10.
Promoting Export Of Meat Will Kill Livestock-Driven Farming
Anuradha Dutt, The Pioneer, 24 May 2012
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi recently expressed concern at the Centre’s ‘pink revolution’ — encouraging exports of meat — describing it as an anti-farmer policy. This is because livestock is diverted from farming to slaughter houses. The blame must first fall on the British, who began the practice. In fact, they changed the traditional farming system for pecuniary reasons. Under the Permanent Settlement Act, 1793, first implemented in Bengal and then in other parts, landowners were assigned fixed revenue targets by the colonial administrators and many were forced to shift to plantation farming such as cotton and indigo in place of food grains. This led to famines in the 19th century.
Cultivators were under greater pressure to meet the zamindars’ demands. If the revenue target was not met, the land was auctioned off, ruining both owners and peasants. It altered India’s agrarian economy, which was self-sustaining, primarily grew food grains, vegetables and fruits, reared livestock and engaged in organic farming by using animal dung, urine and manure as fertilisers, and plant and cattle derivatives as pesticides. Emphasis shifted to cash crops, and during the Green Revolution, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. This increased the debt burden on the farmers.
Livestock-driven farming was ruined by the promotion of the meat, bones and leather industries by the British, with butchering of cattle, goat, sheep, pigs, fowls and other creatures acquiring institutional status, and mechanized slaughter houses being set up. Later, tractors and machines further made cattle redundant among better-off farmers. The age-old ethos of compassion was completely repudiated, with free India’s leaders continuing with the meat policy. Many people, overcoming food taboos and religious tenets against wanton killing, took to commerce of meat.
The constitutional directive for a countrywide ban on cow slaughter was never implemented though some States did impose a ban. A Supreme Court order in 1958, dismissing a plea by some Patna butchers that cow slaughter was a religious duty under Islam, had allowed slaughter of impotent bulls but prohibited killing of cows and calves on economic grounds. It said, “Cattle in India has three-fold uses, firstly providing milk for consumption, secondly for draught purposes; and, finally, as provider of manure for agriculture. Dung is cheaper than chemical fertilisers and extremely useful. In short, the cow and bullock are the back bone of India.”
However, livestock continued to be diverted to slaughter houses to feed the thriving meat export, leather and derivatives industries. Modern India
developed a culture of non-vegetarian food, sharply at variance with its pre-Raj past. Under Muslim rulers, most Hindus, barring the heterodox, shunned flesh and eggs. And cow slaughter was forbidden by many sultans out of respect for Hindu sentiments.
Emperor Akbar was said to be so very impressed by Jain tenets that he forbade killing of animals and fish, and eating of flesh for six months in a year. Foreign travellers testified to the general avoidance of flesh. JT Wheeler quoted John Fires (1678-81) on Hindu food habits in his British History under Mughal Rule, “Hindus eat fruits, vegetables, roots and rice. But they do not eat meat, fish and eggs.”
In his Indian History, Part II, Wheeler quoted the late 13th century Venetian Marco Polo’s Testimony, “In the entire country spreading from Cape Camorin to the Koromandal coast in the east which was earlier known as Maula Pradesh and which is the area inhabited by the Tamil speaking people; and from there the entire area up to the Bay of Bengal, which is inhabited by the Telugu speaking Telangs; no one except the Parihars (pariahs) ate beef or meat. All these people worship cows and bullocks. They do not slaughter any animal. Hence, if any traveller wishes to eat flesh of goats, he has to carry with him as servant a Syrian for doing the job of a butcher.”
Much before, the Chinese Buddhist monks Fa Hien in the fifth century and Hsuang-tsang in the seventh century recorded the absence of violence against animals and consumption of flesh, or, as Fa Hien noted, even liquor.
The British made meat-eating and drinking socially acceptable. They requisitioned the services of some pliant natives. A book by Pandurang Kane, a Bombay advocate, postulated that beef was consumed in the Vedic age. Raja Rajendralal Mitra of Bengal in 1872 brought out an essay, Beef in Ancient India. He was awarded a doctorate by his masters for his effort. He later expanded this into a book, Indo-Aryan, published in 1877.
Bengal, as the seat of the Raj, provided the most fertile ground for such ideas to take root. Left-hand tantrik tradition condoned the consumption of flesh and liquor. ‘Beef-eating clubs’ sprouted, with English-educated natives readily breaking food taboos. If not beef, they ate other flesh and eggs and freely drank alcohol. The ethos spread throughout India as a mark of modernity.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father, and the Nehrus, all anglicised, relished both beef and pork. Krishna Hutheesing, Pandit Nehru’s youngest sister, recalled in We Nehrus, published in 1967, “Our lunch was always of the British style and that is why we always used to have lunch in a hotel because only the British lunch included beef and pork. If beef and pork were to be brought into the home, our mother and Muslim servants would have felt bad.”
The genesis of the pink revolution lies in such devaluation of animal life, with unfortunate consequences for farmers.
Cultivators were under greater pressure to meet the zamindars’ demands. If the revenue target was not met, the land was auctioned off, ruining both owners and peasants. It altered India’s agrarian economy, which was self-sustaining, primarily grew food grains, vegetables and fruits, reared livestock and engaged in organic farming by using animal dung, urine and manure as fertilisers, and plant and cattle derivatives as pesticides. Emphasis shifted to cash crops, and during the Green Revolution, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. This increased the debt burden on the farmers.
Livestock-driven farming was ruined by the promotion of the meat, bones and leather industries by the British, with butchering of cattle, goat, sheep, pigs, fowls and other creatures acquiring institutional status, and mechanized slaughter houses being set up. Later, tractors and machines further made cattle redundant among better-off farmers. The age-old ethos of compassion was completely repudiated, with free India’s leaders continuing with the meat policy. Many people, overcoming food taboos and religious tenets against wanton killing, took to commerce of meat.
The constitutional directive for a countrywide ban on cow slaughter was never implemented though some States did impose a ban. A Supreme Court order in 1958, dismissing a plea by some Patna butchers that cow slaughter was a religious duty under Islam, had allowed slaughter of impotent bulls but prohibited killing of cows and calves on economic grounds. It said, “Cattle in India has three-fold uses, firstly providing milk for consumption, secondly for draught purposes; and, finally, as provider of manure for agriculture. Dung is cheaper than chemical fertilisers and extremely useful. In short, the cow and bullock are the back bone of India.”
However, livestock continued to be diverted to slaughter houses to feed the thriving meat export, leather and derivatives industries. Modern India
developed a culture of non-vegetarian food, sharply at variance with its pre-Raj past. Under Muslim rulers, most Hindus, barring the heterodox, shunned flesh and eggs. And cow slaughter was forbidden by many sultans out of respect for Hindu sentiments.
Emperor Akbar was said to be so very impressed by Jain tenets that he forbade killing of animals and fish, and eating of flesh for six months in a year. Foreign travellers testified to the general avoidance of flesh. JT Wheeler quoted John Fires (1678-81) on Hindu food habits in his British History under Mughal Rule, “Hindus eat fruits, vegetables, roots and rice. But they do not eat meat, fish and eggs.”
In his Indian History, Part II, Wheeler quoted the late 13th century Venetian Marco Polo’s Testimony, “In the entire country spreading from Cape Camorin to the Koromandal coast in the east which was earlier known as Maula Pradesh and which is the area inhabited by the Tamil speaking people; and from there the entire area up to the Bay of Bengal, which is inhabited by the Telugu speaking Telangs; no one except the Parihars (pariahs) ate beef or meat. All these people worship cows and bullocks. They do not slaughter any animal. Hence, if any traveller wishes to eat flesh of goats, he has to carry with him as servant a Syrian for doing the job of a butcher.”
Much before, the Chinese Buddhist monks Fa Hien in the fifth century and Hsuang-tsang in the seventh century recorded the absence of violence against animals and consumption of flesh, or, as Fa Hien noted, even liquor.
The British made meat-eating and drinking socially acceptable. They requisitioned the services of some pliant natives. A book by Pandurang Kane, a Bombay advocate, postulated that beef was consumed in the Vedic age. Raja Rajendralal Mitra of Bengal in 1872 brought out an essay, Beef in Ancient India. He was awarded a doctorate by his masters for his effort. He later expanded this into a book, Indo-Aryan, published in 1877.
Bengal, as the seat of the Raj, provided the most fertile ground for such ideas to take root. Left-hand tantrik tradition condoned the consumption of flesh and liquor. ‘Beef-eating clubs’ sprouted, with English-educated natives readily breaking food taboos. If not beef, they ate other flesh and eggs and freely drank alcohol. The ethos spread throughout India as a mark of modernity.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father, and the Nehrus, all anglicised, relished both beef and pork. Krishna Hutheesing, Pandit Nehru’s youngest sister, recalled in We Nehrus, published in 1967, “Our lunch was always of the British style and that is why we always used to have lunch in a hotel because only the British lunch included beef and pork. If beef and pork were to be brought into the home, our mother and Muslim servants would have felt bad.”
The genesis of the pink revolution lies in such devaluation of animal life, with unfortunate consequences for farmers.
India is perhaps the only nation state wherein large numbers of people subjugate their desires for the benefit of other species. That this great culture of kindness is being eroded by one of greed is very sad. I hope compassionate vegetarians of every creed are able to join hands and stop this descent into malevolence and moral turpitude.
~ Leroy Schwarz
