The only time I’ve received hate mail — real hate and real mail sent by post — was when I was doing a stint on the features desk of a US newspaper. In September 1988 I had written a mildly critical essay on “wealth from waste”, where I pointed out how that country threw away what we in India would eat, use or reuse. On the whole it was welcomed by readers and colleagues, with the more sensitive ones expressing their guilt and shame. One white farmer who was a recycling campaigner invited me to be his guest for a weekend so that he could show me, among other things, the town garbage dump. A couple of readers, however, were so affronted by my effrontery that they sent me vicious anonymous letters, the gist of which was “How dare you lecture to us, you brown-skinned alien?” One of them sneered: “Why don’t you kill all your cows and feed them to your starving children?”
Although I tore up both letters, this sentence, which shocked me to the core, is imprinted in my memory. You can guess why I’m bringing it up after all these years. I believe that such racist intolerance is an inverse replica of the intolerance shown by some of our countrymen today. I could easily read the vacuous mind of the poison-pen letter writer: “She is from India so she must be Hindoo. Hindoos don’t eat beef because they all worship cows. So the ultimate insult I can fling at her would be...” Every one of these assumptions was wrong. I struggled with mixed feelings: on the one hand I was sickened by the thought of forcing people to eat what they might find repugnant; on the other, I was grimly amused because the shot had entirely missed the bull’s-eye. I was born in a beef-eating Hindu family.
It’s simple, really. Nobody should force me to eat what I don’t want to. And nobody should prevent me from eating what I want to.
It’s not so simple, though, when it comes to the cow in India. An Article in the Directive Principles of our Constitution directs the States to prohibit its slaughter, with the result that today only 16 states allow cattle to be killed; of them, five specifically prohibit cow slaughter; the rest of India has banned the slaughter of all cattle. I am a native of Kerala, which permits cows older than 10 years to be slaughtered. Although India has never adopted the environmentally disastrous practice of rearing cattle for meat like the West does, let us not forget that beef is popular in some states of our nation, if not an inherent part of the regional diet.
But why am I talking like a schoolteacher in a Social Science class? You know all this already. Apparently, many citizens don’t. Tune into some of their putrid babble on television. What did you say, bhai? I didn’t hear you because you were yelling at the top of your voice. Oh yes, the cow should be our national animal. It should be declared an endangered species. What next? Let’s ban the word ‘beef’. Just as we should not use ‘beef’ to mean ‘complaint’, we should no longer say that security was beefed up. (I vote for ‘tigered up’, which sounds more forceful and refers to a genuinely endangered animal.) Censor recipe books that carry pictures of beef dishes. Ban leather.
I have a suggestion, bhai. Organise a protest outside the Tower of London. The guards there are known as Beefeaters. I can also give you the names of some authors you can lynch. In their books they described the beneficial qualities of cow meat, claiming that it helps build muscles, prevent cold, etc. One Mr. Charaka, I believe, along with his friends Mr. Atreya, Mr. Agnivesa... I’m sorry I don’t know the gentlemen’s full names. Door numbers also not available. A minor hitch: they were born thousands of years ago. Wrote one of the foundational texts on Ayurveda, the Charaka Samhita. You missed an opportunity there, bhai. Never mind, there are plenty more in store. In future, when a small farmer’s cow stops giving milk or ox gets too old to work, and when he tries selling it, you can either kill him or force him to feed it while his own family starves. When it dies of natural causes (as certified by a licensed vet), you can demand a state funeral. A better idea would be to accuse an ‘appropriate’ person of killing it so that you can then organise a mob to do its job, as you’ve been doing with such remarkable efficiency of late.
Ban food, ban books, ban films. Kill the rationalist, for unpalatable truths must remain unspoken. I watched a documentary film last weekend on the Muzaffarnagar killings and refugee camps. Its Delhi screening was stopped, but it was shown at multiple venues in our city in August. This particular screening took place at a local college. Sitting next to me was one of my former students, the offspring of a Hindu-Muslim union. Earlier, I had lemon tea at a restaurant that has both beef and pork on its menu. Its name is Peace.
Peace be upon you, Bengaluru, sweet ooru of mine.
(Send your feedback to ckmeena@gmail.com)
