Cows

Blog Post 14

4/26 /2023

37O41’47” N 108O2’2” E

The cows in India are one of those things that you can conceptualize but never truly understand until you witness them yourself. And when you go to India it is impossible not to witness them. The cows crowded every street easily mingling with the automobiles and pedestrians, they have a sort of wise but weary look, as though they have seen it all (which they have). Once I asked ‘who takes care of all the cows?’ and my guide said that the cows each have a home and they are let out in the morning to wander over the cities and in the evening they slowly graze back.

When I first arrived, I thought them livestock that people lived off. But then I learne in most of India It is illegal to eat beef. So what was the true purpose of these cows? As I traveled across India, I asked people this question, and initially I was told they were simply used for milk, but I as I moved farther and farther away from Delhi all the way down to Kolkata (which was historically more progressive than Rajasthan), I learned a more interesting reason which clues in to a political struggle raging in India.

First you need to know a little bit about Modi, the current Prime Minister of India. Modi has been serving as the Prime Minister since 2014 and in the beginning he was fantastic for the Indiana economy, pushing infrastructural advancements and expansion of the economy. But when Trump became the president of America, he showed to the world a new form of political domination, and Modi appears to be following in his footsteps.

I didn’t have any of these perspectives coming into India. All I knew was that Modi was the very popular Indian Prime Minister, who I saw smiling down at me from advertisements at every single bus stop and billboard.

But how does this relate to the cows? Well, cows are extremely important to Hinduism. Every God has a particular animal that appears in paintings with them. For Ganesh, this animal is a mouse, and for Shiva, one of the most popular gods, this animal is the cow. So cows represent Hinduism for the nearly 79% of Indians that are Hindu. Thus whenever you see a cow, it’s similar to seeing a cross or a Jewish star. And this is a symptom of Modi Hindu nationalism. It was even mentioned to me that before Modi there were not so many cows. He pushes Hindu values to bring attention to conflict between Hindus and Muslims and always sides with the Hindus to ensure he has a loyal base of supporters. He uses religious nationalism to ensure he has the majority of the votes, which he does, at 49%. You may think that’s not a lot if you’re reading this from America, which has a two party system, but in a parliamentary system, that is a landslide vote. But all of this is just from the few conversations I have had and that is because it is difficult to do online research because India has some of the worst press freedom in the world.

But every situation is nuanced, and it’s difficult to know if even what I just said about Modi being a nationalist is true, especially as someone who is briefly entering a different culture. We heard alternatively from many people how fantastic Modi is for the country. And of course I wish I could have had perspectives from Muslim people as well as Hindu people. And whether or not cows are a symptom of Modi’s Hindu nationalism, it is fascinating to see animals mingle so casually and4 peacefully with us.