Dark and Dairy

South Asia, 2008

[PLEASE USE THIS ESSAY TO COUNTER COW FASCISM] The Hindutva juggernaut which rode on with Ram, love jihaad and ghar wapsi on top of it, is riding with cow this time. There have been countless incidents of lynching, maiming and robbing of Muslims and Dalits in the name of saving holy cows. It is to be noted that there are large number of such attacks which go unreported. The videos of such lynching and maiming uploaded on the social media by the perpetrators as instances of latter's bravado are horrendous and blood curdlingcomparable only to the violence during Partition. This spectacle clearly shows the collusion of State with the criminals who fear no law. These shameful visuals show how brazenly Hindutva perpetrators make merry, celebrate and enjoy the ‗game' of lynching. These criminals who are out on religious duty of saving holy cows are worldly mortals also. This is proved when we find them robbing the victims before lynching. This killer cow juggernaut continues to roll down despite our PM, a senior RSS leader, describing most of these lovers of 'gaumaataa' in August 2016, as antisocial elements. According to him: " It makes me angry that people are running shops in the name of cow protection…Some people indulge in antisocial activities at night, and in the day masquerade as cow protectors. " If despite this strong rebuttal by the PM, almost one year back, violence in the name of cow has become more common, covering larger areas of India, more strident and beyond control; it may have either of the two following explanations. Firstly, PM playing to the gallery spoke those words in order to diffuse the social anger against such criminal activities. Secondly, the current cow vigilantes are the ones who are not antisocial elements but fall into the category which has Prime Ministerial approval and sanction as genuine holy cow saviours. There is no doubt, these gangsters have sanction of the RSS and law and order machinery.

Essay in History According to Cattle. Edited by Laura Gustafsson and Terike Haapoja. 2015

Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions, 2018

Control: Attempting to Tame the World, edited by Gro Ween and Michael Lundblad, 2022

Democracy, Religious Pluralism and the Liberal …, 2011

Dialectical Anthropology, 1978

Cow is a national animal. Cow is our mother. Cow is a useful domestic animal. Cow has four legs, two eyes, one mouth and one tail. Cow gives us milk.... cow has a calf that grows into Sanjay Gandhi. Excerpts from the essay written on The Cow by a class 5 student in 1976. Source: Verbal testimony of a teacher educator The ‘image’ and imageries are very important in electoral democratic politics. The above essay reflects how Mrs Gandhi (Indira Gandhi) and her younger son, crown prince Sanjay Gandhi, were perceived through the cow-calf symbol of the Congress Party in the 1970s, following the imposition of Emergency. The imageries are important to democracy, more so to win elections. Even Nehru with his progressive stance to science and scientific temper still mollycoddled the Hindu vote-bank and farmers, though softly, through the symbol of the field ploughing oxen. The idea of ‘secular’ India is evolving still from the aftermath of the partition of India, whereby the debunked two-religion theory, as advocated, somehow made appeasement to one or another religion. India is seen as the rightful place for revived Hinduism or political-Hinduism which originated only as a response to Muslim and British coming to India.

MARKETING BULLETIN-DEPARTMENT OF …, 1996

Public policy dictated by food security and food self-sufficiency objectives have contributed to rapid increase in India's milk output. However, domestic production cannot match increasing demand. The opposition to culling nonproductive animals, and constraints in ...

Emotions: History, Culture, Society, 2019

Recent violence in India towards minority Muslim and Dalit communities in response to their alleged killing of cows is shocking in its brutality. Those responsible maintain the cow is sacred to Hindus and a threat to its life is an attack on Hinduism itself. They claim a deep sense of hurt at what they see to be the historic violation of their religion. In contrast, liberal commentators argue that right-wing forces have become emboldened since Hindu nationalists came to power in 2014. Yet, Hindu nationalism alone cannot explain the widespread belief that people whose livelihoods depend on cattle are beyond the democratic norms of tolerance. Rather, we must consider ‘affect’ and the role of history to understand the currency of cow protection in the cultural politics of hurt in contemporary India.