DISCLAIMER: The following article is entirely an opinion from Mr. B.V. Rao. Please contact the author for any clarifications. I (Shubham Basu) find his point of view on Human Dharma interesting especially against the ubiquity of violence. Personally I feel non-violence would be the epitome of civilization when participants abdicate violence of there own volition. Until then…
Author: B V RAO
Age 62 years
# 66, Netaji Layout
Attiguppe, Vijayanagar
Bangalore – 560 040
In 1947 the population of the country (India) was about 30 crores. Today it is about 100 crores. Thus there is a three fold increase in the population. During the same period, the number of pilgrims going to various holy places has gone up many more times. For eg on January 1, 1999 a total of 80,000 devotees visited Tirupati. The Lord of Tirupati SriVenkateswara does not give darshan between one o’clock mid night and three A.M.
Leaving out these hours, balance of time is about 79,200 seconds in a day. Thus people took darshan at the rate of more than one person per second. Take the case of LordAyyappa of Kerala. Hardly 10,000 visited him in 1947. But in year 2000 AD, nearly five crore people have seen him.
New centres like Puttaparti of Sri Sai Baba, Amrutpuri of Sri Mata Amrutanandamayi, branches of Ramakrishna Mission, Chinmaya Mission, ISKON centres have come up, each withlakhs of followers.
Thus the number of temple going bhaktas has increased eight times or more when the population has increased three times. But the country is becoming poorer year by year in moral values. Is this not a subject to be brooded over by every body? During my travel in bus, train etc I discussed this aspect with various citizens. Some explained away saying that the bhaktas were basically sinners and would commit sins again after going back from pigrimage. It is partly true.
Many Ayyappa bhaktas will not drink beer, do smoking etc during the 40 day vrata. But they restart the same afterwards. In fact there are many who commit these and manyother sins and still go on the pilgrimage. Even criminals go to Tirupati and offer hundi money. Corrupt staff have pictures of various Gods in their offices and cabins.
But look at the psychology of most devotees. They, in their hearts, want to become better citizens. But circumstances force them to the bad old days. Why our Lord is not answering their wishes? The Lord is a perfect judge. There must be a fundamental mistake. My conclusion is that these millions of devotees forgot about one fundamental dharma.
It is the duty of cow protection. The sin of cow killing has brought this country to this pathetic situation. The subject of cow protection can be divided into following parts-
a) Hindu beliefs
b) Human Dharma
c) Economics
d) Medical
e) Actions by non Hindus
f) Women and go mata
g) Foreign countries.
h) Silence against sin
i) Solutions
j) Cautions
Hindus respect the cow as Go mata (mother cow). They believe that in Go mata reside all Gods of the pantheon. In Lalitha Sahsranama there is a stanza “gomata guhajanmabhuh”. As per it gomata is another name of Sri Devi. Sri Mata Amrutanandamayi, the living saint of our times has stated that Lalitha Sahsranama should be read by all family persons every day.
Lord Venkateswara’s idol was found when somebody observed gomata was milking on the anthill covering the idol. Thus the Lord of Seven Hills also indicated that the cow is a holy animal. Ghee of cow is to taken in the ‘irumudi’ to Lord Ayyappa.
In sankrit there is an universal prayer `GO BRAHMANEBHYAH SHUBHAMASTU NITYAM, LOKA SMASTHA SUKHINO BHAVANTHU’. The prayer means that let cows and brahmins live peacefully, Let all the living beings of the world live happily. The first prayer in the shloka is for Go mata. Then Brahmins, meaning good persons engaged in god thoughts, good thoughts and praying every day for the society. If the loka (world) is to have peace, first the cow should be protected.
Deepavali is a popular festival of lights. During Deepavali days one day is dedicated to Go-puja. The day is called Go vatsa dwadashi. It is the 12th day of Deepavali.
Every Hindu house warming ceremony is initiated with the entry of cow in house.
There are thousands of Krishna mandirs all over India that is Bharath. One of the popular names of Krishna is Gopal. It means lover and protector of cows. Of what use is of the Krishna puja if cow killing goes on in his land? In Udupi, Mathura and several other temple towns the people have elected persons whose party will not do cow protection.
The story of Ramayana starts from the story of protection Nandini cow by Raja Dilip. By protecting the Nandini against the attack of a ferocious lion, Dilip gets the blessings to have a son. The name of his son is Raghu. Raghu dynasty starts thus. Lord Sri Rama was born in this dynasty and is called Raghava. The cow is in the picture of Guru Dattatreya.
When a person is ill, he goes to the doctor and follows the advice of the doctor in diet. Like wise on spiritual matters, we should follow the words of our rishis and saints. Our rishishad attained vast knowledge of God and the cosmic world. They described God Anantha (endless) and Koti Surya Sama Prabha (with light equal to crore suns). Today our Hubble telescope in the high sky has found lakhs of galaxies and some suns several thousand times bigger than our sun. Our sun is a pixel size in front of another sun named Antares. They find new galaxies in their search, confirming that God is endless.
Forget the ancient rishis. All living saints of today such as Mata Amrutanandamayi, Sri Sai Baba, Swami Nityanand, Yogi Juggi Vasudev etc all prescribe non-eating of beef. We follow the orders of an ordinary doctor or a boss but not the sayings of the saints who are higher beings. The good words of the saints of every religion are for entire man kind. (If somebody says ‘Kill the followers of other religions’, obviously he is not a true saint !)
The religious beliefs born in India are Jaina, Bouddha, Shaiva, Vaishnava and Shakta. They have five common beliefs- Guru, Rebirth, Bharath Mata, Go mata and Omkar prayer. All these believers respect Go mata. But the belief is not translated into action. There is no tally between the belief and action.
The dumb headed Hindu has not done any whole hearted action to protect the cows. Several years ago when Al Aksa mosque in far away Israel had some damage, the muslims in Mumbai burnt down twenty Hindu houses. When Saddam was hanged in far away Iraq, again muslims in India caused public troubles. Can Hindu not do something for cow protection without doing such mad actions?
Now let us think in terms of Human Dharma.
Many people think that cow protection is a Hindu agenda. It is actually a human agenda. All over the world many people are now realizing the need to conserve and protect the animal world. Among all these animals, cow is the most useful for human living. It provides milk which is most nourishing. Every child of the world grows for about six months with mother’s milk. There after every child grows with the milk of the cow. Till death the humans consume milk and various milk products such as curd (yogurt), butter, butter milk, ghee, cheese, ice cream, biscuits etc., The cow dung is used as antiseptic in many households. Now- a-days it is also useful for generation of domestic cooking gas.
When a person renders help to us in any minor form, we say “Thank you” to him. If he gives one ordinary pen, we say thanks. If he gives one chocolate, we say thanks. On a similar logic we have to say thousand thanks to the cow. The best way of translating the thanks to action is to protect the cow, stop its killing and stop eating beef. It is an expression of thanks to the entire animal world represented by the cow.
Some persons argue why not allow old cows to be killed. It is akin to killing ones own parents. We do not eat the meat of the dead humans as a respect to the departed. The same human feeling is to be expressed to one animal of the animal world. There is no other animal fit for such respect than the cow.
Some others argue why only cow? Why not stop killing sheep, goat etc. Well, Vegetarianism or total ahimsa of Buddha and Mahavir are good. Everybody should be encouraged towards the ideal. Many may not know the fact that the Sisters of the original Mount Carmel were vegetarians and took egg only once a week. It indicates that total stoppage of meat eating is a step towards sainthood and God realization.
By allowing cow killing, one becomes thankless. The sun sustains the world every day without sick leave, casual leave and priviledge leave. But the thankless humans of the world do not say even one minute thanks to the sun.
Going by the law of action and reaction, the cow killing and the thanklessness is also leading to more and more violence in the world especially towards women who philosophically represent the cow. It is thus clear that the Hindu seers, who enjoined the followers several thousands of years ago to protect the cow, were visionaries of human love towards animal world.
Even the founder of the great secular Congress party, Mahatma Gandhi also wanted Go raksha. At his insistence, it was included as one of the duties of the government in our constitution. But to the misfortune of India, Pandit Jawaharlal became the first prime minister of India. He was a blunder master. Even today we are suffering the results of his mistakes, about which I have written a separate article on his mistakes. He had his school education in London. He had no deep faith in Indian culture and was more influenced by western and Marx philosophies.
His negligence of the cow protection in 1947 has become now a major issue now. This Gandhi topiwalla did many things against the beliefs of Gandhi. Cow protection is one of them. Still many called him great Gandhi follower.
Many good persons avoid vanity bags and fur coats made from animal skins. In a similar way it is necessary to abstain from beef eating.
In Mahabharat story, Yudhistira is known as Dharmaraya. He was embodiment of dharma in all actions. His only mistake was betting on his wife Draupadi.
Once Pandavas were caught by a Yaksha. The Yaksha asked Dhrmaraya “ I will free you and another of your brothers. Whom will you choose?” Dharmaraya said “ Please releaseNakula. The Yaksha was surprised. “Why are you asking Nakula instead of Arjuna or Bhima, the warriors?” Dharmaraya said “ Me, Bhima and Arjuna are born of Kunti. Nakula andSahadeva are born of Maadri, my father’s second wife. So I want one son of Maadri to live”
Such a logical Dharmaraya was asked another question by Yaksha. The dialogue is as under:
Y: Which is the source of all food?
D: The cow.
Y: How?
D: The cow yields milk from which ghee is prepared. The ghee is offered to all devas in yajnas. Accordingly the devas cause timely rains and food chains
Thus according to Dharmaraya, Gomata is the source of food. Should we not stop beef eating?
The economics of the cow protection is well proven by many goshalas being run all over India. Cow dung is the major element in chemical free natural farming. Chemical sprayed food is slowly affecting human genes leading newer and powerful diseases. Maximum use of bovine dungs and urines is the answer to this problem.
Our kind hearted secularists are worried that if cow killing is stopped, many muslims will become unemployed. This is not a correct logic. Firstly killing of goat, sheep, pigs can go on as earlier even though it is not good ahimsa principle. Secondly, the loss of jobs is a continuous process. When computers became popular, many typists lost the jobs. No secularist cried for them. The society takes care of itself in changing times. Government should only help the orderly change.
Now let us study medical cases.
In India there are two recently recorded cases of humans cured by the treatment of cow urine therapy. In one case one girl child of about 10 years was suffering from failure of both kidneys. Her father was a very poor man. He could not dream to afford the huge cost of allopathic treatment. He went to a temple priest requesting help. The priest prescribed the cow urine therapy. Surprising every body including the doctors, the child recovered fully within six months. There after the child took the cow too many houses announcing that the cow was the protector of her life.
In another case the parents had a child of ten months, who was omitting all the foods given to him. The doctors diagnosed the problem as infection of stomach. They opined that an operation was necessary but the chance of success was only 50%. The shocked parents went to a holy woman. She applied the cow’s ghee to the navel of the child and the cow urine to the body of the child. She prescribed the continuation of the treatment to the parents. The child fully recovered in matter of three months as well as picked up normal weight.
These examples support the common Hindu belief on the efficacy of cow urine for various illnesses. Care should be taken regarding the cow from which urine is collected. The cow should have been fed only natural products and not cattle feed with synthetics or blood meal.
Swami Ramdev’s medicines containing cow urine is helping lakhs of patients suffering from the blood pressure and heart problem.
In Chennai a person fills his sceptic tank with cow droppings and visitors are amazed that no bad smell is emanating from it. He uses the sceptic tank products as manure for his garden. Our water boards of cities spend crores of rupees in human waste treatment. What a waste of money !
But the tragedy is that the number of cows which was 100 crores in 1947, has dwindled to less than 30 crores now, reverse of the population growth. Thus there is real shortage of native cows for preparation of medicines.
How the non-Hindus react to the issue?
Many secularists say that the muslim has to eat beef as part of his religion. This is pure false argument for vote bank politics. The country where Islam was born, only camels lived.The founder did not prescribe cow killing. It was started only to humiliate Hindus.
During the rule of Akbar, cow killing was banned. During the rein of Bijapur Sultan of Karnataka, one muslim was pulling a hapless cow to the killing center. This infuriated boyShivaji who hit the person with a sword and released the cow. For this action, Shivaji was hauled up before the Sultan. Sultan decreed that Shivaji was right and he banned the cow killing thereafter.
The second President of Egypt Mr Anwar Sadat banned cow slaughter because he found that children were facing shortage of milk due to the reducing population of the cows. But the fundamentalist muslims killed him within three months of the order.
Women and the Go mata. Women represent the Go mata in the human race. The killing of the cows affects them most. The ever increasing violence against women is the pointer to this. Earlier only gents were serial killers. Now women are also becoming killers. Violence in families are increasing. Father, son, son-in-law are killing each other. When a tragedy happens in family, the first affected is the woman as a mother or wife or daughter. The results are there to see. Rapes, bride burning, wife beating etc. These are occuring in many sections of society which were normally peaceful earlier. Remember tandoor Sharma?
Unfortunately, among us there are several secular and English educated persons who put forward silly arguments against go-raksha. One is that go-hatya is going on in severalforeign countries. What about them? The statement of our rishis are not for Hindus alone. It is meant for entire humanism just as gospel of Buddha, Mahavir, Christ etc. The world is suffering violence on ever increasing scale because of the go-hatya. America is the great beef eating country. But see the tragedies there. The family life diminishing. The population of USA is one third of India’s. Still there are already one lakh persons suffering from Alzeimir’s disease. It has no known medicine. Many famous persons are suffering from it. Ex-President Reagon, some actors have/had it. The number of AD sufferers is increasing dramatically in the western countries.
Violence has become so much ingrained in American life that recently even school children are killing their colleagues and teachers. Take the case of muslim countries. Iran-Iraq war claimed eight lakh lives during 1980-1988. Iraq Kuwait war of 1990 claimed six lakh lives. Bosnia and Slovakia had bitter fight. Black muslims of Africa are dying in millions.
The silence against cow killing is also a sin. But what is this sin of being quiet? Let me illustrate with a puranic story. The story of Daksha yaga is known to most Hindus. But they don’t know the moral of the story. Therein lies the tragedy. During the Daksha yaga, Daksha insulted lord Shiva. Dakshayani, the daughter of Daksha and wife of Lord Shiva burnt herself. She was re-born as Parvati, daughter of Parvat Raja and married again Lord Shiva , her beloved. After the Daksha yaga, Devas were driven out of swarga by Vritrasura. Thedevas suffered one thousand years under the asura rule. Ultimately they went to lord Brahma and asked Him the reason for their suffering. Then Brahmaji reminded them that thousand years ago during Dakhsa yaga, they were present in the sabha when Lord Mahadeva was insulted and they did nothing to protest. Not only that, they also took the offerings of Dakhsya. Thus they were a party to the sin.
In Mahabharatah Bhishma was lying on bed of arrows. One person asked him: `Sir, you are a brahmachari and learned one. How come your days are ending like this?’
Bhishma answered: `Son, you have asked a right question. I am eating fruit of my bad karma.’ `Sir, what was that the bad karma?’
`Son, when Draupadi was being disrobed, I kept quiet, being obliged to Kaurava. The sin is now visiting upon me.’
The above two stories tell a moral lesson that do not keep quiet when sin is being committed in front of your eyes or within your knowledge.
There simple solutions to the problem are:
a) An easy way of cow protection is for many places of worship to adopt barren cows or the abandoned cows or the cows up for sale to the butchers and keep it in their custody. Calf and milk giving cows are not normally sold to butchers. Feeding of a cow is more fruitful than hundred temple worships. There are more than three croremutts and temples in the country. Large number of them can afford to keep barren cows. Others can be helped in the cause of cow protection. Unfortunately many mutts are only interested in pada puja. They spend little time in solving the social problems like dowry, go hatya etc. I have not read any mutt head saying “do not take dowry”
b) Where poor farmer can not maintain the cows, local panchayat should take the responsibility. Necessary budgets are to be provided.
c) There are many large housing colonies in cities. If each housing colony adopts a cow and bull it is a great help. It will also develop love of animals among the children.
d) Print this article and give free to poor people for awareness.
A word of caution is required. The fertile brains of some, particularly English educated intellectuals argue that even during the time of Veda there were beefeaters. This is false propaganda. One of the names of Gomata is Aghanya, which means one who should not be hurt. How then ancients could have eaten beef? I have seen an ancient picture of Jesus carrying a lamb. If a person eats an animal he cares, probably he would not be saint. Arguments apart, nothing prevents humankind to improve upon whatever was done in the past.
Another caution required is in the way of feeding the cows. Let us not provide cattle feeds many of which are mixed with blood meal in the USA. The scientists in their attempt to increase the yield of cows have stepped in to violate the God’s principle that the cow is a vegetarian animal. Probably this violation has also caused mad cow disease and the dreaded AD (Alzheimer’s disease) in USA.
The cows are killed in most brutal ways. Air is pumped into the body of the cows to make their skins soft. The animal rights groups fight for the cause human killer animals, but not the cause of cows which sustain human race.
It is a sad development that many ahimsa followers such as Jains, Buddhists support parties which will not implement cow protection. As a matter of fact a Jain Congress mayor of Mysore gave permission for another abattoir. If the gentle Buddha’s Bihar is today the most violent state, it is probably due to the sin of cow killing in his land.
Let us all vote for cow protection, the fundamental human dharma after which every good things will follow. We can boldly tell our co-religionists to follow this human dharma. This objective should be realized both politically and socially.
All are now worried about 2012 and after. One can say that unless cows are not protected, the world will head towards self destruction.
(BV RAO)