At popular level, Swami Vivekananda confirms the findings of historians like Prof D.N.Jha, who traces the history of beef consumption in Vedic times. Bhimrao Ambedkar in his celebrated essay “Did Hindus never eat beef?” demonstrates this very well. Cow got transformed into mother hood and a major tool of identity politics later. Historically it is interesting to note that beef was part of food habits from Vedic times.

Being a large country with big cattle strength, India is also the major exporter of beef. Apart from Adivasis, large sections of Dalits, Muslims, Christians and even upper caste Hindus consumed beef, as a cheap and rich source of protein. The old bullocks and cows being used for food by large sections of society has been the norm. Talking at an economic level, cow has been an important part of the agricultural economy. It is remarkable that in our country to begin with, cow could be presented as ‘mother’ and then used as a tool of communal propaganda and action. It has added to the worsening scenario as far as communal harmony is concerned. At a subconscious level, the issue of beef has been kept very much alive and now this issue has become more important as far as communal polarization is concerned keeping in mind the electoral arithmetic. Occasionally one did hear of beef in the temple being put in by Bajrang Dal elements. The TV serial Tamas (Bhism Sanhi) showed a pig being thrown into a mosque to instigate the riots, a parallel to beef in the temple and such incidents leading to communal violence.Īfter independence, the ‘pig in the mosque’ is heard of less often. At that time, there was a matching slogan of ‘pig as an object of hate’ from Muslim communalism.

As such ‘cow as mother’ was the ploy used by Hindu communalism all through from late nineteenth century. Now the Holy cow, ‘cow as mother’ is the major tool.

Thus far, the Ram temple issue was the core one. Today the insecurity amongst minorities is growing every day, making their lives very difficult. For Hindu nationalist politics, identity issues have been the hallmark and they pursue it to divide society and polarize communities along religious lines.

Swami vivekananda on meat