Where's the beef?

`Beef' cut from India's history textbooks
Victory for Hindu fundamentalists

Education council unhappy with move
Jun. 20, 2006. 01:00 AM
SHAIKH AZIZUR RAHMAN
SPECIAL TO THE STAR


Calcutta—References to the beef-eating past of ancient Hindus have been deleted from Indian school textbooks following a three-year campaign by Hindu hardliners.

For almost a century, history books for primary and middle schools told how in ancient India, beef was considered a great delicacy among Hindus — especially among the highest caste — and how veal was offered to Hindu deities during special rituals.

"Our past" chapters in the texts also detailed how cows used to be slaughtered by the Brahmins, or upper caste Hindus, during festivals and while welcoming guests to the home.

The passages that offended the Hindus, who now shun beef, have been deleted from new versions of the books delivered to schoolchildren last week.

However, the National Council of Educational Research and Training, which is responsible for the texts, now seems unhappy with the changes that were agreed to by a former council director.

Council lawyer Prashant Bhushan said ancient Hindus were indeed beef-eaters, and the council should not have distorted historical facts by deleting the chapters.

Noted Calcutta historian Ashish Bose added: "NCERT has committed a mistake by dropping those facts from the textbooks. It is a victory for Hindu fundamentalists who have lodged a misinformation campaign. Historians should unite against this cowardly move by the council."

Hardline Hindu activists, who consider cattle holy and have been seeking a ban on slaughter by Muslims and Christians, said the beef-eating references were meant to insult Hindus.

In 2003, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party held federal power, the educational council decided to delete the references. Congress and leftist opposition parties protested, but the move was approved by Jagmohan Singh Rajput, then council director.

The process took longer than expected, however, and Hindu fundamentalists alleged last year that the council was dragging its feet.

Two activists asked the Delhi High Court to order the immediate deletion of the chapters from new textbooks, but the court has not ruled on the suit.

When the litigation was filed, firebrand Hindu leader Praveen Togadia, general secretary of the World Hindu Council, declared: "Most of the facts in the chapters are not true. Some low-caste dalit (untouchable) Hindus used to eat beef. Brahmins never ate it."

Accusing textbook author Ram Sharan Sharma of shoddy research, Togadia said: "The chapter is poisoning the minds of little children. They will not respect their own religion in future. They will not turn out to be good Hindus and it will cause harm to the nation."

Dwijendra Narayan Jha, a history professor at Delhi University, says there is plenty of evidence showing ancient Hindus, including the Brahmins, slaughtered cows and ate beef.

"There are clear evidences in the Rig Veda, the most sacred Hindu scripture (from the second millennium BC), that the cow used to be sacrificed by Hindus during religious rituals. Ancient Hindu text Manusmriti lists the cow as one of several animals whose meat can be eaten by Hindus. The great epic, the Mahabharata, too speaks of beef being a delicacy served to esteemed guests," he said.

Jha's 2002 book, The Myth of the Holy Cow, presented historical evidence that Hindus ate beef long before the Muslim invasions in the 10th century, and provoked such a furor it was banned. The professor, himself a Hindu, feared attacks by fundamentalists and was given police protection.

The slaughter of cattle is banned in most Indian states, but not in Kerala, West Bengal and seven northeastern states. However, Muslims — the largest minority in the country — sometimes ignore state bans and slaughter cattle, which can spark communal tension.

 

It sounds like these scholars have uncovered some interesting historical clues, and I'm not closed to the idea that there is some fact involved...but in practical contemporary reality Hinduism has a long-established, persistent, and active vegetarian tradition.


What's relevant now is that the majority of observant Hindus are inclined to be vegetarians and strongly disapprove of cow slaughter...broadly, some reasons for this:

One of the tenets of Sanatana-dharma, the philosophical basis of Hinduism, is ahimsa, or non-violence...killing plant life for food is seen as an infinitely lesser sin than slaughter of higher animals for this purpose; consequently fruits, vegetables, grain, nuts, milk, and so on are regarded as proper foods for human beings.

Lord Krishna is one of Hinduism's most revered spiritual figures, whether one adheres to advaita philosophy, where He is seen as an avatara, or to dvaita, in particular Caitanyaite Vaisnavism, where He is regarded as the supreme diety. In the traditional stories about Lord Krishna, the cow is seen as His favorite animal and a cosmic-scale symbol of nurturing motherhood...sacred cows.

Any genuine guru who is engaged in the propagation of Sanatana-dharma, whether of the advaita or dvaita school, will advise or outright require his/her disciples to adopt a strictly vegetarian diet, or at the least one that does not include products of the slaughter of higher animals.

 

I've read that during the Indus Valley civilization period beef was eaten by followers of the Vedas. However, vegetarianism and avoidance of beef is an established thing in Hinduism from quite an early date.

I don't think falsifying history is ever anything but mistaken.

I'm surprised that veal was offered. It is a very pernicious thing, which causes great suffering to the calves who are fed exclusively on milk.

Generally, whatever the moral questions involved, beef isn't a very good food for humans as it contains far too much saturated fat.

 

calves aren't kept under the same conditions as modern calves are i am sure but still, must be a little distress for the mommas to have their kids taken away

this beef would be free-range grass fed beef which is much healthier than grain fed beef

 

a free and open society is pluralistic where the dominant does not impose its will on minorities

 

Q: Should we avoid eating meat, since it entails killing?

A: Nonsense! … You may talk of not killing, but can you possibly avoid killing? What would you eat? Potatoes? … Has the potato no life? … You want to drink water? Examine a drop of water under a microscope and see how many millions of lives there are. You must breathe to live, yet with every breath you kill millions of creatures. Do you see any harm in that? You think you will lose your religion if you take a little fish. Such arguments are foolish. The ancient Hindus held no such ideas.

–Swami Brahmananda

 

Actually, Hindus have taken so much criticism over being passive...it's nice to hear about them kicking some political ass over what is a very basic faith and lifestyle issue...you probably are too PC to think that Christians and Muslims deserve a bit of their own medicine.

 

its the bharatiya janatas who try to whip hindus into a frenzy by saying they are too passive

and sanatana dharma is to love of which all these artificial divisions such as hindu, muslim, christian dissolve... there is only one of us here

what can be called hinduism has always been a syncretic faith constantly absorbing and evolving

great saints such as shirdi sai baba saw no reason to differentiate what is hindu or muslim

 

India is a secular country... i agree with you that they should have included beef eating in their history books.
however, is it really secular though? I still remember when i went to school in India, during our morning prayer in a "Central school" (state gives funds for this school), the prayer involved slokas from the vedas "Asatoma Sadgamaya, Tamasoma Jyotirgamaya Mrityorma Amruthangamaya" , and all hindu kids/muslim kids/christian kids prayed along with the slokas, and such prayers as well as prayers to ma saraswati was common in most schools.

But then again, no body had any religious problems with it, we didn't get picked on my muslims (atleast where i was living) and muslims didn't get picked on by hindus at school actually we didn't really know someone was a muslim or a hindu until they told us, rarely people wore burqas and even with strictly muslim/hindu attire, everyone intermingled so you really couldn't tell. Also, near my house , every friday there was a speech given by "the father" about how Jesus was the savior , it was put on a loud speaker so that the entire town could hear him... and it was kind of pleasant... so i guess it is secular..but then maybe not, but now according to the article it is definitely not as secular as we might think i guess.

I also remember 10 km away on a hill, they used to yell allah ho akbhar allah from the top of it every evening...it was pretty noisy on friday evenings... along with temples' giving special prayers to the presiding deity... ram, hanuman, or krishna..

 

Actually some kali worshippers and some other radical sects (if you consider them hindu) used to eat beef/meat and even humans (sometimes) after an offering to kali. Even Adi Shankaracharya when he was in one of his trips around India met a kali worshipper- who said "You don't care for your body, so you won't mind if I sacrifice it to kali, so follow me" and he says "alright" and almost gets sacrificed... when on the way through the jungle, the tiger attacks and kills the kali worshipper.

 

There is no doubt that beef is very high in saturated fats, and hence it isn't a very healthy food, as too high a level of cholestrol in the blood makes one susceptible to heart attacks and strokes.

Maybe many spiritual people ate meat and do to this day - but still, they're prejudicing their health by so doing if they go for fatty, red meats such as beef.


To Molly - it is impossible to produce veal in a humane way, as it involves a totally unatural diet for the calves, no matter how big their pens etc.
And actully, it's pretty poor stuff anyway.

 

Beef was consumed by the Indus Valley civilization...and esp. in the higher classes because it was a sacrifice. Also I agree with you BBB that falsifying history is anything but right...the Spanish Inquisition, slavery, the Holocaust, ect. are not things to be proud of...but denying that they ever happened is wrong...because it was a part of human history.... for better or worse

 

yea well but I think it is understandable that if spain wishes to not talk about the atrocities of the catholic church , or lets say (hypothetically) saudi arabia wishes not to teach children about suicide bombings and other negative things.

 

I think that both would be totally unacceptable. Mistakes are made throughout history, but if they are then covered up, the same mistakes may be repeated again and again. The Catholic church these days doesn't seek to supress the truth about history, even if it reflects badly on them. The Saudi authorities are prepared to do anything to hang onto power, it is a 'secret police' state, so you can't expect honesty there.
There is no advantage at all in lies, state sponsored or otherwise. They serve only to keep people in ignorance, and living in an unreal world. It is just a poor attempt at whitewashing.
It does nothing to make Indian culture look better to deny the beef-eating past.

In Germany, it is against the law to deny the halocaust and other Nazi atrocities - and rightly so. Unlike children of my generation, German children are now taught the true history of Germany in the 20th century.
It seems that nowadays, there is money to be made by denying certain aspects of history, the halocaust, the moon landings, even world war II.
To me, it seems like a dangerous trend.

 

::nods:: I agree. The point of learning of the past is so that we can learn from it. To cover it up would be both wrong and wouldn't help with the trend of most people's dislike of history for it "already happened".

All this also is very hard for archaeology which tries to recover and preserve the past but people are so set in the their denial they can't even accept material evidence. People need to accept that you can't change what's happened but you can use it to learn from your mistakes and not do it again... both on a broad and not so broad sense.

 

The cutting edge of archaeology these days is re-writing the book when it comes to ancient history in some very interesting ways. Things like the age of the sphinx, settlements in central Asia, the ice-man etc.
I find it all quite fascinating, and it poses many questions -

 

Like, since God created everything , has a sense of humor, likes telling stories, etc.:

How can you tell if something actually existed or if God just put 'evidence' there to make you think something existed so you would make up cool stories about the stuff you found?

 

what? my good man! God is aloof to all of this.

 

wow , well if you put it that way, yea i mean they should make sure it doesn't repeat itself, and yea one way to do that would be to say exactly what historians discovered.

but then there is another problem with telling it as it is, there is always this personal twist to history.. teachers - especially english teachers, history teachers... any teacher who is teaching a subject that has to do with Humanities... they cannot stay objective, they always add their twist to whatever they are teaching. And they make it look bad, teaching kids/little children about how Muhammed married a nine year old girl will make nonislamic children to think their peers who follow islam are evil and what not... its going to plant seeds of hatred at such a young age.

I don't mean you shouldn't talk about the holocaust or you shouldn't talk about the genocide in Gujurat (a state of India) or you shouldn't talk about the great manifest destiny... or nanking, but then what would kids gain learning these things?

 

If a teacher is actually teaching their own opinions, then they are failing as a teacher. I think though that up to a point your right that it is inevitable.
I think myself that education should be more than 'training' for a job. It should enable people to think for themselves, and seek to provide a wide basis of knowledge in may areas.
In the case of religious education - I doubt there are many schools in either the UK or the US which teach much about the history of Islam in that kind of detail.
With world war II and the Nazis, I think it is essential that kids should be taught about it because it is relatively recent, and there is much potential for a repeat of the same thing. It is hard to find any other crime in history of such magnitude as the halocaust - even things like 9/11 seem mild by comparison.
The 2nd world war was a disaster unprecedented in human history. The Soviet Union alone lost 25 million people. That is one hell of a lot of death and destruction. To keep children in ignorance of such facts, after a certain age, would be to do a great diservice to the future, as another similar war could really spell the end.
And by study of the halocaust, perhaps they can learn to see exactly where race hate, extreme nationalism etc ends up.
As human beings we are all heirs to the past - it won't do to try to cover it up or falsify it because it is uncomfortable.