According Goal policiesdoes not allow “content that glorifies, supports, or depicts events that Meta designates as violating violent events,” including “hate events” and “hate crimes.” Meta spokesperson Erin Logan told WIRED that Meta has “strict policies against graphic or violent content on our platforms, and we apply these rules impartially. We will review this report once we receive it and will remove any infringing content and disable the accounts of repeat infringers.” Logan declined to answer questions about whether Meta considers cow vigilantes part of “violent or hateful groups.” Last year, the company removed profiles associated with Monu Manesar, a cow guard who was arrested and accused of instigating violence in Haryana.
Cow protection is not new in India, where Hinduism considers cows sacred. But the country also has a significant minority population that includes Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and Adivasis, or indigenous people, who have no religious prohibition against eating beef. Dalits, the group at the base of the Hindu caste system, also sometimes consume beef. Due to their marginalized status, Muslims and Dalits in particular have For a long time it was economically dependent on the livestock industry..
Since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, several states have passed stricter laws regarding the protection of cows. TO Congressional Research Service Report published last week noted that cow vigilantism was one of several types of “religiously motivated repression and violence” used by Hindus and supported by the country’s Hindu nationalist government against minority communities. According to a April report Based on data from armed conflict events and locations, cow vigilantism was the motivator for 22 percent of all communal violence perpetrated by Hindus against Muslims between 2019 and 2024.
“Vigilantes organize their attacks to punish minorities through extrajudicial means,” says Angana Chatterji, president of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at UC Berkeley. “Hindu nationalist leaders in government have aligned themselves with these militias, and their speeches often function as whistles to mobilize people, allegedly inciting them to commit these extrajudicial acts that have included housebreaking, robbery, and lynching.”
Chatterji says that making violence public on a place like Instagram allows cow vigilantes to recruit new members and mobilize other Hindu nationalists in different parts of the country. “For Muslims, minorities and their allies, Instagram messages are calculated to spread terror with impunity,” it says. “To indicate: ‘Stop protesting.’ We are going to come after you and there will be nothing to stop us,’ especially since law enforcement is often absent or in cahoots.”