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I was reading up on the seriousness of the issue of killing a cow in Hindu religion. There may be many discrepancies but I thought I will highlight some facts that might be relevant in the current context. Its a controvertial issue and facts go very deep down that what appears but it is certainly not blown out of proportion in the show as it may seem.
The five products (pancagavya) of the cow — milk, curds, ghee butter, urine and dung — are all used in puja (worship) as well as in rites of extreme penance. The milk of the family cow nourishes children as they grow up, and cow dung (gobar) is a major source of energy for households throughout India. Cow dung is sometimes among the materials used for a tilak - a ritual mark on the forehead.
The orthodox Hindu goes so far as to say that the purificatory ritual of prayaschitra includes partaking of the five elements of the cow: milk, curd, clarified butter (ghee), dung and urine.Among the animals the cow was given the most important and sacred place. Injuring or killing of cow was prohibited in the Vedic period. The cow was called Aghnya (is not to be killed or injured). Vedas prescribe punishment for injuring or killing cow by expulsion from the kingdom or by death penalty, as the case may be.
Cow protection societies were a common phenomenon in modern times. Dayananda Saraswati, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and even Mahatma Gandhi stood for cow protection (Y.Ambroise, "Hindutva's Real Agenda and Strategies", 82). Golwalkar considered cow as 'mother' and the emblem of Hindu devotion and protested against its slaughter (M.S.Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts, 59,232,363). Article 48 of the Constitution (part of Directive principles) requires that the states take steps to preserve and improve the breeds and prohibit the slaughter of cows and calves.
In post-modern India, the efforts at cow protection have taken many forms. In August 2003 another attempt had been made to introduce a bill in Parliament to ban cow slaughter. But the Government was forced to defer on it (The Hindu, 22 August, 2003, 1). There is a Hindutva lobby spearheaded by the RSS trying to ban factory produced fertiliser and substitute it with cow dung and cow urine (India Today, 23 October, 2000, 38).
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