A dietary paradigm shift in democratic

India
March 14, 2015

Unwinding Culture
Teotonio R. de Souza
Teotonio R. de Souza is the founder-director, Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Goa (1979-1994). He
presently resides in Portugal, where he is a University Professor and Fellow of the Portuguese Academy of
History since 1983 and tweets @ramkamat

Indias beef politics raises prospects of a dietary paradigm shift on a scale

corresponding to the number of Muslims and Christians in the Indian population.
Stray dogs (excluding the mad ones) and fast breeding cats could very well be a
timely substitute for the population sections whose beef eating habits
unfortunately confirm that they are converts of foreign religions and cultures.
With political-military power of foreign origin the local converts were forced to
make one major diet change in India. In Goa the Inquisition gave a big helping
hand in this process. One may ask why a similar situation cannot occur again. If
the Goan Catholics could get used to the scavenger pig that licked the human
excreta and can be a carrier of tapeworms, why cant now get converted to a
relatively less risky diet, say dog or / and cat meat, for the sake of an argument
and potential option?
It is generally known that the Chinese and the Vietnamese relish dog and cat
meat, but not many may know that in the best chocolate producing nation of
Europe, namely in Switzerland, hundreds of thousands of people eat cat and dog
meat, particularly at Christmas, according to a Swiss animal rights group seeking
to ban the practice. In Switzerland, a proposal needs 100,000 signatures out of a
total population of around 8 million for a national referendum to be held on the
issue and Tomi Tomek has nearly reached half that target.
From known statistics 3% of Swiss people eat cat or dog meat, 80% of them
being farmers. Unlike in a bulldozing democracy of a billion plus, the democratic

mini nation of the Swiss seems to respect the tastes of their minorities and may
not yield to the demands of Tomi Tomek. The Lucerne, Appenzell, Jura and Bern
areas seem to be the main culprits. Cat meat features prominently on Christmas
menus in some parts of Switzerland, and is served with white wine and garlic,
while dog meat is used to make sausages and dog fat is considered good for
treating rheumatism.
While we see a general inclination towards applying the cow-slaughter ban in
India ever more robustly, in Israel, for instance, the prohibition on pigs has been
declining. The easing of prohibition on pigs is due to a growing demand for its
reversal from within the majority Jewish secular establishment. The prohibition
originally stemmed from Jewish religious attitudes towards pork and the
condemnable humiliation they suffered in Europe when they were forced to
consume it.
Three issues arise from such legal affirmation when it comes to the protection of
the cow: First, there has not been much debate on what this means in terms of
privileging one set of belief. The legal protection of cultural symbols demonstrates
which cultures have legitimacy and public domination, and which do not.
There needs to be a strictly legal debate (not a political or a popular debate) over
what it might mean to constitutionally affirm one value set vis--vis another in a
modern democracy.
Secondly, it is worth debating how much of the cows sacred status is an
economic construct in relation to its religious significance. The economic basis
of the cows sacred status is clear from Gokarunanidhi (1881), a seminal text of
cow protection movement by Swami Dayanand. It upheld that cow gave milk and
numerous milk products on which the rural economy runs; the cow was essential
to the practice of agriculture in predominantly rural India.
Cow worship is not a central Hindu practice. In Bengal, for example, the cow has
no such eminence. And lower castes Hindus routinely eat beef. Hinduism is not
a religion of uniform practices and rituals, and exhibits a wide diversity of
traditions in contrast to the largely standardized religious norms of the Semitic
religions. The Muslim religious community has acted with supportive compliance
to declare that cow slaughter is not a religious requirement and can be avoided
to respect Hindu sentiment, as evident from sermons issued by Darul Uloom in
Deoband, the seat of Subcontinental Sunni Islam.
The third issue, much bandied in the name of democracy and secularism, has to
do with individual liberty. Should or can the state dictate what people can or
cannot eat? It is possible to argue that the state can and must intervene when
dietary habits threaten public health or impinge upon survival of species from an

environmental point of view, such as the case of whaling in Japan, where whales
continue to make up nearly one-quarter of the Japanese diet.
Article 48 of the Indian Constitution clearly has an environmental basis. However,
the fact that such a constitutional privilege of protection to cattle is not extended
to poultry or other animals confirms its ethno-cultural basis.Check some useful
data in http://bit.ly/18ZkBxI In the liberal tradition, can those who culturally
consume beef (Christians in Mizoram included) continue doing so in a manner
that it doesnt offend Hindu sensibility? A blanket law affirming the cultural symbol
of majority precludes such a scope and compromises the neutrality of the law in
a modern democracy.