Engineer Rashid Ahmed, a Jammu and Kashmir state lawmaker, shouts as he protests inside the state legislature house. — AP

SRINAGAR: Lawmakers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party tried to assault an opposition member in a state parliament yesterday over eating beef, as debate rages in India over intolerance of religious minorities.

Television footage showed several Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators, who consider cows sacred, pushing and shoving Abdul Rashid, a Muslim, in the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly for holding a provocative “beef party”. “No amount of condemnation can be enough for what happened today,” opposition leader Omar Abdullah told reporters outside the assembly in the northern region’s main city of Srinagar. “Trying to beat up a member, this is the first time I have ever seen something like this in any house,” Abdullah, whose party walked out of the chamber over the attack. “Do I assault everyone who eats pork or alcohol?” Rashid served beef kebabs at the “party” this week in protest against a ban on killing and eating cows in India’s only Muslim-majority state.

The issue ignited in the region after a top court last month ordered the long-standing but little enforced prohibition be strictly implemented. The attack comes as a wider debate rages in Hindu-majority India over hardliners’ intolerance of Muslims and other religious minorities, many of whom eat beef as a source of protein. Late last month, a mob beat a Muslim man to death in Uttar Pradesh state over rumors that he had eaten beef. The man was dragged from his home and attacked while his 22- year-old son was also severely injured.

Modi, a staunch Hindu nationalist, is under growing pressure to condemn that attack and defuse the growing row, amid accusations that his silence so far is only emboldening hardliners, including those from his own party. Modi’s government wants a nationwide ban on the slaughter of cows, which is prohibited in only some states. India is the world’s biggest exporter of buffalo meat, an industry mainly run by Muslims. President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday called for officially secular India’s tradition of tolerance to be upheld, in what was seen as an attempt to calm raging anger over the issue. Rashid told AFP that about 10 to 14 BJP members “just pounced on me as soon as I entered the house”, saying he had feared for his life. Footage showed legislators rounding on Rashid, trying to hit him as others held them back. — AFP