The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has unleashed a new weapon against the United Progressive Alliance government: the cow.
The VHP-run gaushalas held the latest in a series of ‘cow-promotion and protection camps' here on Sunday to bruit about their claim that the UPA is hostile to Hinduism's most sacred animal. Pamphlets distributed at the camp railed against a plan, proposed by a working group framing the 12th Five Year Plan, to permit beef exports.
“Hindu society is injured by this oppressive policy of the UPA government,” senior VHP leader Jugal Kishore said. It was a shame that the government had approved the selling of the meat of the “cow mother.”
VHP media chief Vinod Bansal said the camp was meant to promote products made from cows, which are now “cultivated only for milk.”
Visitors to the camp were greeted with a bewildering array of creams, lotions, face packs, hand-wash, shampoos, balms, eye-drops and, even floor cleaners derived from panchgavya or a mixture of milk, curd, ghee, urine and dung. “This revolutionary product helps to control hair fall,” said a VHP worker who had set up a stall. “Even if you have the driest of hair, this product is guaranteed to prolong greying.”
There was even a product designed to allow the VHP to take a crack at Chief Minister Sheila Dixit in Delhi — a device to test milk for impurities such as urea, soda, starch and detergent powder. “People should know that 80 per cent of the city gets impure milk,” another VHP worker told The Hindu . “Until a few years ago, there would be a ban on ‘paneer' and ‘khoya' products in the summer. Ever since Sheila Dikshit came to power, the ban has been lifted. Clearly, people are being fed chemicals.”
“People think the VHP is an extremist organisation, but there is a scientific basis to what we are saying here [about the cow], rooted in our scriptures,” he said.
