The Controversy over Beef - Part 2

“Not since Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses ... has a book caused such a violent reaction.” (Observer). “The Government of India asked for the book to be ritually burnt”. (this claim is curiously missing from subsequent editions of the book). “The book was banned by a Hyderabad Civil Court”. “His book was turned down by its original publishers in Delhi, who were afraid of provoking the Hindu fanatics who have recently been seen vandalising art exhibitions and burning books. One extremist even sentenced Jha to death in a fatwa…”

These lines are for 'The Myth of the Holy Cow' by DN Jha, the book which invariably gets mentioned when the left liberal brigade wants to berate the odium on beef. The book is ‘mentioned’ not referred or quoted, as it is quite likely that hardly any, if any at all, of the champions of the book have actually read the book.

Please read and decide if I be excused for suspecting that the above quotes are a part of an elaborate myth making process? After all, what sells better than the story of an upright academician, pursuing the truth against all hostile currents, finally managing to product a magnum opus which has the might of the State descending upon him and its henchmen baying for his blood? 

Unfortunately for Jha, he is not Salman Rushdie or even Taslima Nasreen! The elaborate myth making falls hollow when one goes through records of the days when the book was published and realises that the release was a non-event. Except for some reviews and self references, there is hardly any mention of the book in news archives of those days. Neither was there a ban on the book by any court (a conditional restraining order in not a ban) nor did the BJP call for the book to be burnt. And the mandatory death threat, which figures so prominently in Jha’s resume, has its root in a stray comment made by fellow traveller, Pankaj Mishra, in his review of the book on The Guardian. Of course, minor details of who made the threat, when was it made and what were the rewards of the fatwa were conveniently omitted.

A scholarly work is supposed to a work of research and conclusions drawn scientifically from research findings. The researcher may start either with a hypothesis or a question and at the end of the study, the researcher is supposed to either affirm or reject his hypothesis or answer the question if answered or continue with further research if the question remains unanswered. But what about research where the findings are pre-construed? Here, the researcher goes through the motion of research, provides copious references (like the students who write long answers hoping the evaluator judges basis form rather than substance) and concludes what had been planned right from the beginning. Don’t believe me? Let me elucidate. I have a hypothesis that lying down is the most dangerous posture that a human being can adopt. I now analyze data to calculate the percentage of people who died while lying down and presto, I declare that with more than 98% deaths appearing when the person is lying down, the horizontal human posture is biggest cause of deaths since time immemorial!

If the reader has drawn an assumption that I have denigrated Prof Jha’s book with such comparison, I must humbly submit that much more is to follow. If, even for a moment, we manage to ignore the screaming biases in the work, we cannot at all ignore his propensity to present half truths and untruths when referring to ancient works. His hatred for the religiously inclined Hindus is so intense that he condemns the out of court settlement on the class action suit which had been bought against McDonald for use of beef tallow in its fries. Try howsoever hard, the fair reader is unable to empathise with Jha’s rage against those who were being fed something which is a taboo for them. To be fair, the title of the book itself gives away what the author desires to expound. But, it will do well to ponder on the relevance of the title in today’s context. It cannot be denied, even by Prof Jha, that a very large number of Hindus consider the cow holy and an object of veneration today. Hence, the bovine’s holiness today, howsoever reprehensible to Prof Jha, is not a myth but a fact. If, on the other hand, Prof Jha’s attempt is to show that the cow is not holy per se, I humbly submit that nothing in the world is holy unless the believing choose to attribute and see holiness in the said object. Why go after the poor cow alone?

Now, a little on the physical attributes of this piece which has become the bible of the beef propagators in India. Sans the introduction and bibliography, it runs to about 132 small, lightly scaped pages. Of these, 47 odd pages are endnotes, leaving around 85 pages for the text. More of a longish essay rather than a book, from the looks of it. But if the readers are looking for copious references to beef eating in our ancient texts, they will be a little disappointed. For, the majority of this book is devoted on the flesh eating habits of the ancient Indians. Yes, not beef but flesh. Reams are devoted on the culinary spread at the time of the Epics, the early Aryans, the Buddha, the Mauryan and the later periods and how it included meats of various kinds. Unfortunately for Prof Jha, Indians have never seen themselves as a vegetarian people. Except for the numerically small Brahmin community, the North India & the Gujarati Baniyas, hardly any other Indian caste has been vegetarian by practice. If we further account for the gradual adoption of meat / fish by sections of Indian Brahmins, i.e., Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Maithili, Konkanastha and Gaur, we find the number of vegetarian India communities shrinking even further. So, what exactly does Prof Jha intend, except to add to the miniscule bulk of his book by harping on meat, escapes us.

I may be accused of being pretentious for my attempt towards dissection of the work of a tenured professor. I can only point to my reader that my analysis is basis the same texts which the professor speaks of, analysis of what he himself has referred to, written and concluded and a perusal of the end notes which he has provided. The best way to decide if the book is worth the paper on which it is printed is to read and analyze it critically, something which I have attempted in my own way.

Broadly, Prof Jha has adopted the following approach in authoring this book:

·     Provide a large number of references, whether relevant or not: Frankly, the quantum of end notes provided seems intimidating. And ‘seems’ is what it really is. A large number of these references are from contemporary news reports and articles – a large number of which are mere comments. Of how much relevance is a journalist’s musing in Times of India to cow in the Vedic era is not even a question! Again, a very large number of references are not from the main text it is supposed to be referring to. For example, references to Rama are not from the original or even any translation of Valmiki Ramayana but from other works, prominently from JL Brockington’s ‘The Righteous Rama’, which is not a translation but a commentary on his view point on the epic over the ages! Finally, the references are plain incorrect. For example, at one instance, he refers to a story of Kathasaritasagar where a celestial nymph was cursed was having caught a Veena’s string in her teeth. While Prof Jha states the string to be of cowhide (how can hide be made into a string?), the unabridged translation mentions it to be the intestine of a goat!

·      Damn if you do, damn if you don’t (refer) – Prof Jha has referred to the absence of strong explicit prohibitions to cow slaughter and beef consumption in texts like the Manu Smriti to infer that the cow was not sacred enough to warrant such prohibitions. At the same time, when he refers to the later Dharmashastras or the Ved Vyasa Smriti’s references to prohibitions, he calls them as mere exhortations on the excess of beef eating and contends that the references prove that beef was indeed widely eaten. He surely needs to make up his mind, whether absence or presence is proof enough for him.

·     Treating outliers as the main reference – Not sparing even the Jain texts, Prof Jha refers to Aapad Dharma (exemptions when faced with calamities) and medical texts to proclaim that beef for indeed eaten. Perhaps it escapes him that the exceptions allowed in face of exigencies mean that they are to be exercised when faced with exigencies, not on everyday basis. The survivors of the Andes Flight disaster of Oct, 1972 ate the bodies of their teammates. Can we equate that with cannibalism in modern societies? Or, laws of most countries allow offense in the course of self defense. Does that mean that attacking, killing people is legally sanctioned today? Of course not!

·      Treating commentaries as periodic proof – A reading of history most of the times means that someone today has written on what prevailed in the days gone by. A commentary on Gita written by a Gandhi or a Tilak means that they are presenting their understanding of the narrative, as it happened. No sane person will take a stand that writing a commentary on a work written say a millennium back means that what was then, applies today. Well, the curious gets curiouser. Prof Jha refers to many commentaries on the Dharmashastras (all composed by 6^th century AD) written till the 18^th century and notes that those references mean that beef eating was prevalent even in the 18^th century!

·       Presenting known beef eating communities as representative – As indicated in the previous essay, the chandala people of India have always been beef eaters – eaters of the meat of the dead cow, who they would dispose off. It would be they who would cure its hide and bones, which would in turn be used by those who would otherwise get defiled by the touch of cow meat. Our literature is full of instances where a chandala is depicted as carrying slabs of cow meat and getting shunned by one and all. So, Prof Jha’s contention on the chandala people eating beef being representative of a beef eating culture is plain mischievous.

·    Coming to the more serious aspect of Prof’s Jha work where he resorts to Misrepresentations, Half truths and untruths ­– Obsessed with the idea of proving that the cow was as much an eatable as rice, Prof Jha, in all likelihood frustrated by the absence of relevant reference material in support of his hypothesis, falls back on deplorable skullduggery. For example, while the term goghna, i.e., guest, also taken to be cow-slayer, has been flogged to death, that the cow is declared aghanya in the Vedas, is mentioned as a mere appellation. The Vedas and the Dharmashastras talk only of cow sacrifice on special occasions and the cow is always Vasa, i.e., barren cow and more often than not, the cattle that is sacrificed are bullocks, ox or heifers. Sacrifice of milch cow has been condemned in almost all of the religious texts since the ancient times. Prof Jha has on numerous instances narrated Yajnavalkya’s taste for beef who said: “I for one eat it, provided it is tender (amsala)”.(Satpatha Brahmana III 1, 2, 21). But, strangely enough, we are to face two exhortations in the same Brahmana (I 2 3, 6-9 ) against eating beef which obviously do not find any mention in what Jha has to write. Rantideva is another character who crops up again and again as the pious king whose kitchen ‘prepared the meat of 2000 cows everyday’. The story as per the Mahabharat (Anusasan parva, Third Chapter) states that the pious King Rantideva performed a Chaturmas yagna wherein a group of cows approached him offering themselves as the yagna sacrifice. After many remonstrations, the king agreed with a condition that the sacrificed was to be stopped if a cow even hesitated before stepping on to the altar. Before long, a cow wept looking at her calf and the sacrifice stopped. So, a one time incident, that too a ritually sanctioned sacrifice was expanded to be a daily culinary feast!

Coming back to the Brahmin eating the cow (rituals, visitation, ceremonies), Prof Jha certainly seems to believe that the priestly classes of the yore were towering men with colossal appetites. Since donation of the cow or godaan is a ritual which exists only as myths, Prof Jha makes the jajman kill a cow or an ox and serve it to the gluttonous Brahmin. I don’t blame the poor jajman though. I too, would be scared of a figure which could polish off an entire cow in a meal. No sir, if not the cow, it would be me and I take refuge in aapaad dharma.

I don’t know which version of the Arthashastra has the venerable Prof referred to when he claims that the text does not talk of the cow. Well, the Penguin edition of the book (R Shamasastry & RP Kangle) has chapters devoted to animals, their upkeep and penalties, which incidentally talk of the standard punishment for even hitting the cattle. While bulls are not immune to killing, killing of the milch cows, and calves, though permitted for sacrificial purposes, is forbidden for butchers’ stalls. But what can we expect, the Prof would want us readers to believe that Sita’s desire for the Golden deer was driven by her desire to eat its meat when the Valmiki Ramayana talks of Sita’s wish to get it as a plaything or if capture was not possible, getting its skin for a mat. Incidentally, in the same canto, Sita accepts that her desire is cruel and unladylike but that the she is besotted on the deer.

Prof Jha triumphantly exclaims that there is no cow temple in India and hence it’s a proof that the cow is not a Goddess. My, my. When the living animal is considered a Goddess, why does one need to build temples for her? Even otherwise, none of the Vedic Gods (Vayu, Varuna, Indra, Agni, Ashwins) other than the Sun, have temples dedicated to them. Does it mean that their holiness is a myth too? And what about Gopashtmi, the day of the cow? Sadly, Prof Jha could hardly be expected to know anything of the Hindu religion as it is practiced.

·     Finally, the most important aspect - faulty premise – The underlying theme of Prof Jha’s attempt at research is ‘What was considered acceptable in the hoary days are the only things which can demand continuity’. The realization is bound to make him unhappy but, religions are living and like any other organism, evolve with time. Today, we worship Gods who were hardly mentioned in the Vedic era and likewise, hardly venerate Gods who held sway then. We were a sacrifice oriented people then and have since evolved to a sagun bhakti oriented people. Moving away from Hinduism, Sikhism evolved from Hinduism while both Islam and Christianity evolved from Judaism. There are so many minor religions and sects which have evolved in the last century alone. If we apply Prof Jha’s totalitarian dogmas, it would mean that none of these later day beliefs have reason to even claim existence. It is ironical but Prof Jha belongs to the same ilk of people who have otherwise have no use of India’s ancient religious traditions. Why does he even bother with something which he does not understand?

This list can go on without serving any further benefit. ‘The Myth of the Holy Cow’ is not a book but a propaganda pamphlet and deserves to be treated so. The book miserably fails to establish the prevalence of beef eating as a food habit in the Vedic era and exposes itself by its callous disregard for later Hinduism (3^rd Century AD onwards), wherein the cow was accorded the prominence it enjoys today. For Jha, beef eating as a taboo was invented by the British, just the way the Hindu Muslim divide never existed before the British. So what if conversion to Islam was not considered complete till the convert ate beef or the surest way to defile a temple or a well was to throw cow entrails in it (Akbar in Kangra, Abdali in Amritsar just to name a few). Medieval Indian writings record the disgust the Indians had for the foreigners, who were considered Mlechas, the unclean ones, the eaters of the cow. For whatever he would want us to believe, Swami Dayanand Saraswati was not the originator of the cow protection sentiment. Yes, he was the moving force being the movement and blessed Gau Rakshini Sabhas. The movement was built upon the sentiment and not vice versa. The reference to Arya Samaj is interesting in another sense. A Swami, who was on expert on the Vedas and the one who had no time for what he believed were non-Vedic practices, could hardly be expected to venerate the cow, if the practice did not have Vedic sanction.

While the Prof has struggled in compiling this book and the same remains a tiny piece of work in spite of all the tactics he could adopt, he would do well to refer to the other aspect and see for himself the greatness our scriptures have bestowed on the cow. Had he done so, and written a book on the lines of ‘Why is the Cow Holy’, he could have written an infinitely more valid tome, running into hundreds of pages, as can be seen from the two short narratives as below:

A short narrative on the Rigvedic King Sudasa (The Battle of Ten Kings).

Once, the Sudasa of the Ishvaku dynasty asked his chief priest Vasishtha thus: “O Saint! What is sacred in this world?” 

“O Sudasa! Cow is sacred in the entire world. Cow is the abode for Havis. Cow is the life for all creatures. Lakshmi stays where cows stay. Cow is the ladder to climb to heaven. Human beings shall give away one cow from out of ten cows as Godana. Saluting cow in morning bestows great Punya. Cow dung, cow urine are sacred but consuming cow meat is a great sin. Cleaning house with cow dung and consuming cow urine as medicine are advisable.” said Vasishtha to King Sudasa.

Or a short narrative from the Mahabharata.

Once Suka, son of Vyasa, asked his father thus: “O father! which is greater than all and which is essential for performing Yagna?

“O my son Suka! none is equal to cow in this world. Cow is essential for performing yagnas. Once Brahma told the saints thus: “Cows are sacred. Cows are essential for performing Yagnas. All troubles vanish on the sight of a cow. If cow milk, cow urine and cow dung are taken for three days as medicine, it cures all diseases. Cow ghee gives human being brightness. Chanting Gomati Mantra amidst cows, purifies body and mind. Chanting Gomati Mantra in front of Brahmins and Cows accomplishes all desires. Hence Cow is said to be best of all” said Vyasa.