from AOL news: Excrement Pills and Products Are Hot at India Shop

[Guest guest]

I found this on AOL this morning (didn't have time to read the whole thing

yet).

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Cow Excrement Pills and Products Are Hot at India Shop

Dung Toothpaste and Urine Aftershave Among Offerings

By Terry Friel, Reuters

NEW DELHI (March 1) - Alongside life-size posters of Hindu nationalist

leaders, Indian political activists can now buy lotions, potions and pills to

cure

anything from cancer to hysteria to piles -- all made from cow urine or dung.

A new cow products stall at the Bharatiya Janata Party's souvenir shop is

rapidly outselling dry political tracts, badges, flags and saffron-and-green

plastic wall clocks with the face of former prime minister Atal Behari

Vajpayee.

"You won't believe how quickly some of the products sold out," says Manoj

Kumar, who runs the souvenir shop along with his brother, Sanjeev, at the BJP

headquarters in a plush central New Delhi neighborhood. "The constipation

medicine is a hot seller."

But the biggest seller is a "multi-utility pill" that claims to cure anything

from diabetes to piles to "ladies' diseases."

"It's a miraculous cure" the container declares. A month's supply costs a

little over $1.

Another cure-all is Sanjivani Ark, a liquid medicine that battles cancer,

hysteria, and irregular periods, among other things.

In addition to medicines, the goratna products range from cow dung

toothpaste, to detergents, a skin-whitening cream, baldness and obesity cures,

soap and

a cow urine "antiseptic aftershave."

Siddarth Singh, a spokesman for the Hindu nationalist BJP, which has long

campaigned on the sanctity of the cow, said the stall aimed to promote village

industry, one of the biggest employers in India.

"If you go back in the history of India, this belongs to our culture. There's

no commercial value to us. Village industry in this country needs to be

promoted."

The use of cow products in India is centuries old. The five key products --

butter, milk, curd, urine and dung -- are collectively known as panchgavya and

are an important part of ayurvedic medicine.

The cow is worshipped by Hindus, who make up some 82 percent of India's over

1 billion people. Cow slaughter is banned in most parts of the country.

The goratna products, made by a cooperative in the northern "cow-belt" state

of Uttar Pradesh, are rapidly gaining in popularity.

"Once they use it, they are coming back and they are bringing their friends

and their family and their neighbors back with them," says Kumar.

Singh already uses the detergent and is thinking of experimenting further.

"I'm tempted to try something for the hair -- let's hope," he grins, running

his fingers through his thinning crop.

03/01/05 10:43 ET