Abattoirs in India called off a four-day strike after the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, gave assurances that mainly Muslim-run, unlicensed slaughter houses would not be shut down or attacked.
Separately, in Modi’s western home state of Gujarat, lawmakers of his ruling party stiffened the punishment for cow slaughter to life imprisonment, the toughest such measure aimed at protecting cows, widely considered holy by Hindus.
Earlier, the maximum punishment had been a seven-year jail term.
State elections are due by year-end in Gujarat, where 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in 2002 after a wave of Hindu-Muslim riots when Modi was chief minister. A Supreme Court investigation found no case against Modi, who denied wrongdoing.
Shrill demands by right-wing Hindu groups to stop the slaughter of cows threaten to stoke a fresh wave of communal tension, as Muslims, who make up 14 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion people, dominate the meat trade.