Why do Indians love cows so much?
One of the reason writes historian Mukul Kesavan, is that the "desi cow is a beautiful thing".
"Its large eyes, its calm, its matte skin tinted in a muted palette that runs from off-white to gray through beige and brown, its painterly silhouette with its signature hump, make it the most evolved of animals," From my title, you would have realized I put beef in caps and pork with no caps. You will know its significance at the end of this. Read on.
Hindus are not allowed to eat beef (A.k.A cow meat). Many have asked me why we are not allowed to eat cow. The main reason is the significance to cow I our lives. Cows are worshiped in Hinduism as they give us milk. Then you may ask then why do we eat lamb since lab also gives milk. Simply because the more prominent milk is cow milk for Indians. We do drink goat milk (Although I personally have never tried but hate the smell). Not only that cows were the main "tools" for our ancestors. They helped us with the farming. So we dedicate a day in one of our festivities known as "Pongal" just for cows. That day cows throughout India will be bathed and pampered with treats and decorated beautifully.
Many years ago almost all houses had cows. No one went to the supermarket like nowadays to get milk. What came out of their house was their coffee for the day.
Even in my father's native home,they had almost 5 cows. I never dared go near them but they never fail to give a wake-up call in the morning with their "moos".
In fact, even my dad has these works before.Every day they would pray to the cow by placing "Kumkuma" a red holy powder (As shown in the picture above) on their foreheads. But those days are no more. they had sold all the cows. Now only those in my house but the most recent time I went to India
I realized most stop having cows at home. This may be due to reasons such as people moving out of the village or no one to take care of the cows and people preferred packet milk.
Even in my father's native home,they had almost 5 cows. I never dared go near them but they never fail to give a wake-up call in the morning with their "moos".
In fact, even my dad has these works before.Every day they would pray to the cow by placing "Kumkuma" a red holy powder (As shown in the picture above) on their foreheads. But those days are no more. they had sold all the cows. Now only those in my house but the most recent time I went to India
I realized most stop having cows at home. This may be due to reasons such as people moving out of the village or no one to take care of the cows and people preferred packet milk.
Their body parts are said to represent various gods and their urine is sacred. The urine of a cow is splashed around the house after the house warming ceremony before someone officially starts living in that house. This is believed to purify the house at the same time get rid of all the bad things lingering around from the past in the house (Honestly, smells bad. But surprisingly the odour goes away in maybe 2 min). Not only that cows are usually brought into the house during the ceremony and given food. Prayers are done around them before they are fed.
Their calfs are also brought in. Not only that cows can predict anything bad that were to happen to the family. It is believed that if the cow tries to go away from the house or doesn't eat the food in the house something bad was to happen.
And for the pig. It's a personal preference. Pigs are known to be dirty because India does not have white pigs but those wild pigs so no one ate them but I guess now pigs are grown in a more hygienic manner people have started eating pigs. That is once again your own preference. Most don't.
