“Make the cow a national animal”, declared Maulana Syed Ashrad Madani, president of the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind. He said this not so much to buy peace as to bring sanity to the issue of beef eating. Both sides have misplaced priorities, and this is bad for our brains. Those who argue that minorities are being pampered should ask themselves, why then, in aggregate terms, are Muslims always poorer than Hindus?

At the same time, a fact check is advised for those who think banning beef is anti-secular. True, Hindus are forbidden to eat the cow but neither does Islam ordain that it be slaughtered. Muslims would certainly not lose their faith if they did not get a regular ration of beef. In fact, some of the best cuisines from Awadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir, are mutton based and, in all such instances, the connoisseur would be horrified to stir cow meat into the pot.

Nor is it that the veneration of an animal is strictly a Hindu peculiarity. The Egyptians believed the cat was sacred; the Zoroastrians, like the Hindus, revere the ox as their prophet was, in lore, saved by one; the Cherokee Native Americans give the eagle a special place and nobody is allowed to mess with it. The gentle turtle is also an object of worship among many peoples, ancient and modern.

In a number of cultures it is forbidden to kill the totemic symbol of the community, be it an animal, even a plant; why, sometimes also a creature nobody has ever seen. The Chinese have a near totemic relationship with the dragon, Czechs with a double-tailed lion, but none of these animals actually exist. Humans and nature interact in ways more complex than the dichotomy between “us” and “them”.

Beef is banned in 24 out of 29 Indian states; besides our Constitution also directs us to protect the cow. Other countries have outlawed other kinds of meat for reasons not always religious. However, when a law prohibits the consumption, or slaughter, of a certain animal, then it applies to every citizen, without exception. In Germany, Britain, Ireland, France, South Australia, among several other countries, dog meat is banned. In six states in America you cannot flip dog flesh on your hamburger grill.

As you can’t pet a dog and slaughter it too, eating its meat would mean farming the animal and keeping it under conditions in which chickens and turkeys are bred. This thought, by itself, is so revolting, that plating dogs for a meal is now a hideous crime in many parts of the world. Curiously, even where eating dog meat is allowed, there are restrictions on slaughtering it. Such is the case in Appenzel and St Gallen districts of Switzerland.

If you are hopelessly addicted to dog meat, you have to go somewhere else, and the space for that is shrinking. Now even Taiwan, post westernisation, has banned the sale of dog meat. The Chinese, for a long time, had no inhibitions against this kind of protein, but now some qualms are emerging.

It is often argued that this is an outcome of the one-child policy which allows for more time, room and emotional space for raising a pet. Under these conditions the dog, predictably, is the most popular choice in many homes. It is hard to imagine this for as recently as in 1983 in Beijing, it was illegal to keep a dog as a pet.

Eating a horse was not particularly encouraged in the US, but is known to have happened. When it did, it was usually under strained circumstances; when food and victuals were scarce and even the kitchen salt running low. Today, however, there is a specific law against horseflesh in the US and there is nothing religious behind this. It is true that over 600 years ago Pope Gregory II had instructed St Boniface to campaign against horse meat, but when the last horse slaughter house was closed in America in 2007, nobody remembered what a Pope had once said.

The horse, the dog, the cat, are treated as pets in many cultures, which is why eating them is not just bad manners, but illegal too. It does not matter where the sentiment to ban the eating of a certain animal comes from: it may be religion, or because of a certain affection towards a species. But whenever this prohibition is in place, the arm of the law is equally muscular and long. Under these circumstances, it is pointless to demand dog meat as a legal claim; it would be laughed out of court.

Doubtless, there will be random attempts to trick people into buying dog meat as goat meat, or horse meat as beef, or selling cat meat as rabbit meat. This practice must have been prevalent enough for there is, in fact, a Spanish saying: “To pass off a cat as a hare.” In India, sadly, gau rakshaks often set out to “pass off” buffalo meat (sometimes any meat) as beef, to create terror among Muslims. Well-meaning secularists, on the other hand, frequently end up falling on their swords. When gau rakshaks turn murderous they should be single-mindedly tried for their crimes. Why blunt this thrust by simultaneously arguing that eating beef is a democratic right?

To insist on beef in India, in the name of secularism, is just as ridiculous as demanding a dog or horse in a New York restaurant. All that is forbidden need not be holy!