Two days before Id-ul-Zuha, Baroda-based businessman Yusuf Sheikh went for a meeting at the Swaminarayan temple in the city, to meet with the chief mahant and other religious leaders of both communities. The idea behind the meeting was to maintain communal peace during the Id, traditionally observed with the qurbani of an animal and the distribution of the meat. He showed the Hindu religious leaders pamphlets that had been distributed for the past two years in Muslim localities across Gujarat, saying that cow sacrifice was now illegal and would bring troubles on the community. He says that no one in Gujarat would be foolish enough to invite violence on themselves by slaughtering cows and if they did so should be punished. He felt that such efforts were necessary in an atmosphere where there had been tensions during the preceding Navratra festivities when images of the Mother Goddess were superimposed on that of Mecca and distributed on WhatsApp and Face­b­ook. There had been curfews and small clashes in quite a few Gujarat towns, inc­l­uding Ahmedabad, during the...

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