It would mean that
this republic no longer believes in separating religion from the state
and privileges the beliefs of the majority.
Ipsita Chakravarty
That way things are moving, it should not be long before a movie production house announces Crouching Tiger, Hidden Cow, or Revenge of the Vegetarians,
a fast-paced action thriller by Anil Vij. Sacrificing cow gets
sidelined by carnivorous tiger in the bid for national animal status.
The tiger has a showy habit of getting poached but does anyone ask where
all those beef kebabs came from? But the meek (or the tasty) shall
inherit the earth and when the right government comes to power, cow
finally edges out tiger to become national animal.
That, broadly speaking, is the plot
Haryana Health and Sports Minister Anil Vij has in mind. Living up to
his reputation of being a maverick, caller of spades, Vij went on
Twitter to add his two bit to the controversy on beef and cow slaughter.
Make the cow the national animal and you won’t need laws for its
protection. The Royal Bengal Tiger can protect itself, Vij reasoned, and
held an online poll on the matter. Of the 329 people who cast their
vote, 88% agreed with Vij.
Not a representative
sample size, really, but Vij and his online voters are not the first to
demand Project Cow. Last year, the Sanatan Brahma Foundation, believed
to be an offshoot of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, voiced the same
opinions. Earlier this year, over 100,000 groups and individuals
appealed to the Centre for national animal status for the cow, according
to one report. And the government is said to have given the idea due consideration.
This
time, the demand has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. Vij, a
minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party, now seems to be mobilising
public opinion around it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the
state government he belongs to has already passed laws banning cow
slaughter and the sale of beef. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal
Khattar has also recommended
that minorities give up beef if they want to stay in India. So why not
make the cow, a holy animal for some Indians, a national animal for all
Indians?
How to choose a national animal
A
changeable skein of reasons goes into the choice of a national animal.
But what we choose says much about our priorities as a society at that
point of time and what qualities we wish to identify ourselves with.
The
real and the symbolic meet in the body of the national animal. The
animal that lives in the collective imaginary, the significance attached
to it, the qualities attributed to it, and how we use those qualities
to describe ourselves. And the actual living, breathing creature with
biological needs like food and water, circumscribed by evolutionary
conditions such as habitat and breeding seasons. Indian governments so
far have chosen animals with a cultural resonance, recognising their
physical realities through projects of conservation. Which means they
generally picked endangered species, animals that needed to be tracked,
counted, protected from harm. Their very elusiveness, the fragility of
their existence, gave them a new symbolic significance in the public
imagination.
Between 1952 and 1972, it was the lion,
perhaps appropriate for a new republic anxious to establish its
sovereignty. It matched the statues on the Ashok Chakra, the new
national symbol, it stood for kingliness, power and courage across
religious traditions. Lions were also early subjects of conservation,
dating back to colonial times. Hunted at an alarming rate in the 19th
century, there were just 12 left in the Gir forest at the beginning of
the 20th. Appalled, the nawab of Junagadh put a stop to hunting and
declared the area a reserve. By 1950, there were 240 lions in Gir,
numerous enough for the conservation to be called a success story, few
enough for them to keep needing protection.
More
recently, the lion has been absorbed into the iconography of the Modi
government, his brand of muscular development and the figure of the
prime minister himself. Earlier this year, it was suggested that the
lion might become national animal again, newly laden with associations
such as Make in India, Vibrant Gujarat and “hoonkar” rallies. Even
conservation was caught up in a competitive jingoism, as Gujarat and
Madhya Pradesh sparred over the proposal to transfer lions out of Gir
and into the Kuno Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary.
Back in
1972, the lion had been edged out by the tiger as conservation gained
new urgency. It was the same year that the government passed the
Wildlife Protection Act, compiling a list of protected species and
outlining an agenda for conservation. The following year, it launched
Project Tiger. The tiger, which ranged over a much larger area than the
lion, came to represent the modern state’s new environmental
consciousness, the wealth of its biodiversity. But the tiger is also a
much storied animal in the subcontinent, returning to culture in symbols
of power and valour.
The Chola kings used it as
their symbol and the Mughals liked to be painted hunting tigers. The
tiger is also a familiar for several deities and the form favoured by a
divine king in the Sunderbans, known for both his wrath and mercy. To
British colonisers in the early 19th century, it stood for Oriental
savagery. Their most difficult opponent, Tipu Sultan, had fashioned
himself as the “Tiger of Mysore”. Later, Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book
would also cast Sher Khan as the villain of the piece. Colonial hunting
lore only acquired the conscience of conservation in the last few
decades of empire.
In post-colonial India, Tipu
Sultan was reinvented as a national hero, known for his courage, martial
prowess and sense of independence, and the tiger acquired the same
virtues. The National Portal of India
says, “The combination of grace, strength, agility and enormous power
has earned the tiger its pride of place as the national animal”. It also
mentions the animal’s dwindling numbers.
National holy animal
People
demanding that the cow be made national animal, however, have tended to
focus on the tiger as non-vegetarian, a trait that is increasingly
reviled and identified as non-Hindu. The vegetarian cow, in contrast, is
sacrificing and nurturing, giving up its milk for humans and spending
its energies on the field. Since cows populate the landscape in large
numbers, conservation is not an objective here. What is being protected
here is the agricultural animal, absorbed over time into Hindu
mythology.
Writing about how Western culture “pictures the beast”,
historian Steve Baker refers to an older symbolic relationship with
animals in rural settings. Farmers depended on animals for food and
labour, and therefore attributed mythic significance to them. They
worshipped and sacrificed animals because they reared, worked
with and ate these animals. Urbanisation disrupted this relationship,
separating the symbolic from the real as animals disappeared from the
essential business of living.
In Indian slums and
cities, a similar process has taken place. Cows rummaging in garbage
dumps, cows run over by cars, cows swallowing filth and plastic – these
are the physical realities that city dwellers know. In the countryside,
too, the cow’s uses have waned. Vij and his supporters may be surprised
to find that most of the milk drunk in India today comes from buffaloes,
and mechanisation has forced cows off the field in many places.
The
symbolism that remains, hollowed out of real ties, is overtly religious
and political. Next-door Nepal, which recently named the cow its
national animal, has adopted a constitution that is secular but
especially for Hindus. It is the country of Muluki Ain,
or a criminal code based on Hinduism, which treats cow slaughter like
homicide and imprisons people for eating beef. The laws have interfered
with the customs of indigenous groups and religious minorities, who feel
the constitution is another instrument of exclusion.
In
India, where people are lynched for allegedly eating beef and where
chief ministers tell minorities to change their habits if they want to
live in the country, this experience could be repeated. Cow as national
animal would mean this country has given up the attempt to separate
religion and the state, that it identifies completely with the beliefs
and practices of the religious majority, even if it means criminalising
the beliefs and practices of other religions.
We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in
http://scroll.in/article/762962/crouching-tiger-hidden-cow-or-what-the-demand-for-a-new-national-animal-means
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