Cow
slaughter and consumption of Beef was a part of Hindu culture and religious practice.
The Hindu Kings did not ban cow slaughter or consumption of Beef among Hindus.
The only ones who banned Slaughter or cows and consumption of beef were the
Sikhs and what Indian Hindus campaigning against the slaughter of cows were actually
a Sikh practice and not a Hindu practice. read below more to understand.
History of Brahmin diet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vegetarianism is an integral part of most schools of Hinduism although there are a wide variety of practices and beliefs that have changed over time. An estimated 20 to 30% of all Hindus are vegetarians.Most sects of Hindus do not observe vegetarianism[ Dietary habits and dietary customs were factors that have played roles in the formation, evolution and development of Indian caste system
Mahabharata there is a mention of a king named Rantideva who achieved great fame by distributing foodgrains and beef to Brahmins. Taittiriya Brahman categorically tells us: `Verily the cow is food' (atho annam via gauh) and Yajnavalkya's insistence on eating the tender (amsala) flesh of the cow is well known. Even later Brahminical texts provide the evidence for eating beef. Even Manusmriti did not prohibit the consumption of beef.
Aryans of the Rig Veda did kill cows for purposes of food and ate beef is abundantly clear from the Rig Veda itself. In Rig Veda (X. 86.14) Indra says that twenty bulls were cooked for him. The Rig Veda (X.91.14) says that for Agni were sacrificed horses, bulls, oxen, barren cows and rams. From the Rig Veda (X.72.6) it appears that the cow was killed with a sword or axe.
The Muslims has started eating beef only after knowing this, and they left eating pork. The Muslims came from Arab were carrying pork meet as it was richest source of energy.
Ancient India
A bull seal from the Indus Valley Civilization.
A 2nd Century A.D sculpture of Nandi bull.
A bull bas relief in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu.
The first sovereign Prithu chasing earth-goddess Prithvi, who is in the form of a cow. According to the Puranas, ancient Hindu texts eulogizing various deities, Prithu milked the cow to generate crops for humans.
The cow has been a symbol of wealth in India since ancient times.However, they were neither inviolable nor revered in the same way today. and in the Vedic period cows, buffaloes and bulls were frequently slaughtered, both for consumption and in sacrifices. Cattle slaughter and beef eating began to be disfavoured by lawgivers from the middle of the first millennium. The cow was possibly revered because Hindus relied heavily on it for dairy products and for tilling the fields, and on cow dung as a source of fuel and fertilizer. Thus, the cow’s status as a "caretaker" led to identifying it as an almost maternal figure (hence the term gau mata (mother cow)). Buddha pointed out that ritualistic practices like animal sacrifices are not good. This became one of the core preachings of Buddhism, which was later adopted by Hinduism. Jainism also played a role in cow protection idea in Hinduism.
In the olden days cattle being limited to select few fortunate folks, the cows enjoyed the status that gold or money enjoys today. In addition, it has been suggested by author and orator Terence McKenna that religious reverence for the cow is a result of early humankind's association of psilocybin mushroom with it, this association having developed as a result of the discovery of said mushrooms in the animal's excrement. Panchagavya, a mixture of five products of cow milk, curd, ghee, urine and dung, is used in Brahmanical rituals. The mixture is also smeared on ulcers as a healing product
Hinduism is based on the concept of omnipresence of the Divine, and the presence of a soul in all creations including bovine. God Krishna, one of the incarnations (Avatar), tended cows. The cow and bull represent the symbol of Dharma.
According to legend, Chola King Manu Needhi Cholan killed his own son to provide justice to a cow. The king hung a giant bell in front of his courtroom for anyone needing justice to ring. One day, he came out on hearing the ringing of the bell by a cow. Upon inquiry he found that the calf of that cow was killed under the wheels of his son's chariot. In order to provide justice to the cow, he killed his own son Veedhividangan in the same manner that the calf had been killed.
Medieval India
Cow slaughter again became prominent in India in the medieval age after 1000 AD, when parts of India were ruled by various Islamic rulers of Arab and Central Asian Turkic origin. According to Islamic traditions in Arab countries, goats and sheep were killed as a sacrifice. On special occasions they would sacrifice camels. Islamic rulers, from Central and West Asia were not habituated to eating beef, as there were no cows in Arab countries. After Islamic rulers arrived in India, they began sacrificing cows, particularly on the occasion of Bakri-Id.
Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire and Maharaja from 1801 to 1839, banned cow slaughter throughout his domains.[39] Ralph Fitch, a gentleman merchant of London and one of the earliest English travellers to India wrote a letter home in 1580 stating, "They have a very strange order among them - they worship a cow and esteem much of the cow's dung to paint the walls of their houses ... They eat no flesh, but live by roots and rice and milk."
In 1756–57, in what was his fourth invasion of India, the founder of the Durrani Empire, Ahmad Shāh Durrānī sacked Delhi and plundered Agra, Mathura, and Vrndavana. On his way back to Afghanistan, he attacked the Golden Temple in Amritsar and filled its sacred pool with the blood of slaughtered cows. This final act was to be the start of long lasting bitterness between Sikhs and Afghans. Hyder Ali, sultan and de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore from 1761 to 1782, made cow slaughter an offence punishable with the cutting of the hands of the offenders
Mughal Empire
The Mughal emperor Humayun stopped eating beef after the killing of cows in a Hindu territory by his soldiers led to clashes, according to the Tezkerah al-Vakiat. Later Mughal emperors Akbar (reign: 1556 – 1605), Jahangir (1605 – 1627), and Ahmad Shah (1748 – 1754), it is said, imposed selective restricted bans on cow slaughter.
Cow slaughter was not prohibited during the reign of Aurangzeb. In 1645, soon after being appointed Governor of Gujarat, Aurangzeb converted the Chintamani Parshvanath Jain temple near Sarashpur, Gujarat into a mosque, and ordered that a cow be slaughtered in the shrine.[48][49] The building was later restored to the Hindus, by order of Aurangzeb's father, then emperor Shah Jahan.[50]
In present-day Punjab, India, a delegation to the 9th Sikh guru Guru Tegh Bahadur told him that " ... Cows are everywhere being slaughtered. If any cow or buffalo belonging to a Hindu is mortally ill the qazi comes and kills it on the spot. ... If we fail to inform the qazi when a beast is dying he punishes us ... "
The last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar banned cow slaughter in 1857 in the territories he nominally controlled, a couple of months before being deposed and deported to Burma by the British. Zafar banned the butchery of cows, forbade the eating of beef and authorised for anyone found killing a cow the terrible punishment of being blown from a canon.
Maratha Empire
The Maratha Empire through the late 17th and 18th centuries was typically inclusive of all groups regardless of religious belief. Religious minorities such as Muslims, Jains and Parsis were given jobs, and other kinds of help such as hereditary grants in return for service, revenue rights and allowances; and permitted to build places of worship, sometimes with funding from the state. However, this tolerance of religious differences became sharply delineated with regard to cow protection.
The Maratha Empire took extensive steps to inhibit cow slaughter. However, some historians suggest that the crackdown on cow slaughter was enforced more rigorously on the empire's frontiers, which would suggest that it was partly connected with the empire's need to assert control over newly gained territories, and build support among the populace within shifting political boundaries.
In 1683, Sambhaji, the eldest son of Shivaji, is said to have executed a "Mahomedan of rank" for having killed a cow. Two Muslim butchers were publicly executed in Pune in 1775, for killing a cow and selling its meat. The hands and feet of another butcher implicated in the same crime, were cut off, and the men who bought the meat (mostly Muslims, but at least one Chamar) were fined. In the 1760s, the Peshwa punished a qazi for permitting a butcher, who had killed a cow, to go free on payment of a modest fine. In 1793, then Peshwa Madhavrao II ordered that the right hands of three Mangs who killed a cow be cut off as a warning to Muslims who had newly arrived in the area.
The Marathas attacked the Portuguese-held Bassein Fort in 1739, and following the battle, the outnumbered Portuguese requested parley. The Portuguese offered to surrender their weapons, on the condition that Christian priests in the city wishing to leave would be given free passage, and that any Christians that stayed behind would be protected and granted their religious privileges. The Marathas honoured these demands.
In the 1760s, Portuguese Christians were given further privileges. Priests were given grants to build churches, re-open disused churches and use materials from disused temples to build churches. Then Peshwa Madhavrao II gifted land in Pune to build a church in 1794 to serve his Portuguese and Goan gunners and recruited a priest on state expense. However, the Marathas warned that the religious concessions did not extend to cow slaughter. Despite the warnings, cow slaughter continued in the city. The Marathas set up blockades around Bassein (now Vasai, Maharashtra) in the late 1790s to prevent cow carcasses from being smuggled to butchers in Bombay and Salsette.
Sikh Empire
Cow slaughter was banned by Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire in Punjab. Many butcher houses were banned and restrictions were put on the slaughter of cow and sale of beef in the Sikh Empire, as following the traditions, cow was as sacred to the Sikhs as to the Hindus. During the Sikh reign, cow slaughter was a capital offence, for which perpetrators were even executed.
British Raj
With the advent of British rule in India, a new situation was created with the arrival of the Europeans, who were habituated to eating beef. Beef was a popular food for the British living in India. The first slaughterhouse in India was built in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1760 by Robert Clive, then Governor of Bengal. It could kill 30,000 animals per day. Several more slaughterhouses were set up in various parts of the country by the Commissariat Wing of the three British armies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay Presidencies 350 slaughterhouses were constructed by 1910.
The reverence for the cow played a role in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against the British East India Company. Hindu and Muslim sepoys in the army of the East India Company came to believe that their paper cartridges, which held a measured amount of gunpowder, were greased with cow and pig fat. The consumption of swine is forbidden in Islam. Since loading the gun required biting off the end of the paper cartridge, they concluded that the British were forcing them to break edicts of their religion. During Bahadur Shah Zafar's brief reign as emperor the killing of a cow was made a capital offence.
A gaushala in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh.
Historians argue that the symbol of the cow was used as a means of mobilizing Hindus. In 1870, the Namdhari Sikhs started the Kukua Revolution, revolting against the British, and seeking to protect the cows from slaughter. A few years later, Swami Dayananda Saraswati called for the stoppage of cow slaughter by the British and suggested the formation of Go-samvardhani Sabhas. In the 1870s, cow protection movements spread rapidly in Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Oudh (now Awadh) and Rohilkhand. The Arya Samaj had a tremendous role in skillfully converting this sentiment into a national movement.
The first Gaurakshini sabha (cow protection society) was established in the Punjab in 1882. The movement spread rapidly all over North India and to Bengal, Bombay, Madras presidencies and other central provinces. The organization rescued wandering cows and reclaimed them to groom them in places called gaushalas (cow refuges). Charitable networks developed all through North India to collect rice from individuals, pool the contributions, and re-sell them to fund the gaushalas. Signatures, up to 350,000 in some places, were collected to demand a ban on cow sacrifice. Between 1880 and 1893, hundreds of gaushalas were opened.
A pamphlet protesting against the Muslim practice of beef-eating. The demon Kali (far right) attempts to slaughter the sacred cow, represented by "the mother of cows" Kamadhenu in whose body all deities are believed to reside. The colour version ran by the Ravi Varma Press (c. 1912).
Cow protection sentiment reached its peak in 1893. Large public meetings were held in Nagpur, Haridwar and Benares to denounce beef-eaters. Melodramas were conducted to display the plight of cows, and pamphlets were distributed, to create awareness among those who sacrificed and ate them. Riots broke out between Hindus and Muslims in Mau in the Azamgarh district; it took 3 days for the government to regain control. The rioting was precipitated by contradictory interpretations of a British local magistrate's order. He had apparently asked all the Muslims interested in cow slaughter to register, which undertaking was in fact performed to identify problem-prone areas. However, Muslims had interpreted this as a promise of protection for those who wanted to perform sacrifices.
The series of violent incidences also resulted in a riot in Bombay involving the working classes, and unrest occurred in places as far away as Rangoon, Burma. An estimated thirty-one to forty-five communal riots broke out over six months and a total of 107 people were killed.
Queen Victoria mentioned the cow protection movement in a letter, dated 8 December 1893, to then Viceroy Lansdowne, writing, "The Queen greatly admired the Viceroy's speech on the Cow-killing agitation. While she quite agrees in the necessity of perfect fairness, she thinks the Muhammadans do require more protection than Hindus, and they are decidedly by far the more loyal. Though the Muhammadan's cow-killing is made the pretext for the agitation, it is, in fact, directed against us, who kill far more cows for our army, &c., than the Muhammadans."
Some prominent leaders of the independence movement such as Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Madan Mohan Malviya, Rajendra Prasad and Purushottam Das Tandon, in order to mobilize the public to participate actively in the freedom movement, assured them repeatedly that on achieving the goal of Swaraj, the first action of the Swadeshi Government would be to ban slaughter of cow and its progeny by law.] Mahatma Gandhi, stated in a speech given in Muzaffarpur in 1917, that 30,000 cows were slaughtered daily (1 crore 10 lakhs annually) by the British.[62] In December 1927 he stated, "As for me, not even to win Swaraj, will I renounce my principle of cow protection."
The cow was venerated by Gandhi. He said: "I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world," and that, "The central fact of Hinduism is cow protection." He regarded her better than the earthly mother, and called her "the mother to millions of Indian mankind." Gandhi said, "Our mother, when she dies, means expenses of burial or cremation. Mother cow is as useful dead as when she is alive. We can make use of every part of her body – her flesh, her bones, her intestines, her horns and her skin."
However, Mahatma Gandhi opposed the ban as such. He remarked: "I do not doubt that Hindus are forbidden the slaughter of cows. I have been long pledged to serve the cow but how can my religion also be the religion of the rest of the Indians? It will mean coercion against those Indians who are not Hindus. We have been shouting from the house-tops that there will be no coercion in the matter of religion. ...if anyone were to force me (religiously) I would not like it. How can I force anyone not to slaughter cows unless he is himself so disposed?"
In 1940, one of the Special Committees of the Indian National Congress opined that slaughter of cow and its progeny must be totally prohibited. However, another Committee of the Congress opposed cow slaughter prohibition stating that the skin and leather of cow and its progeny, which is fresh by slaughter should be sold and exported to earn foreign exchange.
In 1944, the British placed restrictions on cattle slaughter in India, on the grounds that the shortage of cattle was causing anxiety to the Government. The shortage itself was attributed to the increased demand for cattle for cultivation, transport, milk and other purposed. It was decided that, in respect of slaughter by the army authorities, working cattle, as well as, cattle fit for bearing offspring, should not be slaughtered. Accordingly, the slaughter of all cattle below 3 years of age, male cattle between 3 and 10 years, female cattle between 3 and 10 years of age, which are capable of producing milk, as well as all cows which are pregnant or in milk, was prohibited.
There was a large increase in the number of cattle slaughtered in the years preceding Independence, according to statistics given by Pandit Thakur Dass, during the debate in the Constituent Assembly on 24 November 1948. The number of oxen killed in 1944 was 60,91,828, while in 1945, sixty five lakhs were slaughtered, an increase of more than 4 lakhs. He further stated that the population of oxen in the country decreased by 37 lakhs in 5 years from 1940 to 1945. However, the figures are much lower according to the Dater Singh Committee Report which states that 27,91,828 and 31,67,496 oxen were slaughtered in 1944 and 1945 respectively.
During the British Raj, there were several cases of communal riots caused by the slaughter of cows. A historical survey of some major communal riots, between 1717 and 1977, revealed that out of 167 incidents of rioting between Hindus and Muslims, that although in some cases the reasons for provocation of the riots was not given, 22 cases were attributable directly to cow slaughter.
Post-Independence
The Central Government, in a letter dated 20 December 1950, directed the State Governments not to introduce total prohibition on cow-slaughter, stating, "Hides from slaughtered cattle are much superior to hides from the fallen cattle and fetch a higher price. In the absence of slaughter the best type of hide, which fetches good price in the export market will no longer be available. A total ban on slaughter is thus detrimental to the export trade and work against the interest of the Tanning industry in the country."
India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was opposed to the ban on cow slaughter. In 1954, senior Congress MP Seth Govind Das moved a resolution in the Lok Sabha for a total ban on cow slaughter. When Nehru rejected it out of hand, Das said that a "large majority of the party" was in favour of the resolution. Whereupon Nehru retorted, "I would rather resign than accept this nonsensical demand".According to Nehru, the issue of cow slaughter was 'unimportant and reactionary'.
In 1966, Indian independence activist Jayaprakash Narayan wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi calling for a ban on cow slaughter. Narayan wrote, "For myself, I cannot understand why, in a Hindu majority country like India, where rightly or wrongly, there is such a strong feeling about cow-slaughter, there cannot be a legal ban". In the same year, the Hindu organisations started an agitation demanding a ban on the slaughter of cows. But Indira Gandhi did not accept to the demand.
In July 1995, the Government of India stated before the Supreme Court that, "It is obvious that the Central Government as a whole is encouraging scientific and sustainable development of livestock resources and their efficient utilization which inter-alia includes production of quality meat for export as well as for domestic market. This is being done with a view of increasing the national wealth as well as better returns to the farmer." In recent decades, the Government has started releasing grants and loans for setting up of modern slaughter houses.
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