| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
169997
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This introduction outlines how the essays in this special section contribute to scholarship on cow protection in India. It argues that they disrupt three powerful framing binaries—religion/economy, legality/illegality and cow-lover/cow-killer—that have tended to dominate the literature on cow protection. Making tangible the analytical limits of these categories, the essays find new critical leverage in the everyday situated relationships between humans, bovines and the state. The essays are distinguished by their attention to bovines as creative and productive forces that are not mere symbols for human politics, but materially embodied and agentive beings that play a significant role in shaping the social and political worlds which emerge around them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 2 |
ID:
160072
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Recent efforts to prevent cow-slaughter in India have prompted U.S. concern about violations of religious freedom. But although the politics of cow protection poses a significant threat to disadvantaged groups in India, efforts to ameliorate that threat through an international policy of religious freedom also carry serious risks. This paper reviews reports issued by the U.S. Department of State's Office of International Religious Freedom and by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. It argues that by unnecessarily portraying the politics of cow protection in terms of a stark conflict between Hindus and Muslims, they threaten to undermine the goal of reducing anti-minority discrimination and violence in India.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
ID:
159386
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Offering a more-than-human sociological analysis of cow protectionism in India, this article argues that the discourse renders bovines vulnerable because it reinforces two compatible and comparable oppressions: ‘casteism’ and ‘speciesism’. It privileges upper-caste Hindu nationalists whose identity politics are intertwined with sacralising native cows and their milk, producing ‘casteised speciesism’. Through interviews with experts engaged in cow protection, the article demonstrates that native Indian breeds are burdened with representing Hindu purity, while buffalo and crossbred or Jersey cows are exposed to exploitation and oppression comparable to the situation faced by Dalits. To be meaningful for the animals, protectionism needs to be embedded in an animal rights movement that employs vulnerabilities as a framework to deconstruct the oppression of non-humans.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 4 |
ID:
188840
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
This article offers a historical analysis of the interdisciplinary question to what extent animal behaviour influences domestication, by exploring how socio-cultural representations of cows as mothers were shaped by perceptions of their maternal behaviours. It does so by providing an analysis of the evolution of dairying practices in both the colonial and vernacular sciences of modern India. Mother cow (gau måtå) was imbibed with spiritual and material significance in the discourses of public health, food security and gastro-politics from the late nineteenth century. But to what extent were cultural representations influenced by the maternal behaviours of the cow? Analysing animal husbandry practices, it is shown here that in contrast to the Western tradition of segregating the mother from her calf, the maternal behaviours and emotions of Bos indicus zebu cows were perceived by many dairy farmers to be an evolved characteristic that needed to be nurtured.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| 5 |
ID:
170000
|
|
|
|
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Many of the controversial actions of the central and state governments in India in recent months—from strengthened anti-slaughter laws to the issuing of ‘identification cards’ to cattle—have been made in the name of animal husbandry or breed improvement. Such gestures are generally understood to be superficial, and recent. They have been attributed to post-colonial influences: the pressure of India’s Constitution on cow protectionist legal strategy, or the pressure of national planning and ‘modernisation’ on cow protectionist institutions. This essay argues that breed improvement has been integral to the politics of cow protection since the early decades of the twentieth century. Breed improvement has long been a central component of cow protectionist arguments and activity. It has been the basis for an alliance with the state that began in the colonial period and continues to the present. Far from superficial, breed improvement is integral to the cow protectionist discourse that supports vigilante violence today.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|