How cow protection laws brutalise our culture

By Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
In my schooldays, we used to have a cow called Gangi. She was tall and white with huge horns. We called her Gangavu with affection. We also had a lot of sheep and goats, some cattle that included buffaloes, two bulls and Gangavu. For a long time, this cow was barren and hence was used as a plough- and cart-pulling animal. However, late in life Gangi delivered a calf. Soon she became sick.

My mother Kancha Kattamma said Gangi should be given to a Dalit (Madiga) family. She was the real economist in our family. Whatever she decided was final.

In my village, every agrarian family used to attach itself to one Dalit family (the process was known as Tega).

Whatever leather products we needed, that family used to give us. All the peasant families were supposed to give all the dead cattle — cows, bulls, bullocks, buffaloes — to the Dalit families. The sheep and goats were sold off to other leather businessmen (mostly Muslims) for cash.

While giving Gangi to our Dalit family, my mother said: “Make good chappals for all the male family members with its skin and, if possible, make one good rope out of it for the plough.”

The Dalit family feasted on its meat, sold the bones to Muslim traders and gave us four pairs of chappals. Our female family members were not supposed to wear chappals. That used to pain me all along.

While my mother was understanding of the food and economic needs of the Dalits, the bad side of her was that if a Dalit woman touched her during work, she had to bathe and clean her clothes. This practice of untouchability among the OBCs is one of the worst things that still survives in our country.

When my father suggested that Gangi should not be given to Dalits because it was the first cow that the family owned, what my mother said held a lesson: “Whether sheep, goat, cow, bull or buffalo, an animal is an animal. We bury or burn human beings because they are human beings. But the animals have to be used for economic benefits, even after their death.”

My mother never believed in the notion of Gaumata, that an animal is more important than human beings. Nor did Gautam Buddha, whom I studied quite carefully. It was Buddha who stopped the unnecessary killing of cattle by the Brahmin priests of his time. He was also the one who emphasised that all animals, including cows, should be used as economic and food animal in a sparing manner.

Cow protection has nothing to do with Indian parampara (tradition). Even if it is seen as parampara, anti-humanitarian, anti-developmental paramparas should be given up. My mother taught me a lesson that we must treat an animal as animal, and human beings as human beings. She also showed me the bad practice of treating Dalits as untouchables. Even though I revere her more than anybody in the world, I refuse to practice such a tradition.

Narendra Modi as an OBC PM should not have allowed all the cow protection laws to be passed and strengthened after he came to power. He should have understood that these laws result in unemployment and stall development.

They also brutalise our culture. He should have asked for a slow repeal of all such laws as they have caused a lot of underdevelopment even during the earlier regimes. Earlier, the Congress made such laws under the pressure of the same Hindutva forces and anti-developmental Gandhians. Modi should have focused on an anti-untouchability campaign, as he is focussed on the Swachh Bharat Mission. Cowprotection campaigns will destroy the civilisational credibility of India. What my mother did has a lesson for Modi.

(The author is a writer and an activist)