Ravi Ranjan Singh is a member of the Hindu Mahasabha and was a litigant in the Ram Janmabhoomi case. He has been running an awareness campaign against Halal-onomics for more than a decade.

Apart from that, he has also been trying to fight against it in the courts via PILs (public interest litigations). He set up the Jhatka Certification Authority to counter the spread of the halal economy.

Swarajya talked to him in detail about how halal-onomics boomed, the threats it poses, the solutions that the government and citizens can explore to counter its spread and what his plans are to create an alternative meat ecosystem as the head of the Jhatka Certification Authority.

A century back, the halal economy wasn’t as widespread as it has become? How did it all start?

Halal has been around for more than 1,400 years. When Islam came into being, this word was there in the Arabic language. It simply meant ‘permissible’ and had different connotations for different tribes or religious groups residing in Arabia at the time. We can this as Stage 1.

The concept of halal was Islamised as that religion spread. That’s Stage 2. But it was still very much limited.

What we see today -- the transformation of Islamic halal into universal halal -- started 70 years back, just after the end of World War 2. We can trace its genesis to Great Britain.

After the War, when the Britishers left India, they issued special permits for those who had served the Crown and who were at the risk of being hounded after Independence.

So, groups like Muslims and Sikhs, who had an overwhelming presence in the Police and the Armed forces, benefited from this policy of permits and this is the reason why they are present in substantial numbers in Britain today.

These were also the servicemen who were skilled and could be trained easily in other jobs as per the needs of a struggling economy. And this didn’t cost the British much money.

The influx of Muslims into London increased more rapidly compared to Sikhs because the former had a larger world community to draw from while Sikhs were smaller in numbers as their presence was limited to only India.

Now, Indian Muslims who settled there were more intelligent, politicised and goal-oriented than their Ummah counterparts from other countries thanks to the decades of radicalisation due to the Khilafat and Pakistan movement.

These Muslims wanted to eat only halal and they approached restaurant chains in the city to provide them halal meat. In the beginning, their demand was met with indifference but due to community power and numbers, they were able to get some outlets to serve halal.

Since Muslims would eat at only those outlets, others in the market also decided to have an option of halal lest their business suffers adversely. Slowly, the whole London meat industry was halal-ised and native butchers went out of business.

The next step was a change in the composition of imports. Latin America was the major meat exporter to Britain but for Muslims in the United Kingdom (UK), the meat imported from non-Islamic countries wasn’t halal enough.

So, the shift in imports started and Latin America lost out and Muslim countries, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, gained at its expense.

The situation has become such that even non-Muslim countries that want to export meat have to strictly comply with halal norms. Just look at Australia and New Zealand and how they toe the halal line.

So it wasn’t sufficient that the meat is halal, they insisted that the meat imported is also from Islamic countries. It seems that the halal concept is very malleable. It differs from place to place and also gets updated with time too, isn’t it?

Well, as halal captures the economy step by step, new conditions are put in depending on the time and place.

Initially, only the product needed to be halal. Then, the eligibility changed and the whole establishment was required to be halal. Next, the whole food chain. And in some Islamic countries, a halal food chain means no employment for a kaffir at any stage.

But putting such a condition in one go would not be tenable, in say, India.

So, it is very much malleable. They may start with a minimum condition but will not stop until everything is 100 per cent Sharia-compliant. It’s black and white and there is no room for grey.

In India, what you have today is not strict halal because the conditions aren’t favourable to them but be rest assured, they will not stop until 100 per cent ‘halal-ification’ is achieved.

So if halal is so malleable and changes strategically with time and place, then it is more about getting hold over various aspects of the economy rather than a simple religious concept of consuming only that which is considered pure in Islam. It’s economic jihad, isn’t it?

Yes. There is no doubt about it.

You talked about three stages of the evolution of halal. First, pre-Islam; the second period ranges from seventh century to World War 2; and the third from the 1940s till the present time. What’s the next stage of this “economic jihad”?

The fourth stage in this evolution is going to be halal stock exchanges. It’s on the horizon. We already have many directives on which companies are halal and which ones are haram.

In these exchanges, all companies will be differentiated on those lines. The companies will be certified as halal by Islamic organisations like they do with products and services.

The trading in halal companies will be cheaper -- the stock exchange may charge a less intermediary fee if you buy their stock. This is another sort of jaziya. You are being penalised indirectly whereas your competitor is being rewarded for religious reasons.

Eventually, the investor may also be given a concession if he is a Muslim. And so on. Basically, the game will be rigged against the kaffir.

Halal spread because of our mental slavery and it will result in our financial slavery. This combination of mental and financial slavery is a deadly cocktail. Once that happens, there is no turning back. You can never come out of it.

Some European countries like Belgium and Denmark have introduced laws that have banned ritual slaughter including halal and kosher in the name of animal rights. Is that a solution that India can try?

What countries like Belgium are doing is good. But that’s only limited to the meat industry and there are exemptions in the law too. Nonetheless, it’s a welcome step.

But it’s not the complete solution. There is a misconception among many that halal is about the method of slaughter. It’s much more than that. The meat industry is a tiny part of the whole halal economy.

This is a packet of vegetarian potato chips which has the logo of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind Halal trust. And this is an eyedrop medicine for cataract that states that it was prepared the halal way. (Shows both items)