Hindu, Beef and Economy

The present controversy around beef eating, accompanied by violent objection and equally aggressive support, is engineered by extremist politicians on both sides reacting to the change of ruling parties at the Centre. They play with exaggerated or distorted reports and make sensational statements. With the pathetic decline of the Congress which has been enjoying power for long in most parts of India, people expect serious changes in government and government-related institutions and policies. The excitement of new power on the one hand and the fear of losing positions on the other have created confusion and uncertainty.

As per rule of the land in some states no one can kill any cow. The cost of feeding such barren animal is Rs60/- approximately per animal per day. Now big question rose from nowhere that who will bear the cost of feeding an old cow that has stopped giving milk? Poor owner of animal in maximum cases are living on pecuniary circumstances and not in a position to feed an idle animal. Some official from Home Ministry proposed for maintaining ‘Old Age Home’ in each district that seems practically impossible and may require a dedicated Department under Animal Husbandry Ministry of respective states and a new avenue for corruption will open.

Second question is our large Tannery Industry. The famous Chappals from Kolhapur of Maharashtra is gone 35% or more down in production since 2015 and is gradually decaying further. How the Industry throughout the country will survive and who will be responsible for future of workforce of those industries who are in the verge of layoff?

India is highest exporter of beef as per records. Now what will be future of these export license holders and interestingly majority of them are Hindu?

Beef is a sensitive issue which can be exploited by invoking religious sentiments, and profit from exports also could be involved. It is a favourite item of food mainly for Muslims and a few others as well, including Christians and Hindus in different parts of India. Many others, including habitual consumers of non-vegetarian food, find it distasteful either because they are unfamiliar with it or culturally conditioned against it.

India is a vast country with a great variety of castes and creeds. There is no Hindu "religion". Unlike the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam there is no one founder, sacred book and rules of conduct including procedure for conversion and excommunication applicable to Hindu society as a whole.

Here let us see what Mr M G S Narayanan, a Hindu and former Chairman of India council of Historical Research said about this. An Exert from his article dated 30.10.2015 is very much applicable today’s condition also:

Quote

There were no rules prescribing food habits or dressing conventions or marriage and other customs and practices for Hindu society as a whole. There were no codes of conduct or modes of worship for Hindus in general. Our former colonial masters and their scholars, endowed with Eurocentric arrogance and ignorance about India, conceived the Hindu "religion" on the model of the Semitic religions known to them. They labeled all native groups outside the Semitic religious groups as Hindus in the census records. Actually the term Hindu, applied by outsiders to natives of India, was not a religious term, but a geographical term referring to the inhabitants of the Sindhu or Hindu or Indu region.

The Vedas were considered "apaurusheya" or "of non-human character", thereby suggesting a divine origin. The text consisted of simple songs invoking different deities like Indra, Agni, Varuna, Aditya, Rudra etc. No temples or idol worship are mentioned anywhere in the Vedas, although temples and idol worship, with universal deities like Siva and Vishnu, were in place by the beginning of the Christian era

The sacrificial rituals were elaborated in later centuries and recorded in Aranyakas, Brahmans, Grihya Sutras etc (see, for example, volumes 1 and 2 of Indologist Frits Staal's Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar). They preserved the text of the Vedas as an oral tradition exclusively for themselves, and prohibited the learning of the Vedas by Sudras. Some ancient texts inform that the Brahmin sages (rishis) who lived in forest hermitages (asramas) entertained their guests (atithis, or people who came without prior notice, without looking for the proper tithi) by killing calves and offering beef, considered to be a delicious item of food reserved for honoured guests. That is how the term atithi acquired the synonym of goghna, killer of cows (see Ancient India by R S Sharma). Animal slaughter for sacrifice was common during the Vedic age. The sacrificial animal was called pasu, a term that is used to denote the cow in Kerala. In the ancient law books like Manusmriti, the Kshatriyas were permitted to kill animals in hunting and consume their meat. In Valmiki's Ramayana there is a reference to Sita, wife of Rama, the Kshatriya prince of Ayodhya, keeping watch (during their time of exile in the forest) over the meat of animals drying in the sun.

                                                                                Unquote.

Above exerts of the article clearly defines the rights of food and drapes of people as per ancient Hindu culture and centuries old social customs that prevailed in the society. Why a section of people then making their own rules? Deliberately making statements forcefully towards people in the name of Hindu religion? 

By entertaining indirectly some fringe elements in the camouflage of ‘Gauraksaks’   from Hindu community and thus encouraging hatred and criminal offences by this group towards the basic rights of people living in different walks of the society Government is not reflecting the correct governance towards its people in the democratic set up. Bankimchandra Chatterjee author of National song ‘Vandematram’ opined in the page no 95 of his novel ‘Anandmath’ that ‘Sanatan’ or Vedic Hindu religion is no more exists in India. The religion practiced now in the name of that religion is draconian religion.               

Those so called neo Hindu may fall under certain category, as per Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and may  differ from that I have expressed in this article, but the real fact is that a large Pai of our economy is already decayed by this  and now it is for sweet will good senses of the people who seats on the helm of affairs in Government to chalk out some plan to overcome the situation.