Notes from the Field: Hinduism and Livestock in India
Correspondence with Dr. G. K. Karanth, Institute
for Social
and Economic Change,
Bangalore, India, and field work in South, West, and North India by Ingolf
Vogeler.
An ancient Hindu verse says that he who kills, eats, or permits the slaughter of a cow will "rot in hell for as many years as there are hairs on the body of the cow so slain!" In Jainism practicing ahimsa, the sacredness of life, is very distinctive. India has 250 million cattle.
Click on the map and graph for more details.
Read an interview with Marvin Harris, author of the chapter on the Sacred Cow Complex in your Reader.
Draft power
Bullocks
(castrated "Brahmin" bulls) are the most common animals to pull plows for
growing crops for human consumption. Bullocks also pull carts and wagons in
rural and urban settings. Cows (female cattle) pull plows in the semi-arid regions of India, even though they are
sacred. If the number of cows were decreased by government decree and action,
what would small-scale, one-cow farm families do without their cows. Who would
pull the plows to grow grain for human consumption? Could they afford
tractors? Look what happened in
Switzerland as late as the 1970s on small farm operations.
Water buffalo are used to plow in the wet-climate and heavy-soil regions of India.
Dung
Cattle manure is dried, in this example on a brick
wall, and used for fuel to cook food for people. The shortage of wood
and the lack of income to buy fuel results in dung being used for fuel rather
than for fertilizing fields. European pioneers on the Great Plains
of the United States at first also used dried animal (buffalo) manure, called buffalo
chips, for fuel because of the lack of wood.
Milk production
The bulk of commercial milk in India comes from water buffaloes. Cows are important
for milk products for small-scale farmers for home consumption. In
Europe, dairy products, especially butter, also played an important role in
religion, the Protestant Reformation.
Cattle worship
Both sexes of cattle are sacred, although most southern Indian villages have a temple
dedicated only to the sacred bull! Cattle
(in Nepal, the only official Hindu country in the world) are commonly seen walking on streets and in public
places, such as temples, and even in stores. Read more. Professional and middle class Indians "bless" their new homes
by
bringing a cow into their homes for religious ceremonies.
Killing livestock: examples of
water buffalo
and cattle
in Cochin, South India, where over 75 people of the people are Christians.
Under Hinduism all animals, including livestock (cattle
and buffaloes), are sacred and must not be killed because this results in
ill health or bad luck for individuals and is an offence to the village
community. Hindu farmers avoid the quilt of killing livestock by selling
them to non-Hindu (essentially Muslim) buyers who slaughter the cattle. The
Dalits, or better known as "untouchable" castes, can and do eat meat.
Examine the photos from Kathmandu, Nepal, to the left.
Class structure in rural India
80% of India's population lives in rural areas and there are 90 million poor
households. The richest 10% of households own 81%
of all land assets; the poorest 10% of households own
0.1% of all land assets.
Optional: take a trip to India and learn more about India religions and other aspects of life here.
In the 14th century, the Roman Catholic Church prohibited butter eating on fast days, a decision which did not please the butter-eating nations of northern Europe. They felt they were being forced to eat inferior oil, and many of the wealthy paid, grudgingly, for dispensations that allowed them to eat butter on fast days, providing revenue for the Church in the oil-eating south. This practice, among others, outraged Martin Luther in 1520 when he wrote: "Eating butter they say is a greater sin than to lie, blaspheme, or indulge in impurity." It is no coincidence that the countries where butter was preferred broke away from the Church during the Protestant Reformation.
The Role of
Religion in the USA
Max Weber, the founder of sociology, claimed
that the Protestant Ethic -- emphasizing
thrift and hard work -- made northern European and the USA rich. Niall
Ferguson, a British-born historian at a USA university, argues that today's
economic stagnation in Germany and other European countries owes much to the
decline of religious beliefs and church attendance during the last forty years.
He thinks the Protestant Ethic is dead. Yet more
prosperous countries have lower rates of church attendance; the USA being a
notable exception. More urbanized countries tend to be less religious as well.
Religious beliefs (in the afterlife, heaven and
hell), not necessarily behavior, such as church attendance,
seem to motivate people more. Then there is Japan
with its many sects but no fear of hell and it grew faster after World War II
than Catholic Philippines. Officially, atheist China grew very rapidly in the
last ten years, but not earlier! Religion like other
explanatory variables is used by different ideological perspectives to make
their case respectively.
Read Barbara Ehrenreich's take on religion, ideology, and current affairs.