Holy cow! Push to outlaw beef in India seen as cultural oppression
As Hindu politicians campaign to ban beef throughout India, critics blast the move as food fundamentalism, unfair on the diverse nation's Muslim, Christian and Dalit populations, reports Amrit Dhillon
It's early morning and Radha Kant Vats is stroking the neck of one of the 140 residents of his "cow shelter", a retirement home for elderly bovines. Against a backdrop of noisy evacuation, he explains why he reveres the animal.
"The cow is the most useful animal in the world. It gives us milk, its dung can be used as fuel, its urine has disinfecting properties, when it dies we can use every part of her body. It's a mother in the way it nurtures us all."
As he walks around the shelter, in Geeta Colony, in east Delhi, feeding some, touching the heads of others as though blessing them, Vats, an ayurvedic doctor, laments, "Indians are no longer drinking enough cow milk. This is ruining our mental and physical health, [disrupting] our haemoglobin levels, giving us autoimmune diseases and causing road rage, divorce, diabetes and rape. But …," he shakes his head sadly, "the elite don't understand this."
Vats is surrounded by young men who hang on his every word. When they hear of a cow being taken to slaughter (a practice that is banned in the Indian capital), they give chase on scooters and, if they manage to catch the vehicle being used, they drag the driver and other culprits to the police station and bring the rescued beast to the shelter.
Throughout the day, residents of Geeta Colony, a noisy, crowded, scruffy neighbourhood, pop into the shelter with food scraps, making a point of feeding some of the cows themselves. It's a gesture of affection and Vats watches approvingly.
"I've been taught from childhood that the cow has a special status, so I bring some leftovers every morning on my way to the metro station," says 24-year-old com-puter engineer Akash Gupta, as he pats the animal he has just fed.
