Does ‘cow’ really need protection?

This article is an attempt to speak about historical aspect of cow. Here I am trying 'not to put' my views but definitely challenging reality which is in dilemma..

As per historical data, India has history of more than thousand years. There was a time where Buddhism was initial ‘dharma’ way to peace was started and was praised by Samrat Ashoka dyanasty and then followed all over the India. The question rose here, how come then Brahmanism becomes so important in these days and Hinduism becomes dominant one?  

Buddhism links to beef eating but they believed eat dead cow. Whereas Brahmins used to eat living cow. As Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar has said Brahmins used to have beef eating practice in the guest of honour. It was strategy which made the Brahmins give up beef-eating and start worshipping the cow. The clue to the worship of the cow is to be found in the struggle between Buddhism and Brahmanism and the means adopted by Brahmanism to establish its supremacy over Buddhism. Buddhist rejected  the Brahmanic religion which consisted of Yajna and animal sacrifice, particularly of the cow. The objection to the sacrifice of the cow had taken a strong hold of the minds of the masses especially as they were an agricultural population and the cow was a very useful animal. Even Anthroppologist Marvin Harris has written on ‘The cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred cow’ which speaks about agricultural importance of cow. Cow was never had religious based connections. It was hindu ideology which made cow as sacred animal.

In above paragraph we tried to understand how beef eating was part of brahmin’s daily life. Eating fresh beef was done by Brahmins. How cow become part of hindu ideology? As beef eating was also part of Buddhist bhikshus but they were not purposely ‘killing’ cow or any other animal. Buddhist bhikshus were allowed to eat three types of flesh later it became five types. Brahmanism was in dilemma how to deal with Buddhiism. They thought to stop beef-eating just to beat supremacy of Buddhism over them. They chose to become vegetarian to deal the extremism with extremism. They started vegetarianism and cow-worship to declare their position.

Also another thing can be raised in our mind that why then Buddhism didn’t joing vegetarianism? But as per Ambedkar’s analysis Killing the cow was Himsa. But eating the dead cow was not. The Broken Men had therefore no cause for feeling qualms of conscience in continuing to eat the dead cow. Neither the law nor the doctrine of Himsa could interdict what they were doing, for what they were doing was neither contrary to law nor to the doctrine.

Dr. Ambedkar, Marvin Harris, Kancha Ilaiah , D.N. Jha are some of the known authors who wrote about cow elaborately. In this article I am trying to put slight gist of Ambedkar’s views on cow. This is very long debate which need a lot to read and a lot to write and definitely a lot to ‘understand’. Hence will carry forward this series.