Beef is not just another meat in Indian context. This was an instance where food was weaponized by jihadi hordes specifically to desecrate Hindu temples and assault Hindu sensibilities. There are countless historical evidences of this practice.
Beef consumption gained another dimension in colonial era when Macaulayite class used it as a declaration of their scientific temper. Many young students would eat it as a mark of rebellion against prevailing social norms.
This became a trend in British Kolkata - one of the most famous incidents is that of Rev Krishna Mohan Bannerjee, who was accused of eating beef and wine at a gathering of youth under Derozio, got outed, and was ostracized.
Later, beef eating often became a sign of rebellion against "oppressive Brahminical" norms. Dr Ambedkar has written extensively about it, even claiming that beef eating was norm among Brahmins (using the word "goghna") before challenges from Buddhism marked turnaround.
There is the dimension of cattle protection and cattle burglary too - unlike nations like America/Australia/Japan etc, India doesnt have a high end beef industry. Indian beef industry is low quality & volume driven, fueled by either old or illegally obtained cows.
One may ask, why outrage (or take pride) over consumption of a discarded piece of cloth? True, in the cosmic sense, maybe it is ultimately meaningless.
But stable societies are governed by a common consciousness. It is that consciousness which identifies the sacred and defines boundaries and rules. Yes, that consciousness may (actually, will) change over time.
We live in the age of Individualism. However, the same society that gives one the right to offend, gives others the right to be offended too. After that, it boils down to one thing only- shraddha, and the ability to understand that different people can have different perspectives
if your food is your private matter, so is another person's food choice. If you are a food connoisseur, you would know that the supply chain of indian beef and that of wagyu/angus are different. If you are a informed, understand the context a Hindu views a plate of beef in India.
PS: "Proud beef eater" is one of the stupidest labels in existence. There is nothing to be proud of. No one says proud dhania sprinkler, proud lemon squeezer, proud milk shaker ityadi
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Dharma never falls short. Never ever. It is our misinterpretation of what Dharma is that leads to confusion. Dharma is realisation Srishti-Sthiti-Laya cycle is fundamental nature of universe. Over-emphasis on any one will always lead to disaster. Nothing western- this is Shruti.
The Shruti emphasizes this dynamism everywhere. Indra releases the waters kept stagnant by Vritra. H civilization has been outward looking- this sensibility was at the core of H civilization before the Islamic invasions.
But then we got locked in a Civilizational war, and prioritized stability above everything else. Result is we lagged behind the world, and became colonized. Satyam eva jayate, and at that point in time the truth was we were weak in a world of Matsyanyaya.
the caste jati system is obsolete in the post industrial world. we can keep crying (because industrialization is interlinked with colonialism in Indian context), but the failure of H society to adapt to the new world is at the root of deracination.
social order is tightly coupled with social justice. Once industrial revolution happened, H society lost means of providing social justice, because market economy became norm. That lead to inevitable collapse of social order.
but crying about market, industrial revolution etc is meaningless and futile. So is sticking to older notions of social order and dreaming about its return as if they were some golden era. No. Times change. The world change. There is no going back.
Tradition is a non-argument against equality of opportunity in this day and age. It is always going to lose because it will go against public sense of natural justice.
Earlier times there was guarantee of income associated with hereditary rights and exclusions. Post industrial age those hereditary rights have become meaningless in practice because economic model itself has changed.
Traditions, which are to guide society, will either evolve- organically or by external force, or will become extinct in time. The wheel of time itself will grind it down without mercy. Those who can see that reality and adapt will survive.
One unfortunate long term effect of colonialism on Hindu psyche is the "this is the true X" syndrome.
Current "RW" is majorly a victim of this. Let me try and explain.
So when the British came and colonised India, the Indian traditional knowledge system was dissected and then subject to a brutal assault by protestant/enlightenment forces. The latter operated with completely different fundamentals compared to Indian processes.
Since the foundation was different, the universal truths for these ideologies were also different.
Let us for example take the concept of the individualism.
The human species, over the last 100K years, have slowly but surely added layers to the basic evolutionary cycle that every other lifeform on this planet follows. These layers lead to the formation of what we call cultures.
Ofcourse, based on a myriad of factors like religion, history, climate, geography and natural/man-made events, different places in the world have their own cultural trajectory.
An obfuscation campaign is currently underway to give intellectual cover to assorted foreign supported regime change agents. In this thread I will try to explain why these toolkit creating agents of chaos are, in fact, committing sedition against the sovereign Indian nation state
In order to understand the present, we have to understand how the nature of warfare itself has changed over time. Without this one will not realize the false contrast being created between "peaceful activists" and the state.
Many years ago, battles were messy affairs between massed troops on either side indulging in wholesale slaughter. This is commonly referred to as first generation warfare. Mahabharata, Alexander, Hannibal etc were all example of this. This is the classical image of war.