Protecting Cows, Protecting Power

By Praful Bidwai

Asia Times

21 August, 2003

F aced with uncertain prospects in elections to five state

legislatures due within three months, India's pro-Hindu coalition is

bringing in a bill in the national parliament to ban the killing of

cows and win the sympathies and votes of Hindus, but this is likely

to stir a hornet's nest.

To start with, it means pandering to a particular religious group-

many but by no means all groups of Hindus consider the cow a sacred

animal-in India's multi-cultural, multi-religious society. Indeed,

the preamble to the bill exhibits a strong religious bias-

unprecedented for parliamentary legislation in India. It says that

"the cow is the embodiment of divine virtues like love, compassion,

benevolence, tolerance and non-violence", and that it commands

reverence and cultural sanctity.

This is not universally true, even of the Hindus, who form a little

over four-fifths of India's billion-strong population. Many Hindus,

who keep cows as milch and draught animals and use bullock power in

agriculture, sell them once their economic life is exhausted. India

has a sixth of the world's cows and 57 percent of the world's

buffaloes. Apart from slaughtering millions of cows and buffaloes for

domestic consumption, India also exports over US$200 million worth of

meat, mainly beef.

Bringing in a national law on a subject that falls within the domain

of India's 32 states and territories is itself a highly questionable

move. More than a quarter of these states, including Kerala in the

south, West Bengal in the east and some Christian-majority states of

the northeast, and Jammu and Kashmir, permit cows to be killed for

their meat.

Some of the states have registered an angry protest against the

proposed bill. For instance, the deputy chief minister of north

Meghalaya says, "A particular diet may be poison to one community,

but food for another, as in the case of hill people in the northeast

whose main diet is beef." Neighboring Mizoram state's chief minister

argues, "If a bill banning cow slaughter is passed, it could set the

ball rolling for efforts to ban the slaughter of pigs. But both beef

and pork are part of the food habits of the people." Kerala

agriculture minister K R Gowri, herself a Hindu, has termed the

proposed bill "detrimental to the interests of Kerala". In Kerala,

beef accounts for an estimated 40 percent of all meat consumed. Some

80 percent of Kerala's people regularly eat beef. They include 72

Hindu communities, besides Muslim, Christian and indigenous people.

Even more undemocratic is the government's crude attempt to regulate,

dictate and censor the dietary habits of Indians. Banning cow

slaughter involves preventing people from choosing what they eat.

Permitting it would not impose a particular diet on an individual or

group.

A blanket ban on the killing of cows, bulls and calves, irrespective

of age, utility or health status, is a draconian measure that will

inflict a heavy burden on the peasant-owners of such animals, besides

increasing the proportion of unhealthy bovines in the total

population. Animal husbandry experts have often warned against the

overpopulation of cattle in India and the emaciated state of a high

proportion of cows. K R Ramaswamy, a former director of the Indian

Institute of Management in Bangalore, has argued that India must cull

half its bovine population, which is extremely unhealthy and cannot

be looked after.

There is yet another economic angle to cow slaughter. Beef in India

costs less than half the price of lamb or chicken. It is the

preferred source of first-class protein for the poor, who constitute

a majority of India's population. The absence of beef will raise the

food bill for the underprivileged. Even more important, surveys of

butchers in different states show that three-fourths of all beef is

consumed by non-Muslims, largely Hindus. A higher proportion of the

sellers of cattle are Hindus. Abstinence from beef-eating is largely

a caste or class question among Hindus. The low castes prefer beef to

other meat for reasons of taste and habit too. Yet, to impose this

ban on cow slaughter, the government, led by the Hindu-chauvinist

Bharatiya Janata Party, has conjured up, of all things, an ecological

and animal rights argument. The bill seeks to shift the

constitutional subject matter from the purview of the states to items

common to both national and state legislatures under measures for

prevention of cruelty against animals. This is patently duplicitous.

If the real objective is to prevent cruelty to animals, then why

single out the cow? Why not extend the law to hundreds of other

animals and birds that are maltreated or vulnerable to abuse?

It is not as if Indian society is particularly caring of animals. One

can see thousands of ill-fed, sick cows roaming the streets of Indian

cities, including the capital. Most are left to forage through

garbage. They end up consuming rotten vegetables, meat, and above

all, an enormous amount of plastic bags. India is notorious for its

overconsumption and unsafe disposal of recycled, ugly plastic

carry-bags, which are not required to be separated from biodegradable

matter. Autopsies on cows turn up literally hundreds of plastic bags

in their stomachs. Indian cows suffer from a range of ailments,

including foot-and-mouth disease. The bill is hypocritical in evading

issues at the center of the professed concern for the welfare of the

cow. The proposed law is open to objection on two other grounds too.

It originates in the mistaken belief that cow slaughter was "brought"

to India by invading Muslims in the Middle Ages, and that Hindu

scriptures unanimously proscribe cow slaughter. In reality, eminent

Indian and European historians have conclusively shown, on the basis

of contemporary accounts, that beef eating was an integral part of

the dietary customs in ancient India.