Why Abattoirs Abolition

Author(s): Pratap J Tolia
Publisher: Vardhaman Bharati International Foundation

Page 9

wealth & cow, we have not thought that they provide only milk, manure or bulls. All these and additionally the source of energy - gobar gas - is provided by the cow and other cattle.
Bharat is a huge field - a farm - farmers are its inhabitants and the cow & cattle are in the centre of this household ship! Cattle farming & agriculture is the greatest of the Bharatiya industry. No other thing can replace this. Human beings also flourish when the cow, the cattle, the entire animal kingdom is fed & flourished. But if they are neglected & slaughtered, then only the destruction and disasters remain in the fortune of the nation, which we are witnessing today with our own eyes (if at all they are open)!"
Even Mahathma Gandhi had strongly emphasised this need when he was questioned by Socialist Revolutionary Smt. Aruna Asaf Ali about the priority of cattle life (COW life) or human life. He had said -
"I have to talk of preserving the cow & cattle because the solution of majority of Bharat's problems could not be found at all without the same ... to save them is to save human beings in Bharat"
Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Mahathma Gandhi's thinking heir, has not only provided whole Bharatiya agricultural & cultural outlook about cattle life preservation, but has also instituted the great Satyagraha at the Mumbai's Deonar Abattoir, which is a matter of shame for Bharat's culture, second biggest in the world next to Chicago in USA and is exporting meat daily in abundance. The overall failure and disasters in Bharat as a result of this mass slaughtering has not opened our eyes and we the so called heirs of Gandhi, Vinoba & JP go on establishing new abattoirs throughout the country! What a shame, what a hypocrisy, what a pity!!
Late Jai Prakash Narayan also has said very clearly that -
"Apart from human & moral aspects of cattle protection its economical aspect also has very big importance ... due to this economical aspect also it becomes extremely necessary to protect the cow and to bring up and preserve all other animals"
Even the greatly open-minded person like Late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who was known for his scientific & technological dreams, was honest enough to realise and admit in the Parliament in December 1963, a few months before his death -
"I have commenced thinking more and more of Gandhiji's system ... I feel that unless & until some supplementary industry is not combined with agriculture, perhaps the immediate results are not to be derived. In my view, cattle farming is one such type of industry, which requires sponsoring and it could be combined with agriculture".
Thus if the people and governments go on hero-worshipping or truly following Gandhi, Nehru or JP, do not follow them in action and go against their desires &