“Helpless Indian”: The Sacred Cow as the Symbol of Hindu-Muslim Unity in a Late Nineteenth-Century Hindi Novel

In the colonial North India of the late 19th century, the cow emerged as a powerful symbol of imagining the nation. The present paper explores how the image of the sacred cow was reinterpreted in the new sociopolitical context and subsequently employed in the Hindi novel, the development of which coincided with massive campaigns for cow protection. To this end, I study one of the earliest Hindi novels, Nissahāy hindū, written by Rādhākr̥ṣṇadās in 1881 and published in 1890. The novel can be read as a documentary evidence of polemics surrounding the process of identity formation and circumstances attending it, as articulated in the Hindi vernacular during the last decades of the 19th century. The agitation for cow protection is the novel’s leitmotif revolving around the theme of Hindu-Muslim unity, framed in an original and unconventional way. It introduces the bold idea of a Muslim agitating for cow protection and sacrificing himself for the movement. The analysis of the novel, alongside Bhāratendu Hariścandra’s seminal speech of 1884, reveals growing concerns regarding the Hindu-Muslim-British relations at the time of momentous religious, social and economic changes.

Labors of Love: On the Political Economies and Ethics of Bovine Politics in Himalayan India

This essay asks how conceptualizing love as work might provide a fresh perspective on love’s politics. In offering an ethnographic account of how love for Gau-Mata, the Cow-Mother of the idealized Hindu nation, fuels a right-wing Hindu nationalist politics of cow-protection in India’s central Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, I suggest that the specific arrangements of labor through which affective attachments are organized critically shape the ethics and politics of love. More specifically, I depict how different kinds of situated labor produced varied kinds of love in the conjoined social worlds of right-wing gau-rakshaks (cow-protectionists) and rural women dairy farmers in Uttarakhand. For these social actors, genuine love for the cow manifested in a willingness to labor for her. Yet their understandings of what this loving labor entailed differed starkly. This article examines three distinct kinds of work—protection, service, and care-labor—that these actors variously undertook out of love for the cow. It traces how these different labors produced a varied set of relationships, affiliations, and obligations that crucially shaped the ethics and politics of love. Ultimately, I show, attending to the varied labors of love in situated social worlds reveals how love can condition a variety of often conflicting political and ethical possibilities, working simultaneously as a force of transcendence, fascist violence, and repair.

Invoking ‘Hindu’ Ayurveda: Communalisation of the late colonial Ayurvedic discourse

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century in India witnessed a tremendous growth of vernacular Ayurvedic tracts, journals, pamphlets and public polemics. Incidentally, the consequent Ayurvedic discourse was not merely about the medical aspects of the Ayurvedic healing system. Rather, a careful reading of these published materials on Ayurveda throws immense light on the ongoing debates about sociocultural and religious processes. Interestingly, the social culture manifested by the early twentieth century Ayurvedic discourse was highly communalist, casteist, and gender-and class-biased in its content. In this regard, the present article explores how, in the era of communal polarisation, healing systems acquired religious identities. For example, from the 1920s onwards the cause of Ayurveda was promulgated by many vaids (Ayurvedic practitioners) and publicists by linking it with the broader agenda of ‘Hindu’ revivalism and the consolidation of a ‘Hindu’ religious, cultural and national identity. That is why issues like ‘Hindi prachar’, ‘cow protection’ and the cause of ‘Hindu education’ often formed the subject of vaid campaigns throughout North India. Related to this was the demonisation of ‘Muslim rule’ in India from the apparent perspective of health in the Ayurvedic discourse of the time. Simultaneously, this article argues that this communalisation of the Ayurvedic discourse, besides creating external religious boundaries, also unleashed hegemonic upper-caste and -class ideas that served to homogenise the community internally as well.

Modi’s outreach to Muslims will be cosmetic only

Subject The Hindu nationalist government's claims to be reaching out to Muslims. Significance Several filmmakers, scholars and activists last week wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to protest against attacks on Muslims and other minorities in India. After winning a second term earlier this year, Modi encouraged colleagues in his political alliance to win “everyone’s trust”. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) denies accusations that it is anti-Muslim. Impacts There will likely be further attacks by cow-protection vigilantes on Dalits as well as Muslims. An uptick in attacks on minority groups would prompt further protests from the BJP’s critics, but not enough to dent the party’s popularity. Modi’s government will reject international criticism regarding treatment of minorities in India.

Cow Protection, Hindu Identity and the Politics of Hurt in India, c.1890–2019

Recent violence in India towards minority Muslim and Dalit communities in response to their alleged killing of cows is shocking in its brutality. Those responsible maintain the cow is sacred to Hindus and a threat to its life is an attack on Hinduism itself. They claim a deep sense of hurt at what they see to be the historic violation of their religion. In contrast, liberal commentators argue that right-wing forces have become emboldened since Hindu nationalists came to power in 2014. Yet, Hindu nationalism alone cannot explain the widespread belief that people whose livelihoods depend on cattle are beyond the democratic norms of tolerance. Rather, we must consider ‘affect’ and the role of history to understand the currency of cow protection in the cultural politics of hurt in contemporary India.