________________
LIFESTYLE
For centuries, cows
have been treated with love and respect
in India
Then I was a child growing up, I had
one regret: not to have been born a
Jain. Other children wished they had been born movie stars or astronauts - I just wished to be a Jain.
No matter what high ideals politicians may talk about the true foundations and tenets of Jainism are the world's keys to peaceful coexistence and respect, and the practice of ahimsa is perhaps the most amazing and simple moral view.
So, when I hear bad news: Jains forgetting why there is anything wrong with eating meat, or - most recently - finding Jains involved in running export slaughterhouses in India, I can only think: if Jains can't get it right, what hope is there for the rest of us!
In my early years in India, the images of happy cows were everywhere. The cows who wandered the dusty streets sometimes wore garlands, symbols of respect placed about their necks by Hindus or Jains. Despite their tremendous size, they are as gentle and tame as family dogs. One day, as I walked down a filthy alley, I saw a huge bull who had walked up two steps and was standing at the entrance of the house watching the family do its daily chores. Twenty minutes later, when I returned down the same street, he was still there, blocking the entire entrance, enjoying the company of his people.
Modern milk production involves a lot of cruelty. There are Not that life was easy for them. plenty of healthier and compassionate alternatives which Overworked bullocks pulled carts through the Jains would do well to embrace, argues Ingrid Newkirk clamour of city streets, breathing in the stinking fumes and sweating. Sometimes they collapsed under they all happen for one reason: people eat flesh and drink milk. their burdens. When cows cease to be useful, off they go to Milk is not a vegetarian food: there is a piece of a veal calf or auction. We visited the weekly cattle sales in India. Several bull calf in every glass of milk. I say milk is not vegetarian thousand bullocks and cows stood confused and uncertain in a because the calves are taken from their mothers so that we can dusty field. The temperature soared to 100 degrees but there drink the milk they need, and we want. The females are made was no water and no shade. The cows, tense with fear, did not into milk slaves, like their poor mothers, unless they die of understand why they had been taken from their homes. diarrheal diseases, like scours. The boys are put in small crates
Such things happen where most of us never see them. But in dark sheds, chained by the neck, to be made into veal
JAYU SHAH
DAIRY INVOLVES
CRUELTY
26
Jain Spirit • March - May 2000
Jain Education International 2010_03
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