indianexpress.

com

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/elusive-holiness-of-the-cow/

How the story of the cow in India is riddled with puzzles

and paradoxes
The ritual killing of cattle was de rigueur among the Vedic people, who routinely sacrificed cattle and ate their
flesh.
The cow has been a political animal in modern India, but it has become more political under the present BJP
governments at the Centre and in some states, which are obsessed with beef bans and cow slaughter. But the
ritual killing of cattle was de rigueur among the Vedic people, who routinely sacrificed cattle and ate their flesh.
The Rigveda frequently refers to the cooking of the flesh of animals, including that of the ox, as an offering to the
gods, especially Indra. In most Vedic yajnas, cattle were killed and their flesh eaten. Although some post-Vedic
texts recommend the offering of animal effigies in lieu of livestock, ancient Indians continued to kill cattle and eat
beef, which was the favourite food of Yajnavalkya, the respected sage from Mithila. He made the obdurate
statement that he would continue to eat the flesh of cows and bullocks so long as it was tender (Shatapatha
Brahmana). The practice of cattle-killing on sacrificial and other occasions, attested to by a number of post-Vedic
texts, possibly continued for centuries.
However, post-Mauryan lawgivers are either ambivalent or generally reticent on the issue or, more often,
disapprove of cattle-killing. The Manusmriti (200 BC-200 AD), the most representative of the legal texts, allows the
consumption of the flesh, among others, of all domestic animals with teeth in one jaw, the only exception being
the camel, not the cow. While the text remains noncommittal on the issue of beef-eating, it tells us that one does
not do any wrong by eating meat while honouring the gods, the manes and guests, for eating meat on sacrificial
occasions is a divine rule. The commentator Medhatithi (9th century) interprets that passage to mean that the
eating of cattle flesh was in keeping with the Vedic and post-Vedic practice, which included the killing of cattle.
Another law book, Yajnavalkyasmriti (100 AD-300 AD), also discusses lawful and forbidden food and endorses
the Vedic practice of killing animals and eating the consecrated meat, but unlike the Manusmriti, it clearly states
that a learned Brahmin should be welcomed with a big ox or goat, delicious food and sweet words.
Thus, unlike earlier normative texts, post-Mauryan law books either restrict cow-killing to guest reception or are
reticent about it. Interestingly, they try to cover up the issue by approving of all sacrifices having Vedic sanction
because, according to them, Vedic killing is not killing. This obfuscation was accompanied by the almostsimultaneous development of the idea of the Kali Yuga, first described in the Mahabharata and the early Puranas.
During the Kali age, the brahminical texts tell us, a number of earlier practices, including the killing of kine, were
prohibited and came to be known as kalivarjas. Repeated assertions that the cow should not be killed in the Kali
age tended to make the cow unslayable and led to the disappearance of beef from the Brahmins menu. The
killing of cows now came in for condemnation in the dharmashastra texts and the cow killer was doomed to
become an untouchable. The Vyasasmriti categorically states that a cow killer is untouchable and that one incurs
sin by even talking to him. Beef-eating thus seems to have become a criterion of untouchability. Earlier a part of
the brahminical haute cuisine, beef now gradually became an important component of the food culture of the
untouchable castes, whose number proliferated over time.
During the medieval period, cow-killing became the basis of religious differentiation between Hindus and Muslims,
who were stereotyped as beef-eaters. This led to occasional tensions; two such clashes in the 17th and 18th
centuries are well documented. It may have been in response to this kind of conflict that Akbar (1556-1605),
under the influence of Jains, issued firmans ordering his officials not to allow the slaughter of animals (including
the cow) on specific occasions a policy followed by Jahangir (1605-1627). Obviously both were trying to control
inter-religious tensions. Even the will of Babur, which advised Humayun not to allow the killing of cows, may have
been a response to the views of the Brahmins. Although the will itself was a later forgery, it does indicate the
states willingness to respect the view that was gaining ground. There is no doubt that during the medieval period,
the cow was emerging as an emotive cultural symbol in brahminical circles. It became more emotive with the rise
of Maratha power in the 17th century under Shivaji, who was often viewed as an incarnation of god, descended

on Earth for the deliverance of the cow and the Brahmins. It was first used for mass political mobilisation by the
Sikh Kuka (Namdhari) movement, which rallied Hindus and Sikhs against the British, who had allowed the killing
of cows in the Punjab. At around the same time, Dayanand Saraswati founded the first Goraksini Sabha in 1882.
He made the cow a symbol of the unity of a wide range of people against Muslims and challenged the Muslim
practice of its slaughter, provoking a series of Hindu-Muslim riots in the 1880s and 1890s. This was accompanied
by an intensification of the cow-protection movement following the decree of the North-Western Provinces High
Court that the cow was not a sacred object. The cow now emerged fully as a mark of Hindu identity.
So the story of the cow is riddled with puzzles and paradoxes. In Vedic and post-Vedic times, when the ritual
killing of this animal and eating its flesh was in vogue, it was considered to be an item of wealth and was likened
with Aditi (mother of gods), the earth, the cosmic waters whose release by Indra established the cosmic law,
maternity, and to poetry, which was the monopoly of the Brahmins. Subsequently, if it was killed according to
Vedic precepts, it was not killing, because Vedic killing was not killing. Even when the slaughter of bovines came
to be forbidden in the Kali age, cow-killing remained a minor sin. When the dharmashastras assigned a
purificatory role to the cows five products, they considered its faeces and urine as pure but not its mouth; and
food smelt by it needed to be purified. Yet, through these incongruous attitudes, the Indian cow has struggled its
way to sanctity. But its holiness is elusive. For there is no cow goddess, nor any temple in her honour though it
should not surprise us if some disgruntled elements set up one.

Just Like Other Weaker Sections, Is Cow an Innocent Victim of Politics and Religion in India?

Are cows holy? Why Pig (or Boar), which finds its place prominently in Indian mythology, not made a Holy
Creature? Is cow a weapon in the hands of vested interests to impose their political and religious
agenda? Will saving cows save the poor? Some say that same concern is not shown towards dying
farmer. Is religion more important than hunger? If poor can renounce privacy for a meal, why cant
compromise with religious belief to feed the poor?

business-standard.com
http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/i-ll-have-the-holy-cow-medium-rare-115100200223_1.html

I'll have the holy cow, medium-rare

Present-day India is the sort of ancient, proud, powerhouse society that could
break down your door and kill you because it doesn't like the sound of your
dinner
I have been having this vision problem lately. Ill be out in the world, among civilised smiling people, well-dressed,
well-educated, well-spoken, going about their business, sipping cocktails, or working diligently, or buying soap or
whatever. Suddenly its as if the skin of the world slips a bit and all I see, underneath the pleasant smiles, is a
bunch of savages with bloodstained lips and murderous intent. Then theyll say something very normal, like I just
got promoted, so Im donating lots of money for the welfare of the girl child, and the skin realigns.
Ha ha! Just kidding. Nobody says that.
Anyway, this is why I love watching toddlers at play. Theres no deceptive civilisational veneer in the way: what
you see is what you get. Theyre just nodes of primal emotion and instinct, nakedly violent and power-hungry.
They gang up two against one to snatch a toy, then fight each other for the toy, then regroup in an entirely new
configuration to repossess the toy. They howl, kiss, kick each other, and break stuff. They waddle off to tattle on
each other with a highly doctored history of what happened. Then they make up by collaborating sweetly on
pulling the wings off a fly or torturing a puppy.
Objectively speaking, were looking at instinctively manipulative, double-crossing opportunists with no principles.
While they can be tender, they show almost exalted imagination and creativity when it comes to inflicting pain. The
exalted part is that they dont need a reason, let alone a good one. If kids werent designed to look unbearably
cute, adults would exercise rationality and snuff them out. Rationality is moot, however: it turns out that adults are
just taller toddlers in more expensive clothes. William Golding told us so, but who has got time to read Lord of the
Flies when youre busy spreading lies about your neighbours and sticking knives into your friends backs?
Under the cologne and the small talk, were savages. Theres no better time to remember that than while
savouring the creamy pink flesh of a medium-rare beefsteak. I ordered it for Mohammed Akhlaq, who was
murdered by a mob because someone said there was beef in his fridge. But mostly I ordered it because I like
beef. You are entitled to be upset by this, and Im free to not give a flying cows carcass. That is how the
Constitution works. (I regret that my steak was not actually cow, but then neither was the meat in Akhlaqs fridge.)
So I chomped on my juicy and delicious steak, had a few drinks, and listened to some music, and felt, well, tired. I
hope very much that when the rest of the world looks at us, they too will see the skin of India slip a bit. We can
brag all we like about our youth, our economy, and our rightful place on the Security Council, but when the digitally
forward, commercially vibrant, Bollywood-obsessed, philosophically sophisticated, ancient, charming skin of India
slips, it is a truly nasty sight.
So, world, come Make in India. You will make hills of money. The only thing is, you might actually have to live
here. You should know that present-day India is the sort of ancient, proud, powerhouse society that could also
decide to break down your door and kill you because it doesnt like the sound of your dinner. Then the police and
the politicians will say tut-tut, your mistake. Thats how they think the Constitution works.
While youre deciding whether or not to come, please re-read Lord of the Flies, and evaluate your appetite for risk.
But if you do come, Ill take us both out to a fabulous steak dinner. It would be my absolute pleasure.
Mitali Saran is a Delhi-based writer mitali.saran@gmail.com

livemint.com

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/rSDYoi2HtSdeTDXte9EtEL/Holy-cows-or-cash-cows.html

Holy cows or cash cows?

Cattle investments in India seem to be influenced more by economic considerations than by religious ones
Do Indian villagers purchase cows because they hold them sacred, or do they make economic calculations while
investing in cows? Over the past couple of years, several economists have mined data on livestock costs and
returns to answer that question, leading to a lively debate on the issue.
The debate was ignited by the surprising findings of a 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research working
paper authored by three economists, Santosh Anagol, Alvin Etang, and Dean Karlan. Anagol and his co-authors
analyzed data on costs incurred and incomes generated by those owning cows and buffaloes in two districts of
Uttar Pradesh to come up with startling results: cows and buffaloes generated large negative returns for their
owners, at negative 64% and negative 34%, respectively, once labour costs were factored in. The authors
concluded the villagers did not behave according to the central tenets of capitalism, and offered a variety of
explanations, including cultural and religious ones, to explain the seemingly irrational choice.
As an earlier Economics Express column pointed out, the findings of the study were challenged by two other
economists, Orazio Attanasio and Britta Augsburg, in a 2014 NBER working paper. The duo pointed out that the
surprising findings of the 2013 study had a simple explanation: drought, which affected milk production, and
hence the returns to cattle adversely in the year of study.
In computing the return on cows and buffaloes, the authors used data from a single year, Attanasio and
Augsburg wrote. Cows are assets whose return varies through time. In drought years, when fodder is scarce and
expensive, milk production is lower and profits are low. In non-drought years, when fodder is abundant and
cheaper, milk production is higher and profits can be considerably higher. The return on cows and buffaloes, like
that of many stocks traded on Wall Street, is positive in some years and negative in others. We report evidence
from three years of data on the return on cows and buffaloes in the district of Anantapur and show that in one of
the three years, returns are very high, while in drought years they are similar to the figures obtained by Anagol,
Etang and Karlan (2013).
The latest economists to join the debate are Esther Gehrke and Michael Grimm, who argue in a recently
published research paper that low average returns to cattle investments mask huge variations in returns among
owners. Villagers with large cattle holdings and those with more productive breeds have significantly higher
returns compared with those owning only a few cattle of poorer breed. Just as weather drives variations in returns
across years, economies of scale drive variations among cattle owners even in the same year. Raising more
cattle lowers average costs for big farmers, driving up margins. Gehrke and Grimm say raising more cattle or
more productive breeds is an expensive proposition for most small farmers, which is why they are trapped in a
low-level equilibrium, and earn low returns on investment. Overall, we believe that the findings give little reason
to speak of a paradox of cattle accumulation, Gehrke and Grimm say.
Gehrke and Grimms conclusions raise one obvious question. If investments to cattle are subject to increasing
returns, why dont rich Indian farmers rear cattle on a large scale? The answer perhaps lies in the absence of a
ready market for milk and other dairy products. The lack of ready buyers or the absence of modern storage
facilities tends to deter such investments. Indeed, in areas such as north Gujarat, where such constraints have
been taken care of by well-functioning milk co-operatives and the availability of regular power, a new generation
of cattle farmers have taken to large-scale cattle farming, as a recent report by Harish Damodaran published in
The Indian Express pointed out.
The current debate over the rationality of cattle investments in India evokes an old debate on the same issue
nearly half a century ago, which involved some of Indias leading economists such as M.V. Dandekar, who helped
define Indias first calorie-based poverty line, and K.N. Raj, the doyen of Keynesian economists in India. At that
time, many commentators, in India as well as in the West, viewed Indias huge stock of low-productivity cattle as

a sign of economic inefficiency. Indian farmers were thought to purchase cows because of religious
considerations (cows are held to be sacred by most Hindus) rather than economic calculations. One of the most
influential studies to dispute such a view was a 1966 research paper by the American anthropologist Marvin
Harris.
Harris argued that cows had many unique functions in India, such as their use in ploughing activities, which
required farmers to retain their own draught animals for such activities. Harris went so far as to argue that
restrictions on cow slaughter were tied to economics, and that religious norms that led to such restrictions were
actually grounded in sound economic rationale.
In a scathing attack on Harris on the pages of the Economic and Political Weekly, Dandekar rubbished Harris
thesis as an elaborate defence of cow worship garbed in pseudo-science. Harris had argued Indian breeds were
under-sized precisely because other breeds could not survive the atrocious conditions (including lack of proper
feed) they face here. Dandekar objected that Harris was avoiding the central economic question: could more
milk, traction and dung be produced by fewer but better-fed animals than was the case then? Dandekar argued
that the answer was in the affirmative, and that the practice of cow worship actually stood in the way of a more
rational utilization of Indias bovine resources.
Raj took a more empirically grounded view of the matter than either Harris or Dandekar did in his 1969 research
paper on the subject. Raj pointed out that while Western observers commented on Indias large cattle to land
population and attributed it to spiritual values, Indias cattle to land ratio was actually similar to comparable
developing countries such as Pakistan, where the majority did not subscribe to Hindu spiritual values. Raj also
showed that the large inter-state variations in the nature of bovine population could be explained by economic
considerations.
In three Indian statesKerala, Bihar and Uttar Pradeshwhere pressures on land were the highest, farmers
seemed to be compelled to choose between having male animals for draught purposes (for preparing land for
farming) and female animals for milk, wrote Raj. In Kerala, draught requirements were relatively less important
because it had relatively less land under food grain cultivation, which required such land preparation. The pattern
of bovine population therefore was markedly different in Kerala as compared with Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. In
Kerala, cows outnumbered bulls by far while the converse was true for the two north Indian states.
It is interesting to observe that it is in the Indo-Gangetic valley (particularly in the States of Uttar Pradesh and
Bihar), where Hindu orthodoxy is deeply entrenched and the sentiment against the killing of cows is strongest,
that the pressure of human and bovine population on resources makes it most necessary to get rid of cows in
preference for bulls for traction purposes and she buffaloes for milk, wrote Raj. It is also significant that two of
the States where cows are preferred relatively to bullocks (namely, Kerala and Kashmir) have higher percentages
of non-Hindus among their population than any other State. Obviously, religious sentiment has not much to do
with the actual preferences of the people and the treatment meted out to cows in India. The recurrent agitations
against cow slaughter appear to be based on such sentiment and on the desire of political parties to exploit it for
their own purposes, in either case not on any realistic understanding of the economic interests and actual
behaviour of the people who would have to support the unwanted cattle.
The only role religion played in the cattle economy was in determining the method of getting rid of unwanted
cattle. Rather than sending cows to slaughterhouses, north Indian farmers preferred a method of slow death
through deliberate starvation.
How does the table get turned so dramatically against the cows in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh? Obviously, killing
must be taking place, but perhaps the main technique adopted for getting rid of the cows is infanticide and
deliberate starvation. For it is clear that, in the cattle population below 3 years of age, the number of female to
male animals is much higher than in the adult cattle population in both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, wrote Raj.
Raj also pointed out that while cattle farmers living close to urban settlements were likely to keep more and better
breeds of cattle because they could sell dairy products in nearby markets more easily, villagers in remote areas
were likely to invest in fewer, less productive, and cheaper cattle as the milk generated would largely be used for
self-consumption.

The latest findings by Gehrke and Grimm seem to complement Rajs insights in explaining why so many Indians
farmers invest in low-yielding cattle. Evidently, economics rather than religion dictate such choices.

thehindu.com

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/holy-cow-unholy-violence/article7727157.ece

Holy cow, unholy violence

The cow has been converted aggressively into a symbol for a religious orthodoxy
demanding its place in a secular nation state.
If you love cows and care for them, you have three choices:
Choice A: Build goshalas or cow shelters where the animals can be taken care of. But this is an expensive
proposition. There is heavy investment and no returns whatsoever, despite all the talk of the great medicinal value
of cow urine and cow dung.
Choice B: Ban beef, stop farmers from selling cows and bulls to butchers, outlaw the culling of cattle, punish cow
smugglers, declare all slaughter houses illegal, lynch people who eat beef, and justify all this using complex
arguments. This results in a large number of cows (which can no longer give milk) and bulls or oxen (that are too
weak to be draught animals), being abandoned to simply wander the streets eating garbage and plastic or just
starving to death since Choice A is unavailable. It also destroys industries and creates widespread unemployment.
Choice C: Build local slaughterhouses near farms so that commercially unviable cattle can be humanely culled
nearby, without their having to endure great suffering while being transported in horrible conditions to distant
slaughterhouses. This controversial suggestion was made by none other than N.S. Ramaswamy, founder-director
of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and noted animal rights activist.
Guess which is the preferred option of the rising multitude of go-raksha vigilantes? Not A, as it is too expensive
and tedious, and involves too much work. Not C, because we are conditioned to believe that violence can do no
good. So it is Option B, which has the advantage in that it gives people power. It allows them to terrorise and
dominate Muslims and liberals. It gives them global attention and makes them the focus of a controversy-hungry
media. It is this rather than cow protection that the go-rakshaks really seek.
There is no love for cows in the go-raksha brigade an idea systematically and meticulously unravelled in the
essay Why is the Cow a Political Animal? by Sopan Joshi , a Research Fellow at the Gandhi Peace Foundation,
published in Yahoo! in May this year. It is all about power, a yearning to dominate. So, all the talk about the
economic reasons for saving cows, and the importance of cow milk, cow urine and cow dung are just a
rationalisation for that one single goal: to dominate and reclaim masculinity, following the perceived emasculation
by the Muslims, the British and now the liberals.
Devdutt Pattanaik
New form of Hinduism
A new form of Hinduism is emerging around the world: one that is tired of being seen as
passive and tolerant, like a suffering docile wife. It wants to be aggressive, violent. So it
prefers Durga and Kali to the demure Gauri; Shiva as Rudra and Virabhadra and Bhairava rather than as the
guileless Bholenath or the august Dakshinamurthy; and the Krishna of the Mahabharat to the affectionate
Bhagavata Krishna. It visualises Ram without Sita. It wants its Ganesh to lose that pot belly and sport a six-pack
ab. All this while insisting, with violence if necessary, on the values of vegetarianism and seva and giving up the
ego, which is the principle of sanatana dharma not just a religion but a way of life.
This new form of Hinduism is what we call Hindutva. We can call it a sampradaya, a movement within the vast
ocean of Hinduism that has many such movements, traditions, forces and counterforces. Hindutva sampradaya,
like all sampradayas in history, insists it is the true voice of Hinduism. Like all sampradayas, it rejects all
alternative readings of Hinduism.
And so, when you direct them to an article, The Hindu View on Food and Drink by S. Ganesh and Hari

Ravikumar on IndiaFacts.com, which draws attention to the fact that while Vedic scriptures do value the cow, they
have no problem with the consumption of bulls and oxen and barren cows, members of the Hindutva brigade will
question the credentials of the authors and their Hinduness, invariably in language that is hyperbolic, rhetorical
and violent. There is no room for discussion or nuance here. The only language is force and bullying. Where is
this coming from?
It comes from institutionalised paranoia: a belief that innocent Hindi-speaking rural Bharat needs rescuing from an
evil English-speaking India that favours Nehru, from the liberals who equate Hinduism only with casteism, and
from Euro-American scholars who insist Shiva is a phallic god. And, to be fair, there is a modicum of truth in their
argument.
In his book Rearming Hinduism, Vamsee Juluri expresses outrage at the way Hinduism is being projected in the
U.S. That outrage and anguish is genuine, and can be felt in the NRI community that has increasingly become
more and more vocal, even aggressive. When liberals deny this outrage and anguish, it seems to consolidate the
paranoia of the Hindutva sampradaya. When the liberal press dismisses the book by Sita Ram Goel, Hindu
Temples What Happened to Them, as right-wing propaganda, and gleefully declares that the Hindu memory of
Muslim kings destroying thousands of Hindu temple is just not true on the basis of Richard Eatons Temple
Desecration and Muslim States in Medieval India, you start wondering if the scientific and historical method is
simply designed to mock all things that a traditional Hindu simply assumes to be true. When the banning of radical
literature does not meet with the same outrage as the banning of Wendy Donigers Hindus: An Alternative History ,
a section of the population starts feeling that they are alone, isolated and rejected, by the people who claim to be
fair and just and liberal.
How do you strike back at those who simply invalidate your memories and beliefs by constantly quoting science
and facts? You simply create your own narrative and dismiss theirs. And this is what is happening in the beefeating discourse. It is a symbolic attack on the educated Indian who did not stand up for Hinduism in the
international arena. And the Muslims, sadly, are the tragic collateral damage.
In the 1980s, we saw how the then Congress government tried to appease the Muslim orthodoxy in the Shah
Bano case by diluting even a Supreme Court judgment that gave maintenance rights to divorced Muslim women,
but did not bother to appease the Hindutva sampradaya in the Roop Kanwar sati case when the court declared
sati a crime and not a religious act. In these cases, women were simply symbols in a fight where religious
orthodoxy was demanding its place in a secular nation state. Now, it is the turn of the cow to be that symbol.
When the secular nation state tilts in favour of one religion and seems to be persecuting another, there is bound to
be a backlash. And that is what we are facing now: a karma-phala (karmic fruit) of karmic-bija (karmic seed) sown
by the Congress on the one hand, when it unashamedly appeased Muslim religious orthodoxy, and the liberals on
the other, who endorsed their secular and rational and atheistic credentials by repeatedly projecting Hinduism as
only a violent and oppressive force. Let us ponder on our contribution to the rising tide of ahimsa terrorism, while
the still starving rescued cow wades through garbage in Indian towns and villages, eating plastic.
(Devdutt Pattanaik writes and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times. www.devdutt.com)
View comments (41)

nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/opinion/sunday/manil-suri-a-ban-on-beef-in-india-is-not-the-answer.html?_r=1

A Ban on Beef in India Is Not the Answer

The sacredness of cows in India might be a clich, but it is deeply felt, rooted in the history of Hinduism. In
Mumbai, one often encounters women selling grass to feed the cow they have in tow for a few rupees, the
donation affords not only a blessing, but also a chance to feel connected to the countrys farmland roots. The cow
is divinely associated with Krishna, the cowherd, and considered a mother figure because of the milk it gives. One
doesnt go into an Indian branch of McDonalds expecting to order a Big Mac.
And yet, beef has long been available at various Mumbai restaurants from the burger at the iconic Leopold
Cafe to the marrowbone curry popular at eateries in Muslim neighborhoods. This reflects the accommodation
necessary in a city and country with such extraordinary diversity of religion, culture and wealth.
Last month, however, this changed. Beef dishes were forced off the menu when Maharashtra, the countrys
second most populous state, which incorporates Mumbai, extended a ban on cow slaughter to bulls and oxen,
and made the sale of beef punishable by up to five years in prison. A few weeks later, the state of Haryana passed
similar legislation. Prime Minister Narendra Modis office has suggested that such bills are models for other states
to emulate.
The laws have affected more than just restaurants. Thousands of butchers and vendors, their livelihood abruptly
suspended, have protested in Mumbai. The leather industry is in turmoil. Beef is consumed not only by Indian
Muslims and Christians, but also by many low-caste Hindus, for whom it is an essential source of affordable
protein. The poorest waste nothing, from beef innards to coagulated blood, while their religion pragmatically turns
a blind eye. Low-caste Dalit Hindu students, and others, have organized beef-eating festivals to protest the
infringement on their culture and identity.
With the recent re-criminalization of gay sex, bans on controversial books and films and even an injunction
against the use of the colonial-era name Bombay instead of Mumbai in a Bollywood song, the new laws join a
growing list of restrictions on personal freedom in India. Already, the police in the city of Malegaon have arrested
three Muslim men accused of calf slaughter, and ordered livestock owners to submit mug shots of cows and bulls
to a cattle registry, to create a record in case any of them go missing.
The Maharashtra law had been in limbo, awaiting the Indian presidents signature for 20 years, but was
resurrected only after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power last year. This suggests its real
purpose is to play to the partys political base.
Some Hindu hard-liners insist the idea of eating beef was introduced by Muslim invaders, despite references to its
consumption in ancient texts like the Vedas, written more than a millennium before the time of Muhammad. By
eradicating this alien practice, they hope to return the country to values they hold dear as Hindus. Our dream of
ban on cow slaughter becomes a reality now, Maharashtras chief minister tweeted upon passage of the new law.
Another problem with such bans is that aged or unwanted cattle must be looked after at great expense
(presumably by the state) if they are not to waste away.
The only practical reason advanced by Maharashtrian officials for their law is that it will help farmers hold on to
their cattle in hard times, when they might otherwise be tempted to sell. This motivation actually does have
historical standing. In fact, it fits in perfectly with a theory on the origination of the beef taboo that the American
anthropologist Marvin Harris proposed almost five decades ago.
Mr. Harris observed that more important than their value as milk producers, cattle in India formed the backbone of
small-scale agriculture. They were used to plow fields, provide dung for fuel and fertilizer and produce calves to
stock the herd. He noted that a family that consumed its cattle during a time of drought and famine was not able
to recover afterward: They had lost the means to work the land. Over the years, farmers who preserved their

cattle were the ones who survived, leading to this practices being gradually codified into religion.
This drama is still being played out in Maharashtra, which in recent years has experienced persistent and
devastating drought. Although religious rules ensured that a farmer would no longer eat his cattle, he could still
succumb to the modern equivalent selling it for slaughter, usually at throwaway prices. The beef ban, then, can
be interpreted as an extension of the religious proscription: Thou shalt neither eat nor sell thy cattle.
Unfortunately, the situation in Maharashtra has deteriorated past the point where such a ban will help. Previous
governments have squandered billions of dollars on failed irrigation schemes, while encouraging water-intensive
crops like sugar cane in drought-prone areas. Farmers are desperate: On average since 2011, there have been
four suicides of Maharashtrian farmers every day. Rather than ancient proscriptions, they need a financial safety
net and responsible agricultural policies in order to deal with the current situation and probably worse climate
change effects to come.
Indian civilization has evolved over the centuries to include multiple diverse communities with competing
interests. Despite its secular Constitution, India remains strikingly unequal. The government must make every
effort to balance majority sentiments with minority needs. This is what the previous rules that restricted cow, but
not bull, slaughter did.
Imposing ideals from a mythic past is not the answer. The true lesson to take away from history is how utilitarian
goals can shape religious custom. Hinduism has always been a pragmatic religion; what todays India needs is
accommodation.