Cow, mother of India

Many people know cows are sacred in India and that most of Indian don’t eat beef meat. However, few number knows why this animal is venerated here and all the symbolism that it represents.

It is an Hindus belief. First of all, is considered as sacred because it has a privileged place nearby a lot of gods and has a role in several myths. For example, the animal would have been created by Brahma (god of creation) in the same time as the Brahman, so cow is as sacred as a Brahman. Besides, it is the animal that Krishna and his girlfriend Radha (cow-keeper) watch over. The god is also called Govinda, which literally means “the boy who gives satisfaction to cows”. Furthermore, the cow is also the mode of transportation of lord Shiva who moves on a cow named Nandi. Hindus people believe that within the body of a cow live all the gods and goddesses of the Hindus pantheon. Eventually, according to the legend, the mother of all cows, Surabhi, would have been appeared during the churn of the cosmic ocean, among other treasures.

Cows are also called “mother of India” (Gao Mata in Hindi) for other reasons than religion. By itself, it can feed and make populations live. It feeds with its milk, helps in the fields with its strength, and its dung is used as combustible or material to build houses. Daily, Hindus people are used to thanks the cows by giving them the first two chapattis made during the morning. That’s how all the cows in the streets can survive. In the countryside or in remote villages, the cows are consider as part of the family, and a veal’s birth is celebrated as the birth of a child.

Then why the cows are abandoned in the streets if they are sacred? Maintain a cow is costly and, as said before, a cow in the street will be fed by the people living in the nearby houses. Once a cow can’t produce milk anymore, its owner prefers to let it in the street. We can add also the fact that it is believed that a dead cow is polluting, and if a cow dies in a house, the owner of this house has to purify it with rituals. However, nowadays more and more shelters are opened for the cows picked up in the streets.

The fate of the cow is not the same everywhere in India. Indeed, the slaughter of the cows is forbidden in all the country except in the states under communist control (Bengal, Kerala), where its meat can be eaten. Furthermore, India going through modernization, more and more Hindus are eating meat and sometimes even beef.