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August 21, 2005

FAQ: Why do Indians not eat beef?

[This post is by request of Stephen, a friend and former co-worker, who was pondering this question as he chewed on BBQ ribs in Texas.]

India probably offers the highest number of variations on dietary habits, outside of food allergies. There are lactovegetarians, ovolactovegetarians, nonvegetarians and radicexcludarians (a word of my own invention for certain groups, such as Jains, who don't eat anything that grows below the ground). Some dietary habits even vary with time, such as in the case of people that are vegetarian on certain days of the week but are omnivorous on others. It is understandable for the average outsider to be overwhelmed in the face of such astonishing dietary diversity. Even so, there is one rule in which an outsider can find solace, when trying to understand Indian diets -- the no-beef rule.

Most Indians do not consume beef, beef lard or any bovine-derived products other than milk. It is fair to say Indian meat-eaters are about as squeamish about beef as Indian vegetarians are about any meat. The no-beef rule has had a tangible impact on Indian history. For quite a while, discontent had been festering in the ranks of Indian royals, who had been rendered powerless by the expansionist and divisive policies of the British East India Company in the 1850s. The British played one regional prince against another, assisting whoever it was convenient to assist at the time with native Indian troops fighting under the British banner. These Indian troops weren't too thrilled about being ordered to make war on their own people by a foreign power. The general feeling of discontent against the British reached a fever pitch when rumors spread among British-employed Indian troops about the ammunition they were asked to use during combat. Cartridge covers, which had to be torn off by mouth before loading a firearm, were reportedly adhered to the cartridge using beef and pork lard. Cows were sacred to Hindu soldiers and pigs were profane to Muslim soldiers. The resulting emotional inflammation led to Indian soldiers defying their British commanders in Meerut, starting a localized conflict that grew into the War of Indian Independence in 1857, the first (and only) armed Indian rebellion against British rule.

The cow eats paltry meals of grass, kitchen refuse and a lot of other things humans wouldn't dream of eating. Yet, in an extremely selfless act, it gives of its milk plentifully to nourish humans. Bulls also make their own contribution by helping the largely agrarian Indian population plough its fields. Ancient Indian scriptures exalt the status of the cow because they were written by a largely pastoral people, who had a significant nomadic history before settling in the Indian region. When living a nomadic lifestyle, it makes economic sense to conserve cows, which may be inconvenient or impossible to procure for long stretches, by imposing taboos on their consumption. The most commonly cited reason for avoiding beef is that the cow attains the position of a surrogate mother by giving plentifully of its milk to humans. Just as humans don't kill their own mothers for food even in dire times, so too should the cow be revered thus. It is interesting to note that the status of cow as mother may be further reinforced by the rather striking fact that the gestation period for a cow is the same as that for humans, 9 months.

The ancient taboo against consuming cows presents itself in modern Indian polity in the form of anti-cow-killing laws, enacted at the behest of political parties that place the Hindu faith as one of their central tenets. In most of India, cows are protected by law, thus leaving them free to roam the streets and contribute to one of the Western world's lasting impressions of India. However, Indians really do respect their cows even in this high-tech twenty-first century, which is why they track them with RFID tags. Some nonvegetarian Indians in the United States adhere to the beef taboo. Others start eating beef, sometimes by accident, and hope that their folks back in India never find out. I hope this writeup clarifies the no-beef rule a bit. I will go into a similar explanation of Indian vegetarianism in the future, so watch this space.

Posted by Vishy at August 21, 2005 02:16 AM

Comments

Hey, thanks for writing this!!

Still, I wonder if I could take it to the next, nerdy level.

The central rationale you provide for cows being the sacred animal versus something else (chickens say) consists of:


1) Bulls can plow fields,
2) Nomadic lifestyle encouraged cow conservation, and
3) Cows act as surrogate mothers to humans by giving milk.

But for me, there still seems to be some missing element which explains why Indians came to the conclusion that these facts added up to not eating cows, since it might have been a fairly serious limitation of food resources. As far as I understand, other nomadic peoples had access to cows in the same way, would have found them similarly useful, and also similarly rare. Some civilizations expressed the religious value of animals like cows in animal sacrifice rituals. My understanding is that the ritual signified that the person doing the sacrifice had such respect for his or her gods that they were willing to give up the value of the animal. This suggests that even when cows are valued in a religion, they are not necessarily conserved--so why were they in India? I hold the (perhaps overly skeptical) assumption that sacred status of the cow in India stems from a special historical societal need to keep cows alive, that you would not have found elsewhere. I guess I don't know much about nomadic peoples in general, but is it possible that there was an ancient cow shortage in India which was not seen in other regions?

--Stephen

Posted by: Stephen at September 5, 2005 05:02 PM