world where cows, women, and Brahmins may not be killed.” It trumpeted Nepal as the ‘purest Hindu kingdom’ and simultaneously signaled to Nepalese citizens that Hindu religious creeds would be the law of the land.
But an amendment in 1990 to the Civil Code made cow slaughter punishable by 12 years in prison.
