IN A BARN IN HARYANA, A STATE in northwest India, more than a dozen men are preparing for a night they might not survive. Around them stand injured heifers, many with broken limbs. The air reeks of urine and feces, and in a bowl on the ground, maggots writhe in rotting flesh a vet has cut from one of the cow’s wounds.
The men, however, are unfazed. They call themselves the Gau Putra Sena, or the Son of Cow army, and their life’s mission is to protect cows. In front of them stands their leader, a Hindu militant named Sampat Singh. Tonight, he’s dressed in white and showing me two snub-nosed pistols under the dim lights. Soon he and his group will cluster along the nearby highways, stopping and inspecting…