Thread by @AudreyTruschke

Another Indian human being, a Muslim, killed over a cow by Hindutva extremists.

The cow has had a long, quite variegated history in Hindu traditions in South Asia. Buckle-up for this whirlwind 🧵

thewire.in/communalism/ma… #Hindutva #cows #murder #India #History

Way back in the day, like 3,500 years ago, followers of Brahminical traditions sacrificed cows and ate beef. The Vedas--our earliest Indian texts--are quite clear on this.

Eating beef as part of religious practice continued for some time.

Then, in the first millennium CE, a new idea began to gain traction that not eating beef could be a mark of upper-caste status, especially being Brahmin. It was part of a larger set of prescriptions.

Around, say, 800 CE, what percentage of Brahmins were vegetarian? I have no idea. We don't have that kind of data for premodernity.

But we do know that discussion of vegetarianism generally and viewing cows as sacred in particular pops up a lot, and it was about caste.

A large part of the caste system depends on ideas of purity. And beef began to be thought of as polluting.

Note that this cuts both ways. Brahmins could be pure by avoiding beef, whereas many lower castes and Dalits were impure because they worked with leather.

Fast-forward to the nineteenth century, and there began to be a desire, among some, for a broad-based Hindu identity.

This was a big shift. In premodernity, "Hindus" rarely called themselves such, preferring instead caste terms, regional markers, etc.

In the quest to bring Hindus--many of whom had relatively little in common with one another--together under a single umbrella, some looked for rallying causes.

Cow protection was one of those. It played on long-standing Brahminical ideas of purity but was quite political.

In more recent years, cow protection has become a staple activity of the Hindu Right. It is often weaponized to harm the group that, for them, is enemy #1: Muslims.

But, that's not all you should know about cows in Indian society.

Lots of Hindus eat beef, including some Brahmins.

In part, that's attributable to regional differences. Hinduism is a hugely diverse tradition in general.

Also, human behavior doesn't always follow religious prescriptions. Some people like beef, no matter what a priest says.

India is the one of the largest exporters of beef in the world. Some years, it has topped the beef export charts.

For some, there are distinctions among bovine that matter and explain this away. Also, because capitalism.

I would sum-up, but there is no neat way to tie up these threads. And maybe that's the point we all need --

There is no single Hindu view on eating beef or cow reverence. Even religion aside, whether beef is anathema or a lucrative export depends on context.