Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India

by Yamini Narayanan

India imposes stringent criminal penalties, including life imprisonment in some states, for cow slaughter, based on a Hindu ethic of revering the cow as sacred. And yet India is among the world's leading producers of beef, leather, and milk, industries sustained by the mass slaughter of bovines. What is behind this seeming contradiction? What do bovines, deemed holy in Hinduism, experience in the Indian milk and beef industries? Yamini Narayanan asks and answers these questions, introducing cows and buffaloes as key subjects in India's cow protectionism, rather than their treatment hitherto as mere objects of political analysis.

Emphasizing human-animal hierarchical relations, Narayanan argues that the Hindu framing of the cow as mother is one of human domination, wherein bovine motherhood is simultaneously capitalized for dairy production and weaponized by right-wing Hindu nationalists to violently oppress Muslims and Dalits. Using ethnographic and empirical data gathered across India, this book reveals the harms caused to buffaloes, cows, bulls, and calves in dairying, and the exploitation required of the diverse, racialized labor throughout India's dairy production continuum to obscure such violence. Ultimately, Narayanan traces how the unraveling of human domination and exploitation of farmed animals is integral to progressive multispecies democratic politics, speculating on the real possibility of a post-dairy society, based on vegan agricultural policies for livelihoods and food security.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, India, Vegan, Sociology, Anthropology

424 pages, ebook

Published February 14, 2023

Reviews

[Leanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such an interesting and beautifully written book that explores the paradox of India’s relationship with cows. Cows are protected and sacred, yet India is one of the world’s biggest producers or bovine products. The book follows Yamini’s research through India in a way that makes this rigorous academic book eminently readable, emotive, and immersive. I learned a lot and it has sparked my mind with new questions about humans’ relationships with animals and how we commodify them for political means as well as commercial.

[Carlos Filipe Bernardino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yami ni Narayanan in certain chapters of this book gives us a strong punch in the stomach with the description of the dairy industry in India - the artificial insemination of cows, the discarding of male calves, the transport of animals and clandestine slaughterers. But the book unmasks the hypocrisy of using religion and the sacred mother cow for political reasons and allowing what is described, also stresses that animal are used for racism and intolerance between religions, and the poor.
The book shows an admiration for the work of Verghese Kurien, in the creation and development of dairy cooperatives and in the objective of removing millions of Indian farmers from poverty, following the independence of the Indian Union. The details revealed of him being able to develop powdered milk production against Nestlé's expectations, producing milk powder from buffalo milk against Glaxo's opinion or not allowing oneself to be manipulated by the KGB on visits to the Soviet Union were delightful. But these details reveal a deep racism towards the country, its technical staff and a genuine desire to develop the country.
I don't agree with some of the author's ideas for solutions she proposes, however her book is a good piece of research, courageous in the face of the dangers she faced, in which she is honest with the facts she collected, I feel in it the lack of hard-working statistical data, a compared survey with other countries in Southwest Asia at least.
The author seems to me to be honest with the facts she collected, she does not hide from us the fact that she belongs to a higher caste, the Brahmin, but is capable of being critical of the positions of the more cultured and educated classes.
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[Sagarika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this book thinking I’ll come out a beef eater because of my aversion to cow vigilantes in India. But that was not what happened. My hate for cow vigilantes was no ill placed but ill focused. I have come out of this book considering veganism. I DEVOURED this book despite a hangover that nearly killed me. I loved it so so so much.