If beef-eating is indeed becoming common in India, that’s not good news for many different reasons
ANew York Times report, ‘Cow thefts on the rise in India', dated May 26, claims that beef-eating is becoming more common in India. Even people for whom flesh is taboo, are taking to it. If true, this should be cause for alarm since it indicates increasing deracination of Hindus and others of Indic faiths. Significantly, there are no reports on the rise in consumption of pork or non-kosher/non-halaal meat by Jews and Muslims. Specific dietary restrictions and taboos being integral to different faiths, forsaking these threaten their very survival.
The report refers to cattle-lifting and how “scrawny cows, which are slowly losing their sacred status among some in India” are traded for meat and leather. It further claims that “increasingly affluent Indians” have developed a taste for meat, even beef. Stray cattle are routinely picked up by criminals and sold to illegal slaughter houses. Claiming that much of the illicit beef may be camouflaged as buffalo meat, there is an underground trade in beef, quite like the secret drug trade. Once exposed to the pleasure, says one Anuj Agarwal, in the article, “...you're not going to go back to fruits and vegetables”.
The report inexplicably avers that increasing focus on milk production has turned cows intro tradable commodities. One reason cited for the cows' decreasing sanctity is the import of foreign breeds that are not considered sacred. But even imported breeds cannot be slaughtered under existing laws. While studies have established the superiority of the desi A2 type milk over the foreign A1 milk, blamed for triggering metabolic diseases, the State continues to sponsor cross-breeding programmes. The fact that ‘Mad Cow’ disease, causing brain degeneration, resulted from cattle in Western countries being fed entrails of slaughtered animals, has not deterred some from proposing that desi cattle be given fish-sourced feed!
The attempt to link the great spiritual tradition of gau seva with commerce has led to the devaluation of cattle. Consequently, cows that go dry, bulls and calves are slaughtered for leather, bones and flesh. In its true sense, service to cows and, by extension, cattle is done through devotion, these sacred animals being considered repositories of all deities. Donating for the upkeep of cattle, therefore, is integral to dharma. And cattle also give liberally: Milk and its products, and dung and urine, cheaper options to toxic agrochemicals, used now in agriculture, with detrimental effects on water systems, food chain and health.
Reverence for the cow, along with Ganga and Gayatri, are the cornerstones of Sanatan Dharma, the perennial faith, now called Hinduism. The gods are gojaat, kin of cows, and if veneration for cows and the gods ceases, Sanatan Dharma also ceases to exist. The British Raj set in force an insidious plan to subvert tradition via distorted translations of the Vedas and other Sanskrit religious texts.
Rajendralal Mitra in 1872 published an essay, ‘Beef in Ancient India'. This was expanded into a book, Indo-Aryans: Contributions towards the Elucidation of their Ancient and Medieval history. Drawing from Western translations of Sanskrit texts, his exposition of the Aryan milieu showed celestial beings, sages, the avatars Ram, laxman, Sita, lord Krishna and his brother Balaram, their consorts and regal early Yadavs, males and females alike, as fierce carnivores and fond of spirits. Fermentation of alcohol was detailed as well as the gruesome manner in which animals were killed, cows and bulls burnt alive at yagyas — such sacrifice being an old Judaic and Mediterranean religious practice — and birds roasted for feasts. These depictions were meant to evoke disgust among natives for their forbears and religion, thereby, making them more open to conversion.
The author observed: “It depicts a state of society so entirely different from what we are familiar with in the present day, or in the later Sanskrit literature, that one is almost tempted to imagine that the people who took part in it were some sea-kings of Norway, or Teuton knights carousing after a fight, and not Hindus”.
Influential translations of old Sanskrit books by late 18th and 19th century Orientalists such as Sir William Jones, Max Muller, M Monier Williams, Horace Hayman Wilson, Johann Georg Buhler, Rudolph Hoernle, George Thibaut, Ralph TH Griffith and their ilk were considered by devout Hindus and Indologists of an opposing school as being entrenched with grave errors. Professor Monier Williams, second Boden Professor of Sanskrit in Oxford University, revealed why lt Colonel Joseph Boden of the Bombay Native Infantry founded the Boden Chair in his will, dated August 15, 1811: “...promote the translations of Scriptures into Sanskrit; so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion”.
Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati refuted colonial renderings via his commentaries on Rig Veda and Yajur Veda and other works. Yet, challenging authentic translations, academic DN Jha reiterated the wholly discredited beef-eating refrain in his 2002 book, Myth of the Holy Cow. It was published in london and New York.
