Barbaric Treatment And Slaughter Of Cows In India Today

[Guest guest]

Dear vaisnavas,

 

I had heard this was bad, but never dreamed it was this bad. Can't devotees

in India along with their millions of congregational members somehow lobby

to put a stop to this? I can't even read to the end of it...I got about

2/3rds the way down. I'm going to contact the Indian equivalent of the

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to see if anything can be

done. Anyone got any other ideas?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

--

 

“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. ”

 

 

--

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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