The Holy Cow In Not Too Holy Land
All my life, I have loved cow milk, curd, lassi, chach, kheer and khoya sweets made out from the milk. I loved my morning breakfast paranthas liberally topped up with malai and butter. I think every one loves matter paneer and mush room paneer is my daughter’s most favourite curry at meals. In summer milk shakes make one literally cool. Since I loved cow belt food habits, I never felt the need of calcium supplements to be healthy and fit. I also recollect tantrums of my daughter from her childhood to date over drinking the milk. Away from parental prying eyes, she would quickly pour the milk in our pet Fluffy’s food bowl. She was once caught by her mother and all hell broke in the house and the thrashing she got from her, Neerja remembers for her life time.
My above myth and love for milk was shattered on 5 May 2013. While flying from Chennai to Delhi. I happened to read the top page article of the Magazine of ‘The Hindu’ titled ‘What’s behind that glass of milk?’ by Anusha Narain whose gist I have used in this article.
Till 1998, India was a milk deficient nation. With the white revolution and ‘productivity .enhancement and strengthening and expansion of village level infrastructure for milk procurement, transportation, providing milk producers with competitive compensation, greater market access, improved genetic potential of bovines, provision of superior bulls, frozen semen and bio-security measures have made our country amongst the largest milk producing countries with world’s largest cattle herd.
The Holy Cow
Cows are considered sacred in many various world religions, most notably Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism In some states in India, the slaughter of cow and eating of beef is prohibited. The cow remains a protected animal in Hinduism even today and Hindus do not eat beef. Most rural Indian families have at least one dairy cow, a gentle spirit who is often treated as a member of the family.
Lord Krishna and his Yadav followers are known to care for cows. The five products (pancagavya) of the cow- milk, curds, ghee butter, urine and dung — are all used in Pooja (worship) as well as in rites of extreme penance. The milk of the family cow nourishes children as they grow up, and cow dung (gobar) is a major source of energy for households throughout India. Cow dung is sometimes among the materials used for a tilak – a ritual mark on the forehead. Most Indians do not share the western revulsion at cow excrement, but instead consider it an earthy and useful natural product.
In the Vedas, cows represent wealth and joyous Earthly life. From the Rig Veda (4.28.1; 6) we read. “The cows have come and have brought us good fortune. In our stalls, contented, may they stay! May they bring forth calves for us, many-coloured, giving milk for Indra each day. You make, O cows, the thin man sleek; to the unlovely you bring beauty. Rejoice our homestead with pleasant lowing. In our assemblies we laud your vigour.”
Despite their sacred status, cows are not well looked after in our country. When Bill Gates visited India for the first time and was asked how he felt being in the country. He replied, ‘very strange and shocked seeing suddenly dozen of cows crossing the road as his car sped from the Delhi airport’. Foreigners are often amazed seeing bovines walking neglected around city streets, living on garbage from the gutters. Yet the cow is honoured at least once a year, on Gopastami. On this “Cow Holiday,” cows are washed and decorated in the temples and given offerings in the hope that their gifts of life would continue.
The Shattering Myth of Holy Cow In Not Too Holy India
The importance of cows declined with the replacement by camels and then tractors for ploughing our fields on one side and buffalos giving better milk yield on the other. It would be of interest to find out as to what % of milk in the market today comes from the buffalos and the cows respectively. The equation could be 90 vs10. To make the cows more affordable is to change the breed of cows in India by better milk producing species like the Jersey cows that can withstand and breed in our type of extreme hot and mildly cold environment. So far only miniscule perfunctory effort has been done on ground. Today cows are unaffordable both in terms of milk production and producing male calves which can not be put to any use. And that is the reason for us to see so many cows abandoned and foraging garbage due to their unproductively and shrinking of fodder land and landing to slaughter houses as their flesh is cheaper than mutton in many folds.
With times the society has changed and the requirements also have under gone change. Therefore our systems and living must remain dynamic to change. Let us not be dragged in the past as the concerned interests feel a threat to their authorities. If these embedded interests had their way, we will go for no changes to keep up with the times. Religious beliefs and practices have undergone changes throughout known history to cater for changing times mostly to the detriment of religious leaders and dogmas. We must not remain tied down to what various religious heads all over the world would like us to. That was the main mission of Swami Viveka Nand and other reformers. If cows are no longer useful in their present ‘avtar’ people will discard them but the religion also must cope up with change. Society and religion being interlinked must be dynamic and not averse to change if that change is good for the society. After all it is the religion which is for society and not the vice versa.
In India there is relentless cruelty towards animals specially cows and buffalos from their birth to death with NO let up as highlighted below:-.
- The birth, maturity and motherhood in bovines happen with unnatural human haste. The female calf reaches puberty between 18 to 36 months depending on breed and thereafter impregnated increasingly through artificial insemination for mulching.
- Due to poor equipment and lack of proper veterinary training, artificially inseminated cows very often become infertile and develop infections.
- Soon the calf is born the mother cow is rarely given chance to experience its joys of motherhood for long. Calves are separated from their mothers soon after their birth with in full view so that they do not drink up all the milk. The psychological and emotional trauma suffered both by the mother and infant are infinite. The mother’s day in and day out heartrending bellows are excruciating to hear as it can see its infant, smell it, hear it but can not caress it. This animals’ trauma can not be felt by city bred so much accustomed to the Mother Dairy’s Milk and for sure rural folks understand well. I am sure reading this one would feel poignant and painful howling of the mother cow which must be most nauseating and inhuman.
- Calves are given no or little milk for survival. More often than nor the male calves are not much loved by dairymen and are starved to death.
- To increase yield of the milk, cows are injected Oxytocin hormone banned in India under Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Bovines injected with this hormone have greater incidents of abortions, mastitis lower conception rates and their calves suffer very high mortality rate and delayed puberty.
- Milking cows need to deliver calf every year and half of the calves delivered are males. With the advent of the mechanized farming and transportation, a fraction of male calves grow up to plough fields and pull carts and the others are butchered for beef and leather. Calf leather in abundance comes in India from these unfortunate male calves prematurely put to death by greedy human beings.
- With land on premium, the intensive dairy farming is being done in cramped up spaces and animals are tied with no space to sit or stand comfortably in between. In Mumbai calves are tied outside till they die. In other cities male calves are dumped in the streets to die. Thus the male calves suffer an early death due to all man made reasons.
- Cows and buffaloes yield milk till they are around 14-15 years in age. With constant pregnancies through artificial insemination, cows are milked for around 300 days in a year and most of them dry up after 5-6 pregnancies. Hormonal injections and every year’s trauma of separation of calves and mother, the cows milk dries faster and such cattle are trafficked to slaughter houses prematurely.
- While 28 States in India have cow- slaughter protection legislations and unproductive cows are trafficked to states like Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and especially to Kerala under inhuman conditions. Imagine a truck meant for 5-6 animals carrying 30 to 40 animals, starved and thirsty smuggled to these major beef consuming states.
- Large numbers of animals are smuggled to Pakistan via Rajasthan and Bangladesh via West Bengal as prices of beef are very lucrative in these countries where there are many beef processing plants to export beef to Saudi Arabia and other European countries.
- The latest delicacy in demand in the Middle East is veal (meet of calf not older than 3 months). So many infants are put to sleep for ever for this human culinary lust.
- Flesh of unborn calves has certain medicinal values and therefore pregnant cows are killed. Nothing could be more curer to animals than this act.
- .In most of the slaughter houses slaughtering is done by hammering the head of the cattle with sledgehammer rendering the animal unconscious, then skinning it and hanging it up side down to drain out the blood slitting jugular vein and skinning it alive as such leather has higher monetary value.
With the above grim details, now please ponder over to decide should you be enjoying your glass of milk, lassi, curd, butter, desi ghee, kheer and khoya sweets any more! I regret reading this article on the plight of cows in India, Lord Krishna would be shedding tears up above in the heaven.
Acknowledgments
Article by Anusha Narain published in Magazine of ‘The Hindu’ dated 5 May 2013.
Why Do Hindu Worship Cow? – nhsf (UK).
Wikipedia on Cattle in Religion.