Introduction
The result of cows roaming free in India and not slathered has resulted in an excess number of 283 million cows. If India's cattle population was counted as a population, it would be the 4th most populous country in the world. And bizarre is 7 million cows are completely homeless, that’s almost the same as the population of Arizona wandering the streets of India without food and shelter.
Cows and buffaloes roaming the streets and eating garbage bins are a common sights in almost every part of India. Even though there has been government involvement in this, the problem still exists. Now, let’s see why cows are very sacred in India. Let’s see from one era to another!
Agricultural Era
Let’s go back to our ancestor’s age. Our agricultural era. This started with farming as the main source of food for a family. During this time cattle were left around to work at the field, goats and cows gave milk, sheep gave wool and so forth. What happened was during the time of famine. When agriculture was hit and they couldn’t produce anything from the field. But during this time too, the cow gave milk to the family and kept them alive. From this milk, they created cheese, curd, etc to feed their family. This indirectly resulted in the natural selection process where the families with the cow survived. This made people to believe in cows as Gods or sacred animals and who shouldn’t be killed and should be kept for the family’s survival.
Vitamins and minerals
Another way to look into is the vitamins and minerals the cow gives. The milk the mother gives to her children has the same essence as cow’s milk. Milk contains antibiotics and protein to protect us from infections and regulate our immune system. This is the reason we swap mother’s milk with cow’s milk after a certain age. This can also happen in situations where the mother is unable to produce her own milk. In these contexts, we have grown up drinking cow’s milk which we equally respect to our mother’s milk. This is the reason why we call cows as Mother God since it is next to our mother in terms of health and nourishing us.
Religion
Hinduism is practiced by 80% of Indians or roughly 1.1 billion people. As a result, most states in India prohibit the slaughter of cows and ban the consumption of beef. Hinduism elevated cows from their ordinary status to a more sacred status. Hinduism started to consider cows as a symbol of prosperity since they provided everything for a family.
Cows in ancient scripture
In many Hindus scriptures, cows are termed as Agnya, which means that “which may not be killed”. In Bhagavad Purana, the earth is visualized as a cow. Ord Vishnu gained the name Gopala which means the “protector of cows”. Also, Lord Krishna in the supreme court of Hinduism is depicted as a cow herder.
The belief
As we grow up, we grow up drinking cow’s milk. Same as our mother’s milk which has the same nutrients. If one day, we say we need to eat the cow, it is considered as cannibalism. This is deep-rooted in us.
Human emotion
Since the cow is living with you for years and years, it is basically emotionally attached to the person or the family. It has become one of the members of the family and thus created a sense of cannibalism to cow slaughter.
FUN FACT: The BJP ruled the state of Rajasthan has a cow minister. There are campaigns going on demanding that the cow should replace the tiger as the national animal- a minister in Haryana also ruled by the BJP promptly began an online poll.
Politics in 1882
Hindu religious leader Dayananda Saraswati founded the first cow protection committee. It made the animal a symbol of unity of a widespread people, challenged the Muslim practices of its slaughter and provoked a series of communal riots in the 1880s and 1890s. Subsequently, with the rise of the ideal of ahimsa (non-violence), the absence of the desire to harm living creatures, the cow came to symbolize a life of non-violent generosity.
Politics in Modern India
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The central fact of Hinduism is cow protection”. On 26 October 2005, the Supreme Court of India, in a landmark judgment upheld the constitutional validity of anti-cow slaughter laws enacted by different state governments in India. 20 out of 28 states in India had various laws regulating acts of slaughtered cows, prohibiting the slaughter or sale of cows.
Arunachal, Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura and West Bengal are the states where there are no restrictions on cow slaughter. Modi government poured $41 million into cow sheds between 2014 and 2016. But this didn’t do much to the left alone 7 million cows.
Festival Celebration
Govatsa Dwadashi which marks the first day of the Diwali celebration is connected to the veneration and worship of cows as the chief source of livelihood and religious sanctity in India, wherein the symbolism of motherhood is most apparent with the sacred cows Kamadhenu and daughter Nandini.
Why Cow not a goat?
A cow can produce 5 times more milk than a goat. 70% of Indians were vegetarian back in the 20th century and thus the demand for milk was monumental. Hence India adopted goat from meat and Cow for milk. Other reasons might be that cows existed in India long before buffaloes were introduced. Cows are known to be existing in Indian as early as 10,000 years back while buffalos were known to have been around 5000 years. In Hindu scripture, the God of Death Yama, arrives on a black buffalo.
Government Involvement
Especially since the enforcement of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (regulation of livestock markets) rules in 2017, the sale of cattle to slaughterhouses for use as meat or leather has become very difficult. The law has also severely impacted several communities involved in such businesses, including lower caste Hindus, for whom beef is a cheap and important source of food.
FACT: India continues to be the largest exporter of Beef- 80% of its buffalo meat.
Conclusion
Farmers are letting them loose when they can’t afford to feed them or when they become old. This leads to these cows wandering the street. According to the experts, these stray animals are suffering from a severe disease that has reduced their productivity. At least 36 percent of the stray cattle are suffering from intestinal TB. This disease reduces the milk yielding ability of animals. Gradually, they even become infertile after producing only 2-3 offspring after which the farmer abandons them.
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