Beef ban: Prohibiting cow slaughter is just a load of bull

#BeefBan

You will call me a sickular the moment I toss that word. You will think I am bemoaning the death of my succulent steak in a hushed, plush restaurant, a loss of what to pair my Happy Hours beer with. But wait. I have more bloody, more rare, not-well-done questions to evoke.

Before I start, you may ask me, irritated, am I a Hindu? Do I eat beef? Do I condone those who eat beef? The last question is the most important, and I will address this at the end of this piece. Possession or sale of beef-from a cow, a bull, or a calf-is now banned in Maharashtra. This is to uphold the religious and emotional sentiments of several Hindus who worship the cow, and the bull, as a Holy animal. The intention is to prevent the slaughter of these animals, and to prevent their sale for slaughter.

Question One: Is it okay to ban the slaughter of cows and bulls, but at the same time, allow people to own them and do what they please? "Milch economy" may be an anachronism to describe India today, but this country has a huge dependence on, and production of, milk. How do we get this milk? A cow or buffalo produces milk after giving birth, and she will produce it till her calf needs it. To get this milk, the calf is separated from the milk. If the calf is born male (thus with no milch value), it is very often killed, with its skin pegged on sticks to make the cow mother "believe" her dead, no-longer-milk-consuming-calf is still alive, so she continues to produce milk. Cows are also "owned" and then turned out on the street to feed themselves. Cows in Delhi and other horribly bovine-unfriendly cities walk down the road, innocuously looking for food, and eventually eating rubbish entwined in plastic bags. How many times have you seen a cow hobbling painfully, after being knocked over by a car, its eyes distorted in wretched pain, dragging its bleeding hooves? Do these realities hurt our holy sentiments-and do we want to do something about it?

You may say, none of this is worse than taking away a cow's life, because a life of suffering is better than becoming a steak. I don't know, because cows can't speak. I don't know how much suffering an animal reduced to a milk-producing, plastic-eating machine can take before it moos for euthanasia, preferably without plastic choking its intestines. So this leads me to the second question.

Question two: if religious sentiment is what provokes us to be good to cows, and thus not forcibly take their life, then let us explore this sentiment this further. Hindu religion says we should be kind, courteous, dutiful, dharmic, humane, and not murderous. If in essence pious, religious feelings are about making us better human beings, do these religious feelings permit other forms of cruelty to the cow? And taking this one step further: do these feelings permit the killing of other animals? What makes the dark buffalo different from the white cow? What makes the killing of chicken, when done in a cruel manner, permissible for religious feelings? There are those who stress that you don't need to follow religion to possess religious feelings or moralities, say of charity, kindness, and compassion. I would instead stress that being religious should re-emphasise these universal values.

Towards my final question then: there are those amongst us who are religious and thus, don't want cows to be eaten. They don't eat cows. But at the same time, there are others who will eat cows. They are from other religions, other moralities, other beliefs. You may ruthlessly and indignantly "other" them, call them out to be barbaric, attempt to shame them at dinner tables, at community gatherings, on social media platforms.  But yes, they exist; just like you. And perhaps like you, they don't want wanton cruelty towards animals either.

My final question is: should we condone, or burn in indignant rage those who eat beef, or should we change the way beef is produced?

Once again, to summarise the dilemmas here.

Many among us-a majority Hindu vote bank-are not okay with cows being killed. We are okay with their cousins, buffaloes, being killed though. We are not okay with beef being eaten in front of us, but are okay with it being exported. We fly into indignant rage at cows being killed, but it is okay if they are  accidentally knocked down by cars, or un-accidentally knocked up so their calves are killed-or not fed-for the milk we take away from them. Banning the slaughter of cows is just a load of bull, if we do nothing to change meat production of those who choose to eat cows, and to bring metamorphosis to what we do to cows while they are alive.

Instead, let us sanely attempt to change production of meat and put an end to human-induced cruelty towards animals. Cows should not be owned if they are not kept in stalls, and fed there. They cannot be turned out on the road to magically "take care" of themselves. And animals today - all animals, not just cows-are slaughtered in means that are cruel and immoral.  India needs a better slaughtering policy, and meat certification which upholds basic standards. These basic standards include keeping animals in sheds with natural light, which they need for their well-being and diurnal cycles of sleep and rest; no force-feeding of the animal; and slaughtering the animal by first giving it an electric shock, rather than pulling it yelling, screaming, eyes white with terror, to the slaughtering table.

If we don't do these things, then neither are we religiously inclined, and nor do we have agnostic morality. As they say, there is no good that comes out of banning iron rods, after women are assaulted by rods.

Because animals will be killed, and because meat-eating is a reality, it should be done in ways that are humane.

Because, we are not animals. Isn't that what is Godly/morality?