The Bharatiya Janata Party of India, and its backup organisations, the Shiv Sena and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, would like to pretend that they stand up for the cow. But they do not, really. At the very least, they show a disregard for overseas cows that is nothing less than racist.
In Vedic times, perhaps before the transition to sedentary agriculture, it seems that beef was not taboo. But then the bovines helped the ancients in the settlement of the Ganga plains and hence developed a sanctity that was consecrated by received religion. Cattle provided milk, gobar and muscle power for the plough, all of them crucial for the plains agriculturist.
But if you think that the Hindus of present day Hindustan revere the cow in a way that it matters, then chew the cud and think some more. Where do you think old cows go to? How many bovine hospices have you seen in your area? And with the gradual phasing out of bulls from fieldwork as agriculture becomes mechanised, what is happening to the male offspring?
For many old cows and otherwise 'useless' cattle from parts of North India and eastern Nepal, the not-so- happy hunting grounds are in the abattoirs of Dhaka. Ageing bovines walk or are driven overland, to the Bangladeshi border on trucks, then transferred to huge boats, where they ride shoulder-to-shoulder on a life-ending voyage along the Ganga. Out of sight becomes out of mind.