by AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA
D.N. Jha, historian Photo/The Hindu Archives
The issue of cow slaughter and beef consumption is once again in the eye of a political storm. Hindutva ideologues, aided by the government, have successfully mounted cow-protection programmes across the country and are in the process of using the cow as a political symbol to polarise Hindu and Muslim communities. Frontline spoke to D.N. Jha, the eminent historian of ancient and medieval India, on the food practices in India over the centuries and the place of the cow within these systems. Jha has published numerous seminal books on ancient and medieval India.
His books Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions (2002) and The Myth of the Holy Cow (2009) drew upon vast historical sources to establish the practice of beef consumption from ancient India onwards, thus dispelling the Hindutva myth that the practice of beef-eating was introduced during Islamic rule in India. His books attracted considerable controversy and Jha also received death threats from Hindu extremists for positing the theory. He explains how popular myths about the cow and beef-eating were systematically etched into the nation’s memory by Hindutva extremists and speaks about their larger political interests in rewriting history. Excerpts from an email interview:
What prompted you to take up historical research on the dietary habits of early India? Why does beef-eating become so central an issue in your book?
Since I was interested in the issue of Hindu identity and its relation to food culture, I undertook the research on the early dietary history of India. In the course of my study I found that there was considerable material on beef-eating which could be put together. Also, those were the days when the NDA I [National Democratic Alliance] was in power at the Centre and there was a controversy going on about the mention of beef-eating in NCERT [National Council of Educational Research and Training] textbooks. This prompted me to integrate the relevant data into a book and present it before the reading public. That is why the history of beef-eating became central to the book. But if you read the book you will come across much evidence on the practice of eating the flesh of other animals, too.
The cow has been an important figure in an agrarian economy. Was there any economic logic to cow sacrifices or slaughter in early India?
Cattle sacrifices can be explained in terms of both economic and cultural factors. As you know, the Indo-Aryans migrated to India around the middle of the second millennium B.C. and they brought along with them several traits of Indo-European life, such as pastoralism, incipient agriculture and religious beliefs and practices including the practice of animal/cattle sacrifice. They also brought with them a number of Indo-Iranian gods (e.g., Indra, Agni, Soma, etc.) for whom sacrifices were made. Since sedentary agriculture had yet to develop, the sacrifice of animals—including cattle—met both dietary and sacrificial requirements. Amongst the gods, Indra had a special liking for bulls and buffaloes and amongst men, the respected sage of Mithila, Yajnavalkya, was fond of cow’s flesh.
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