Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics by Kenneth R. Valpey

Author:Kenneth R. Valpey
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9783030284084
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

…

And the Ploughman settled the share

More deep in the sun-dried clod:

“Mogul Mahratta, and Mlech from the North,

And White Queen over the Seas—

God raiseth them up and driveth them forth

As the dust of the ploughshare flies in the breeze;

But the wheat and the cattle are all my care,

And the rest is the will of God.”

60

The Ploughman’s dismissive comparison of rulers—local and foreign—that come and go like flying dust raised by his ploughshare (hinting at impending spiritual drought?) obscures the fact that such distant powers already had increasingly profound influence on the lives of humans and animals alike throughout India and the South Asian subcontinent. One of the most significant tangible changes for modern India would be brought by the introduction of the tractor . But prior to the tractor would be the railroad, which would provide fast transport of bovine meat to markets. The tractor would make it seem that there was no need for the live (“silent and blind and slow”) bullock on the farm. Even less was bullocks’ labor missed when, in the early 1960s, the “Green Revolution” took hold in North Indian agriculture. Nor with the impressively increased crop yields did it seem to matter that chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and over-irrigation would bring destruction of beneficial insects, soil degradation, and loss of biodiversity.61

We may recall from Chapter 3 how in the late 1960s and early 1970s (around the same time that the Green Revolution was expanding in northern India) Swami Prabhupāda began to inspire some of his followers to establish farm communities with cow care in Western countries, where agriculture should be conducted without depending on tractors. Prabhupāda was particularly concerned that bovine bulls be cared for, and integral to caring for bulls would be training them for draught work:The Europeans have invented tractors , and the bull is a problem. Therefore [bulls] must be sent to the slaughterhouse. So, we cannot create that problem [at our farm projects]. How the bull should be utilized? They should be used for transport, and ploughing.62

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