Book on beef-eating runs into trouble 

 By Our Special Correspondent, The Hindu, Aug. 8, 2001

NEW DELHI, AUG. 8. The expert on ancient Indian history, Prof. D. N. Jha's bid to prove that ``beef-eating was not Islam's baneful bequeathal to India'' has run him into trouble with a civil court in Andhra Pradesh restraining the release, publication and printing of his book ``Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions'', and the Animal Welfare Board of India demanding a ban on the book along with his arrest. 

Admitting a petition of the Jain Seva Sangh and Adigoud (Vipra) Samaj, a Hyderabad civil court on Tuesday passed an interim injunction restraining both Prof. Jha and his publisher from ``releasing, publishing and printing the book'' in any manner till the next date of hearing on August 17. The petitioners had prayed that many references in the book were opposed to the religious sentiments and fundamentals of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. 

The day before, the Chairman of the Animal Welfare Board of India, Mr. Justice Ghuman Mal Lodha, had written to the Union Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, demanding a ban on the book and the arrest of Prof. Jha and his publisher, Matrix Books, for bringing out the book ``which is highly objectionable, derogatory and injurious to Indian culture, particularly Hindu, Jain and Buddha religious traditions''. 

While the publishers have decided to stop sending out books for sale in view of the injunction, Prof. Jha - who has been receiving threatening calls from mid-July warning of dire consequences if he published the book - plans to seek legal counsel. The book - which has been talked about in academic circles for a while - first ran into trouble when  the original publisher developed cold feet and backed out at the last minute. 

Insisting that there was nothing in the book that sought to hurt anyone's sentiments, Prof. Jha said the very purpose of writing it was to show that beef-eating was not unique to Islam and, thereby, counter the campaign that seeks to foster ``the false consciousness of the otherness of the followers of Islam''. 

Of the view that the attack on his book was a product of the intolerant days the country was passing through, Prof. Jha said historical facts had never been palatable to all across the board. ``But, you do not ban a book because you do not agree with its contents.'' 

In particular, he is upset with Mr. Justice Lodha's call for arresting and prosecuting him and his publisher, and the latter's description of the book as an ``atom bomb explosion against our religious feelings and sentiments''. While speaking out against the book, Mr. Justice Lodha has donned three hats: That of the Chairman of the Animal Welfare Board of India, the Vice-Chairman of the National Commission on Cattle, and the President of the Rashtriya Goraksha Andolan Samiti. 

To Mr. Justice Lodha's allegation of Prof. Jha using stray references to present a distorted picture, the historian said he was only strengthening the position maintained by very orthodox historians in the past including the likes of Bharat Ratna P. V. Kane and J. C. Jain. ``Jain is on record as stating that meat eating was not uncommon among early Jains, and Kane in his History of Dharmashastras shows that the vedic people ate beef.''
 

                    LINGUA FRANCA
                    Volume 11, No. 8—November 2001
 

                    INSIDE PUBLISHING

                   Banned in Benares
 

                    WHEN THE BRITISH COLONIAL ENTERPRISE on the Indian
                    subcontinent received its first major blow in the mid-nineteenth
                    century, it was apparently a substance as innocuous as animal fat
                    that stoked the fires of rebellion. Known variously as the 1857
                    Mutiny or the first Indian war of independence, the war is generally
                    said to have been set off by the presence of beef and pork fat in
                    the British-issued greased cartridges that Hindu and Muslim
                    soldiers had to bite off before loading into their rifles.

                    Of course, the uprising had a number of political and economic
                    causes, but the Hindu ban on eating beef has been a flash point in
                    India ever since. Upholding the protected status of the cow
                    became a rallying point for extremist Hindu groups in the late
                    nineteenth century. More than a hundred years later, in a country
                    now ruled by the Hindu right-wing BJP, the politics of beef remains
                    contentious. When the Delhi University historian D.N. Jha recently
                    challenged the prevailing attitudes about cows and beef, he was
                    denounced by the government, and his book on the subject was
                    pulled from the country's shelves.

                    In August, Jha, a reputable scholar of ancient Indian history,
                    published Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions (Matrix
                    Books), in which he argues that the current iconic status of the cow
                    would have made little sense to the ancestors of present-day
                    Hindus. The widespread assumption that beef eating was foreign
                    to the subcontinent until it was introduced by Muslim invaders in the
                    twelfth century is incorrect, insists Jha; not only were the ancient
                    Hindus of the Vedic Age no strangers to the pleasures of beef, but
                    the now prohibited meat once had an important position in the
                    hierarchy of offerings made to Hindu gods.

                    Though right-wing commentators often fulminate against what they
                    see as anti-Hinduism in the work of India's generally secular
                    historians, the reaction to Holy Cow has been particularly fierce.
                    The hostility began even before publication, when Jha received
                    threatening phone calls after a chapter was posted on a Web site.
                    During correction of the final proofs, the book's original publisher
                    withdrew from the project, saying, "I will be lynched if I publish that
                    Bhagawan Mahavira ate meat"—a reference to the founder of the
                    vegetarian Jain religion. (Jha says he is not the first historian to
                    have considered the possibility that Jain monks and their founder
                    ate meat in certain extraordinary situations, and he says his work
                    never disputes the fact that Jain texts generally endorse strict
                    vegetarianism.) Hindu priests in Benares have held
                    demonstrations against the book, describing the author as part of
                    "anti-national forces trying to destroy Indian culture and tradition."

                    Upon the book's publication, groups loyal to the BJP—whose
                    election manifesto routinely promises to ban the slaughter of "cows
                    and cow-progeny" in those states where it is not already
                    illegal—immediately demanded the author's arrest and a ban on
                    the book. Jha has not been arrested, but after a number of
                    religious and animal-rights groups filed petitions, a court in the
                    southern city of Hyderabad ordered the publisher to desist from
                    printing, publishing, and releasing the book anywhere in India until
                    further hearings are held. As a result, says Jha, Holy Cow is "for all
                    intents and purposes banned."

                    In today's India, sectarian politics has ensured that beef is eaten
                    only by those considered on the fringes of mainstream society.
                    Because it is cheaper than mutton or chicken, beef is often the
                    food of India's poor. Hindus with liberal tendencies eat it, but the
                    fundamentalist right usually attributes the practice to the misguided
                    secularism of communists. Even in states where it can be sold
                    openly, beef is rarely found in markets with a predominantly Hindu
                    clientele.

                   It wasn't always so, says Jha. Drawing on a wide range of secular
                    and sacred sources dating back to the second millennium b.c., he
                    concludes that the ancient cow was "a combination of
                    paradoxes"—its mouth was considered impure, but cow products
                    (milk, bile, urine) were often used in purification rites. Jha thus
                    contends that the static tradition his accusers cling to is not borne
                    out by rational historical inquiry, which instead reveals that "the
                    image of the cow projected by Indian textual traditions—over the
                    centuries is polymorphic." His chronological study of sacred and
                    secular texts contains abundant references to ritual slaughter of
                    cattle and the consumption of the sacrificial meat, as well as to
                    archaeological evidence of bone fragments ("often with cut
                    marks") and "the therapeutic use of meats." It is only around the
                    middle of the first millennium a.d., Jha says, that Hindu texts began
                    to disapprove of the killing of cows and the consumption of beef.

                    Jha ascribes these developments to a shift in rural lifestyle from a
                    pastoral mode to a more hierarchical agrarian society. This
                    change, he writes, was accompanied by the "gradual replacement
                    of Vedic sacrifice" by a new religious system in which an
                    "emphasis on the donation of land and other agrarian resources
                    like—cattle—made it necessary for the law givers to forbid the
                    killing of kine." Older dietary habits did not die out, however, and
                    while penances were laid down for eating beef or killing a cow,
                    such acts were usually treated as minor sins, not major infractions.

                    Though Jha is known for his combative political stance—he does
                    not hesitate to call Hindu ideologues "ignoramuses" in his
                    preface—he acknowledges that the controversy over the history of
                    beef eating is "more than a century old" and that many scholars,
                    including conservative Sanskritists, have understood that beef
                    "formed an important item of food in ancient India." Somewhat
                    bemused by the attention his scholarly tract is getting, he
                    nonetheless laments the tendency of dominant Hindu groups to
                    divide Indian society into pure selves and demonized others. Jha
                    refers to ethnic riots that begin with Hindus throwing pig flesh into
                    mosques and Muslims flinging beef into temples as contemporary
                    examples of such destructive patterns of behavior. He himself is a
                    Brahmin and a vegetarian by habit. "But if a situation so
                    demands," he says, "I eat nonvegetarian food, including beef,
                    without any sense of guilt. To others I appear a bad eater, but I
                    enjoy whatever food I eat."
 

                    -- Siddhartha Deb
 

The Week, Aug. 26, 2001
 
 

  Interview Of The Week
Holy cow is bull
Says historian D.N. Jha in his new book.
Now the VHP is gunning for him

                            by  Jomy Thomas
 

     Though a vegetarian "by habit", Dwijendra Narayan Jha, history professor in Delhi University, sometimes eats beef, "following the dharma sastras". His book Holy Cow--Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions in which he argues that beef was part of ancient Indian cuisine has angered religious groups. A court in Hyderabad has banned it and Vishwa Hindu Parishad's cow protection wing has demanded his arrest. Excerpts from an interview with the professor:

     I am like a man in red clothes and surrounded by mad bulls. I have to find an escape

     Why did you decide to write this book?
     There is increasing religious fundamentalism and a demand for declaring cow as the national animal. I thought I should write something on the history of the sanctity of the cow: whether it was eaten or not. Scholars have written about beef-eating earlier. I am trying to show the continuity of a tradition. I have also tried to show that beef-eating is pre-Islamic.

     Fundamentalist forces try to associate abstention from beef with Hinduism. We have evidence of beef-eating in the early phase. In the subsequent phase the dharma sastras talk about the 'old practice' of beef-eating.

      Was meat-eating an issue in the Rig Veda period?
      Manu Smriti provides a list of edible animals in which the only exception is the camel.

      Are you saying that the holiness attached to the cow was invented later?
      It has grown over a period of time. One can't say that at this point of time the animal became sacred. The word sacred may not convey the meaning adequately. Better to use the word inviolability. If it was so holy why don't we have a single temple for the cow? In many temples we find a Nandi the bull.As a historian I don't believe in the sanctity of the cow.

    What about the dictum that those who eat beef will become pariahs?
     Several dharma sastras state that one who eats the cow will become untouchable. This happened in early medieval period. Brahmins associated beef-eating with the lower strata of society. This indicates that the social structure was undergoing changes. This was a mechanism to accept people into the social hierarchy where you say that if you eat beef you are an untouchable, an outcaste.

     All these classifications come from Brahmins. You have to read between the lines to find what Brahmins had in mind. Why did the Brahmins who ate beef a thousand years earlier declare those who eat beef untouchable? They were obsessed with the prohibition of beef-eating because the practice was prevalent. It was their invention, a dharma sastric invention. They wanted to maintain their hegemony. Even there, all Brahmins don't agree. Certain medieval writers defended the old practice.

     There is an increasing demand for a ban on cow slaughter.
     I am for protection of the cow, but why this privilege only to the cow? Why not the buffalo? It is not my intention to hurt anybody's religious sensibilities. I come from a fairly conservative Brahmin family. But I have to give up all religious considerations when I am writing history.

     Hindutva forces want to brand this as a part of the larger conspiracy.
     The Hindutva forces themselves are great conspirators. They tell lies, lies and lies. They will tell the same lie so many times so as to make it a truth. Anything that goes against that lie is a conspiracy. A historian does not live in isolation. He is a part of society. I am like a man wearing red clothes and surrounded by mad bulls. I have to find an escape.

     When you try to establish that the Buddha or Mahavira ate beef, you are hurting sentiments.
     They should read the book and try to produce counter evidence. That is how you react to an academic work. Not by burning it. This means you are trying to control academic research. This is not fair. I was not expecting the VHP to react. Their cadres don't read. The demand to arrest me is fascist. Then they will have to ban many things including the Vedas. Ban P.V. Kane's History of Dharma Sastras. Ban all the dharma sastra texts where there are references to beef-eating.
 

Circle of prejudice 
 

Nayanjot Lahiri, Hindustan Times, Oct. 25, 2001
 

                ‘When the Greeks sacrificed an animal to a god, they roasted it and they ate it. That’s a bit like buying your mum a box of chocolates then scoffing them yourself. The greatest honour was to have some roasted heart, lungs, liver or kidney from the sacrificed animal… This didn’t leave very much for the gods to eat, you understand. Just the tail, the thigh bones and the gall bladder.’ 

                This is how Terry Dreary, author of The Groovy Greeks, describes a Greek sacrifice. Such descriptions are legion not just in this book but also in the series of which this forms a part. Aptly called ‘Horrible Histories’, the series revels in recounting the great and gory deeds of the ancestors of many Europeans as also their religions, ranging from paganism to Christianity. 

                The books themselves, with titles like The Rotten Romans and The Vicious Vikings, have a sound historical core but are consciously irreverent. They simultaneously inform, humour and horrify their readers. Their readership remains large and enthusiastic. Certainly, no communities in Europe have felt that the books have hurt their national or religious sentiments nor has anyone asked that they be banned. 

                Some years ago, a few of us who had read and admired these ‘Horrible Histories’ discussed the possibility of producing a similar series on our own ancestors and cultures. Currently in India, all such ambitions, though, seem like distant illusions. 

                Look at what has happened to D.N. Jha’s book called Holy Cow — Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions. The book cannot be read because a court of law has stayed its circulation while it examines whether Jha has hurt religious sentiments. Many of his colleagues in the History Department of Delhi University had positively commented upon the manuscript before it went to the press. We are now puzzled and appalled at the continuing attacks and assaults on it. 

                Consumption of animal meat by various religious communities in India is well documented in all kinds of historical and anthropological writings. Rajendra Lal Mitra in the 19th century convincingly argued for cow sacrifice and beef eating among the Indo-Aryans just as P.V. Kane in the 1940s referred to Dharmasastric passages that speak of cattle consumption. The literary references to animal flesh being consumed by heterodox sects in ancient times are also much discussed and debated as, for instance, in the writings of A.L. Basham and H.R. Kapadia. 

                So, what has been Jha’s fault? Is he being attacked because he has cited all of this, well-known to most students of Indian history, in the form of a book? 

                On the contrary, the charge that can be made against him is that he has not cited all the evidence. Archaeological data, for instance. 

                “If any single factor holds attention in the entire range of the Indian archaeological data, that is the overwhelming preponderance of cattle in this record.” In sixth millennium BC Mehrgarh which is located in Baluchistan, 65 per cent of the entire faunal assemblage is represented by cattle. By the fourth and third millennia BC, the cattle bones go up to 75 per cent in Baluchistan (at Balakot) as also in Punjab (at Jalilpur). 

                Similarly, if bones are an indication, the favourite animal food of the Indus civilisation was cattle. We know this because they account for more than 70 per cent of the total collection from Indus sites. Cattle bones, incidentally, have been identified at all Harappan sites that have yielded animal bones. In other words, the preoccupation with cattle in Vedic literature, discussed in Jha’s work, appears to be the reflection of an old subcontinental subsistence practice. 

                Has Jha’s book come under attack because of its eye-catching title? This also seems unlikely since one can think of hundreds of books with equally provocative titles. For example, the most erudite recent book on the spiritual history of women in south India is called Walking Naked. 

                It is certainly possible that Jha’s work may appear too objectionable to some because it may have been written with a slant and an element of prejudgment. Still, in a democratic civil society, Lord Diplock’s understanding of the concept of freedom of speech is worth remembering: “people are entitled to hold and to express freely... strong views some of you or indeed all of you, may think are exaggerated, obstinate, or prejudiced, provided — and this is the important thing — that they are views which the writer honestly holds. The basis of our public life is that the crank, the enthusiast, may say what he honestly thinks just as much as the reasonable man or woman who sits on a Jury...” 

                Today, in practically all religions and political parties, there are moral police groups; more often than not these are self-appointed ones. At best, such groups are insufficiently informed about the historical evolution of social and cultural practices. At worst, their fragile sense of identity feels constantly threatened by that knowledge of the past which is at variance with their present day sentiments. 

                Nor do moral police groups want people who differ with their programme of action to freely express their views. 

                An instance in point is the campaign that was launched against the historian, Mushirul Hasan, some years ago. Apart from the threats and abuse heaped on him, Hasan was not allowed to fulfil his professorial duties in Jamia Millia Islamia merely because he stated that even while he did not agree with the views of Salman Rushdie, he believed that the Satanic Verses should not be banned. 

                The attack on Satish Chandra’s Medieval India is another sample of this. What will the people who have attacked his book do with all the books that mention that there were groups of Sikhs in Punjab in the 19th century who smoked tobacco and cut their hair — two of the greatest taboos within Sikh tradition? 

                In case someone should accuse me of ‘minority-bashing’, let me say that I belong to a devout Sikh family. While I remain attached to my family traditions, there is no reason why I should fear an open debate about them. Moreover, I am citing what has appeared in the work of a historian who too was born a Sikh. The work is The Construction of Religious Boundaries whose author, Harjot Oberoi, has explored identity and diversity in the Sikh tradition. 

                Certainly, anyone is free to criticise and contest what historians write. But to ask that their writings be banned because they state uncomfortable or contentious truths, amounts to demanding that the academic space that nurtures history be smothered. This is unacceptable to any practitioner of the historian’s craft. It is unacceptable because it is often through differences of opinion about historical sources and their interpretations that our knowledge of the past moves forward. 

                Above all, moral policemen — in religious organisations and in political parties — need to realise that having ‘faith’ in only that version of the past which suits their present day interests, is a theological virtue, not a historical one. 

                My purpose in writing this piece has not been to stir up or agitate the sentiments of any religious group but to stress that one cannot wish away historical facts merely because they are currently unpalatable. If the present prejudices continue, a time may come when we will be forced to either give up or compromise our quest to understand India’s history. 

                Instead of trained historians, there will only be people looking around for ‘evidence’ to substantiate particular versions of ‘our traditions’ in much the same way as people in another part of the world had tried to look for Noah’s Ark and cite radiocarbon dates in favour of it.