Indian Women Get Photographed in Cow Masks to Protest Against Gender-Based Violence

“I am perturbed by the fact that in my country, cows are considered more important than a woman, that it takes much longer for a woman who is raped or assaulted to get justice than for a cow which many Hindus consider a sacred animal,” Delhi-based photographer Sujatro Ghosh says to explain the idea of his project. According to the statistics, rape in India happens every 15 minutes.

Most people in India believe a cow to be a sacred animal, which cannot be killed or eaten. This is also the policy of the Indian government: it is considered that the cows who freely roam around the streets of town and villages should be protected. The parliament is currently considering a law about the death penalty for slaughtering the sacred animals. The High Court of Rajasthan ruled to recommend a cow to be considered a national animal and increase the punishment for killing a cow from three years to life in prison. In April 2017, the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh Raman Singh said that any person who kills a cow will be hanged.