[world-vedic] Barbaric Treatment And Cow Slaughter In India Today

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Barbaric Treatment And Slaughter Of Cows In India Today

 

 

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FROM THE INDEPENDENT

 

INDIA, Feb 15 (VNN) — Heading: "Exposed: The Wholesale Wide-Scale

Barbaric Treatment and Slaughter of Cows in India Today"

 

The following is an article from British newspaper "The Independent"

 

How India's sacred cows are beaten, abused and poisoned to make leather

for high street shops

 

By Peter Popham in Delhi 14 February 2000

 

They are supposed to be sacred animals. Revered above all other beasts

by Hindus - ranked as high as Brahmin priests, the "twice-born", for

their sweetness and generosity - cows still tramp the streets of most

Indian towns and cities, mingling with the traffic, nosing through the

rubbish skips in the markets, roaming deserted highways at night.

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"The arrival of Hindu nationalists in power both at the centre, where

they are the leading party in a coalition, and in a number of states,

has also enhanced the protection which cows receive. "

 

 

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They are huge but very docile. The native breed is creamy white in

colour, with a distinctive hump. Sometimes a pious Hindu can be seen

feeding a roadside cow with a carrot or chappati. Rarely are they the

butt of anger or impatience.

 

And a fleeting appraisal from the comfort of a tour bus might suggest

that India's cows have survived the country's patchy modernisation

unscathed. But a campaign to be launched tomorrow by People for Ethical

Treatment of Animals (Peta), backed up by The Independent's own

investigation, reveals the Indian treatment of its holiest animal as a

scandal of cruelty, greed and corruption.

 

The cow's special status in India is enshrined in law. With the

exception of two states, the slaughter of cows and calves is totally

forbidden, whatever the reason and at whatever age. Bulls and bullocks

and she-buffaloes are protected up to 15 years of age.

 

The arrival of Hindu nationalists in power both at the centre, where

they are the leading party in a coalition, and in a number of states,

has also enhanced the protection which cows receive. Between 1995 and

1999, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of

Delhi gave 390 acres of land and more than 160,000 for the setting up

of gosadans or shelters for cows.

 

But all this apparent reverence and protection masks a trade in cows

and cow products which involves unbelievable barbarity and cruelty.

 

Much of the abuse stems from the fact that the trade in and slaughter

of cows is almost entirely clandestine and illegal - but the

authorities which should be stopping it are routinely bribed to let it

continue. There is, therefore, no scrutiny or regulation of the trade

anywhere along the line.

 

Although Hindus hold the cow in special esteem, and Jains regard all

life as so sacred that they try to avoid hurting insects,

investigations show that all India's major communities are complicit in

the cruel treatment of cows.

 

Hindu farmers allow their cows to be taken for slaughter. Muslims

butcher them using primitive techniques in appalling conditions.

Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians all profit.

 

And because much Indian beef finds its way to the Middle East and

Europe from Kerala and Bangladesh - "we took up a lot of the slack from

Britain caused by mad cow disease," says one authority - and leather

products made from Indian cow hide are sold in High Street shops such

as Gap, the British consumer is also unknowingly benefiting from the

abuse.

 

Thanks to the lobbying of Hindu nationalists, the slaughter of cows has

been banned in all Indian states and territories except West Bengal, in

the north-east, and Kerala in the far south. One result of this is

secret, hole-in-the-wall cow abattoirs dotted around the country,

especially in Muslim quarters of towns and cities. But the main result

is an appalling traffic of cattle.

 

"There is a huge amount of trafficking of cattle to both West Bengal

and Kerala," said Mrs Gandhi, Minister of Social Justice and

Empowerment in the present government and a veteran campaigner against

animal abuse of all sorts. "The ones going to West Bengal go by truck

and train and they go by the millions. The law says you cannot

transport more than 4 per truck but they are putting in up to 70. When

they go by train, each wagon is supposed to hold 80 to 100, but they

cram in up to 900. I've seen 900 cows coming out of the wagon of a

train, and 400 to 500 of them came out dead."

 

The trade exists because of gross corruption, Mrs Gandhi says. "An

illegal organisation called the Howrah Cattle Association fakes permits

saying the cattle are meant for agricultural purposes, for ploughing

fields or for milk. The stationmaster at the point of embarkation gets

8,000 rupees per train-load for certifying that the cows are healthy

and are going for milk.

 

"The government vets get X amount for certifying them as healthy. The

cattle are unloaded just before Calcutta, at Howrah, then beaten and

taken across to Bangladesh by road. Bangladesh, which has no cows of

its own, is the biggest beef exporter in the region. Between 10,000 and

15,000 cows go across that border every day. You can make out the route

taken by the trucks by the trail of blood they leave behind."

 

Even more horrifying is the transport of cows to the abattoirs on the

border of Kerala in the extreme south of the peninsula. Mrs Gandhi

says, "On the route to Kerala they don't bother with trucks or trains:

they tie them and beat them and take them on foot, 20,000 to 30,000 per

day." All Kerala's slaughter houses are on the border. "Because they

have walked and walked and walked the cattle have lost a lot of weight,

so to increase the weight and the amount of money they will receive,

the traffickers make them drink water laced with copper sulphate, which

destroys their kidneys and makes it impossible for them to pass the

water - so when they are weighed they have 15kg of water inside them

and are in extreme agony."

 

Ingrid Newkirk, President of Peta, followed one of the caravans of

cattle stumbling towards Kerala. "It's a hideous journey," she writes

in the forthcoming issue of Animal Times, Peta's journal. "To keep them

moving, drivers beat the animal across their hip bones, where there is

no fat to cushion the blows. The cows are not allowed to rest or drink.

Many cows sink to their knees. Drivers beat them and twist their

battered tails to force them to rise. If that doesn't work they torment

the cows into moving by rubbing hot chilli peppers and tobacco into

their eyes."

 

When they finally make it to the slaughterhouses that stand on the

Kerala border, the end they confront is unspeakable, Mrs Gandhi says.

"In Kerala they also have a unique way of killing them - they beat

their heads to a pulp with a dozen hammer blows. A well-intentioned

visitor from the West, trying to improve slaughterhouse practice in

Kerala, exhorted them to use stun guns, saying that the meat of an

animal killed in this fashion (rather than having its throat slit)

tasted sweeter. The stun guns that she left behind quickly broke and

fell into disuse, but the belief that the meat was sweeter took hold -

which explains this horrible method of slaughtering."

 

The sentimental attitude towards animals prevalent these days in the

West is alien to traditional India, as to the rest of Asia. But respect

and reverence for all life is fundamental to Hinduism - most Hindus are

vegetarians even today - and the prevailing attitude is enshrined in

the Gandhian word ahimsa, "do no harm".

 

Yet greed, poverty, ignorance and absence of regulation and supervision

have brought India's cows to the point where their treatment is on the

threshold of becoming a major international scandal.

 

At root it is a political issue. The ban on cow slaughter has been a

fundamental plank of the Hindu nationalists for many decades - but a

plank with which to bash cow-eating and cow-slaughtering Muslims, not

to improve the lot of the actual cows. The apparent beneficiaries of

the agitation, the cows, were of mainly symbolic importance.

 

Copyright "The Independent"