Annabel Lundy

12/9/2016

Religion & the Environment

Hinduism, Cow Worship and the Ecological Crisis

Introduction:

There is an ecological crisis in India and since the majority of the population self

identifies as Hindu, it seems that the answer to the ecological crisis may lie within this

ancient religion. India is one of the most densely populated countries with a fast growing

economy. The Green Revolution in 1960 was a driving force for the industrialization

and agricultural development. Anil Agarwal made the statement blaming Hinduism for

this crisis, Hinduism, is a highly individualistic religion. It looks into the self,

emphasizing the atman as the key to spiritual decent. Dharma focuses first on oneself,

emphasizing ones own behavior. The consequence of ones behavior plays a secondary

role. One of the major environmental crisis is a production of livestock, and the most

intensive livestock to raise is cows. According to Grim and Tucker, in Hinduism there is

a focus on completing ones dharma as well as achieving moksha (Grim & Tucker,

2014). Dharma is concept in Hinduism for duty and responsibility, especially regarding

ones life path while Moksha is a Hindu term for liberation from the world of suffering

through spiritual practice and meditation (Grim & Tucker, 2014). Cows are a

multifaceted creature with environmental and spiritual significance in India. The Hindu

religion regards cows as sacred, therefore the cattle crisis in India has a direct

relationship to the religion. Indias consumption of beef is one of the lowest in the world,
and less than 2 percent of United States consumption. The goal of this paper is to

analyze the history of the sanctity of cows in India and the environmental impact cows

have on India.

Spiritual Significance

While the production of cows are contributing to the environmental destruction in

India and all over the world it seems almost ironic that they are also held very sacred in

the Hindu culture. According to Cultural India, Hinduism is the worlds third largest

religion and is the worlds oldest religion. Over 80% of the population in India identifies

as Hindu making it the major religion in India. In the Hindu religion cows are not

worshiped, though they are considered sacred and deeply respected. The religion is

based on the idea that humans and animals live many times in different forms based on

their behavior (Cultural India). The atman and brahman is part of this basis, the atman is

the individual soul and the brahman is the collective or cosmic soul. The body houses

the atman until the body dies, but the atman lives on and is born into a different body.

The traditions of Hinduism has been passed down through the Vedas, which means

knowledge. The Vedas are a large body of Vedic texts written in Sanskrit. These are

the oldest scriptures of hinduism and as well as Sanskrit literature.

The cow has had rich symbolism in Hindu mythology dating back to Vedic

culture, in fact cows are mentioned in Vedic literature more often than any other animal

(Korom, 2000). The cow played an important role in the Vedic culture more specifically

as a sacrifice. The basis of the recurring life was believed to be based on the

continuance of the sacrifice or yajna, and without maintenance of the ritual the universe
would fall out of balance (Korom, 2000). Since the cow was at the center of this sacrifice

it began to take on a cosmic importance. According to Frank J. Korom, in his study of

the importance of the cow in india, the one thing that we understand from the Vedic era

is that the cow was identified with the totality of the universe (Korom, 2000). In one of

the Vedas, Atharvaveda calls the cow the "all-producing and all-containing universe.

The Mahbhrata has a passage that states that if you kill a cow you will live in hell for

as many years as there are hairs on the cow (Korom, 2000). It wasn't until 1921, when

Mahatma Gandhi described the worship of a cow as worship of innocence (Gandhi,

1954). According to William Crooke, the cow is the most powerful link which binds

together the chaotic complex of beliefs which we designate as Hinduism (Korom,

2000). A central belief of Hinduism is that the cow is good, whole, and pure, and

represents all aspects of the cosmos. This is illustrated in beautiful representations of a

cow that encompasses all aspects of life. Each aspect of life is drawn in the body of the

cow to depict this view. Up until the last few decades, religious Hindu households had a

cow in their backyard. This was because a cow was their source for food, worship, fuel,

antiseptic cleaning agent and a farming input (Viswanathan, 2014). The devine bovine

goddess in Hinduism is called Kamadhenu and she is the mother of all cows. All cows

on earth are regarded as incarnations of Kamadhenu. In the scriptures Kamadhenu is

described as the cow of plenty (Biardeau, 1993). According to research done by

Klostermaier, some laws treat the killing of a man of a lower caste or outcast as a lesser

crime than the killing of a cow (Klostermaier, 2007).

Environmental Impacts
 Many people believe that since cows have religious symbolism in Hinduism,

which is a majority religion in India, cow slaughter has been banned in all of India. Their

lives and treatment are therefore better than in cattle industries in other parts of the

world, but this belief is not correct. While there are some cities in India where cow

slaughter is banned, there are also many cities with no such laws. Even in the states,

where legislation has been passed to ban slaughter, there are many loopholes to get

around these bans (Humane Society, 2005). Global meat production has increased over

300% in the last 30 years, according to Harold Mooney an ecologist and professor at

Stanford University (Mooney, 2010). Livestock farming is a major environmental hazard

throughout the country. According to Mooney, in 2010 there were 1.7 billion animals

used as livestock which in 2010 was nearly a quarter of the worlds human population.

According to Rob Cook, cattle accounts for around half of the total livestock in the world

(Cook, 2016). India, where Hinduism is one of the major religions, has the largest herd

of cattle in the world, in 2009 there was over 170 million cattle to produce milk (Fact

Sheet, 2011). In rural India cow dung is used as fuel and fertilizer as well.

The environmental impact is large throughout every aspect of livestock. In order

to feed the more than 1.7 billion animals requires a lot of food. Feed production requires

a lot of water, fertilizer, pesticides and fossil fuels. Around 10% of Indias course grain

production and 50% of corn goes to animal feed (Fact Sheet, 2011). In 2008, around

22% of the cattle in India was used to produce milk. According to a report released by

the humane society there has been an increase in the demand for dairy products in

India and this will put more and more pressure on the system (Fact Sheet, 2011). This
means that the more traditional forms of raising cattle will be stressed and switched to

higher yield forms of farming, which have a much larger impact.

The production of livestock has many environmental impacts including land use,

greenhouse gas emissions, water use, fossil fuel use and pollution. One of the major

environmental impacts of livestock including cattle is land use. Livestock occupies more

than one-fourth of the earths land (Mooney, 2010). The production of food for livestock

also takes up about one-third of the total arable land (Mooney, 2010). According to the

Humane Society, it is the largest human-induced user of land (Fact Sheet, 2010).

Greenhouse gas emissions are another way that raising cattle impacts the

environment, through the emissions of large amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, and

other greenhouse gases. According to a fact sheet released by the Humane Society in

2011, animal agriculture makes up 18% of the global anthropogenic greenhouse gas

emissions, including 9% of the carbon dioxide, 35-40% of methane and 65% of nitrous

oxide that humans release (Fact Sheet, 2011). All of these greenhouse gases contribute

to climate change.

Water is heavily impacted by cows. There is intensive use of water in producing

one cow. It is estimated that to produce one pound of beef it takes 1,799 gallons of

water (Sparling, et. all, 2016). (McAllister et al., 2012). Since dairy production is the

main market for livestock in India, it is important that I mention the inputs specifically

related to the production of dairy. In order to keep the facilities where the cows are

milked sanitary, many of these facilities have power flushers to remove waste, dirt and

excess milk from the floor. These power flushers use an estimated 150 gallons of water

per cow, per day. The intensive use of water has a major impact on water supply, meat
production also reduces water supply through pollution. Stephanie Kaza mentions the

study in The Consumers Guide to Effective Environmental Choices done by the Union

of Concerned Scientists that meat production is the leading cause of agricultural water

pollution (Kaza, 2008). This is because the manure from feed lots runs off into ground

water.

Fossil fuels are also a large input for meat. It is estimated that one calorie of

animal meat uses 10 times the amount of fossil fuel energy as one calorie of plant

based foods, and more specifically, grain-fed beef requires 35 fossil fuel calories for

every one calorie produced (Good, 2015). The way that fossil fuels are used as inputs

for meat production as somewhat indirect. 75 percent of fossil fuels used in livestock

production comes from feed (Good, 2015). The fertilizers used for the production of feed

are responsible for the majority of the fossil fuel use. According to David Pimental,

ecologists from Cornell who specializes in agriculture and energy, an average steer

consumes 284 gallons of oil in his lifetime (Robbins, 2012). So you can see how the

more by-products of cattle a person consumes, the more fossil fuels they will be

consuming in the process.

Pollution is a by-product of the other four impacts that raising cattle has on the

environment. There are two main ways that livestock produce pollution; waste and

agricultural chemicals. In 2001, the EPA stated A single dairy cow produces about 120

pounds of wet manure per day (EPA, 2001). While in traditional farming methods

manure is used to fertilize the fields, but factory farms produce way to much for the land

to absorb. The second source of pollution is the agricultural chemicals. About 37

percent of agricultural chemicals are used to grow crops for animal feed (United
Nations, 2006). These chemical inputs pollute the land, water, and air with nitrogen,

phosphorus and heavy metals. As I have mentioned, each environmental issue

associated with raising livestock is also somehow associated with pollution. The

massive amounts of land used for the production of livestock gets polluted by the

manure, the air is polluted by greenhouse gases, and the water supply is polluted by

waste and chemicals associated with cattle.

There are many environmental hazards associated with cattle, but most of them

are due to factory farming practices and could be avoided if traditional practices were

implemented. Since the Hindu religion bans violence, or ahmisa, it seems logical that

these cows in India would not be subjected to the horrible treatment associated with

factory farming. While there have been laws passed in many Indian states protecting

the cow, it seems the industrialization and agriculture have found ways around these

laws and continue to produce animal products in an inefficient and violent way.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the sanctity of a cow in the Hindu religion has not abetted the

environmental hazards of raising a cow. With the demand for dairy in India growing

rapidly, there is a need to find ways to convince people that changes in practices need

to be made. Since Hinduism is just the major religion of India and not the only religion it

is important the religious ideologies are combined with economic and social ideologies

in order to find a wholistic solution. It seems that cow worship could be a good place to

start in order to make the shift in the farming practices. Since there has been such a rich

history of humans relationship to cows, economically and spiritually in India, there is

strong pull towards proper treatment of these cows. The good thing about this is that

when you treat the cows better, you also treat the environment better. These go hand in

hand, so as Hindu continues to influence the culture of India, the more likely it is that the

industry will move towards environmentally friendly practices. India is already on the

right track to cutting down their pollutants, but they still have a long way to go.
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