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Profaning Gomātā: Save Mother Cows From Atrocities— An SOS From The Children Of Gomātā: a letter to

13/04/2021

ABSTRACT

This paper is on the devastating condition of the cows and bulls in India despite the fact that the cow is considered as the sacred holy mother of the Hindus. This exploitative condition of the animal is associated with the condition of the human beings (the subjects of the Republic of India) in a metaphorical manner. Psychoanalytic tools are deployed to understand this love-hate relationship with the female body embedded within the high-caste Hindu Brahmins. This aporia is also observed in the reverse sexism of the Hindu worldview.


या सृष्टिः स्रष्टुराद्या वहति विधिहुतं या हविर्या च होत्री

ये द्वे कालं विधत्तः श्रुतिविषयगुणा या स्थिता व्याप्य विश्वम् ।

यां आहुः सर्वबीजप्रकृतिरिति यया प्राणिनः प्राणवन्तः

प्रत्यक्षाभिः प्रपन्नस्तनुभिरवतु वस्ताभिरष्टाभिरीशः॥१॥

— अभिज्ञानशाकुंतलम्

To

The Honourable President,

Republic of India,

Rashtrapati Bhavan,

New Delhi- 110004

Sub: Profaning Gomātā: Save Mother Cows From Atrocities—An SOS From The Children Of Gomātā

Respected Ācārya, our Gorakṣaka,

With your kind permission, we, as an ardent High caste Brahmin Hindu Undivided Family (HUF), wish to share our traumatic dream that, strange enough, all three of us have seen last night. As a result, after waking at the brāhmamuhūrta, at the moment of sunrise, we failed to perform our daily ritual, prabhāta āhnika by saluting the god, the Sun, Savitā. We are sharing our shared dream in a sequential order for your kind information as that dream has a deep impact in the celebration of our holiest religion: Hinduism. The Māndukya Upaniṣad, while explaining the four states of consciousness through the sacred mantra, AUM ॐ, insists that on the second state, svapnābasthā, i.e. the dream state, the seeker attains taijasa तैजस (endowed with light) through meditation on U of the AUM ॐ. For this reason, we are sharing our svapnābasthā with our ācārya.

As we are swinging to and fro from the svapnābasthā (dream state of consciousness, falser state) to jāgrat abasthā (waking state of consciousness, falsest state) and vice versa at the course of writing this letter, we, following mandukyopaniṣad, are putting all the four states of ॐ and akṣara in the following table:

Moreover, because of such semi-transcendental experience, we were bewildered as we had confused the space-time. Therefore, the grammatical tenses used in the following discursive formation are overshadowed by the perceptual tenses—the past-present-future tenses were merged in the ocean of nectar. Please, pardon us for ungrammatical usages of tenses.

This is to request you to kindly consider our prayer to you for saving the lives of our gomātā after going through the following narrative. We, as Hindus, think that this is our urgent need to save these ailing animals, by enforcing, to the greatest extent possible, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1960) so that not only the Pink Revolution⤡ as planned by our government can be made successful, but the following newly introduced great endeavours taken by our welfare state could also be implemented victoriously:

· Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog , who has introducednationwide online examination on ‘gau vigyan (Cow Science) Prachar-Prasar’ Examination for free in 2019 (an integral part of Rashtriya Gokul Mission)

We are welcoming and thanking all these holy holistic attempts for saving the lives of non-human animates. Our only prayer is to return to the future tapovana, where one can pronounce:

राजन् आश्रममृगोऽयं न हन्तव्यो न हन्तव्यः ।

न खलु न खलु बाणः संनिपात्योऽयमस्मिन्मृदुनि

मृगशरीरे पुष्पराशाविवाग्निः ।

क्व बत हरिणकानां जीवितं चातिलोलं क्व च

निशितनिपाता वज्रसाराः शरास्ते।।

— अभिज्ञानशाकुंतलम्

We are concluding this letter by citing Rabindranath Thakur’s novel Rajarsi (king turned into a royal sage) and a play, Visarjana (The Sacrifice—Rajarsi’s dramatic rendition) to foreground our pleas as the same pleas were demanded here.

FROM RAJARSI:

“The king Govindamanikya came for bathing with Hasi and Tata, siblings.

A stream of blood is descending through the white marble rock-stairs of the ghat and meeting the river. It is the blood of the hundred and one buffaloes, who were sacrificed last night to the altar of the Mother Kali.

Upon viewing the bloodstream, Hasi becomes shocked by the spectacle, steps backward and asks the king: What are these stains, papa?

Raja replied: these are bloodstains, dear.

Hasi screamed out: Why so much blood?

In the King’s mind, the child’s simple question reverberated—echoing.

Hasi starts to clean the bloodstains with the river-water, using part of her saree.

Her saree became reddish. Tata replicated his elder sister’s action.

That night, Hasi catches fever. Tata sits beside her and tries to open her eyelids with his tender hands…

The next day, the king, after viewing the absence of those siblings, comes straight to their hut, only to find Hasi unconscious and Tata perplexedly silent.

The king returned to the hut in the evening. Hasi is in a state of delirium and is recurrently asking a single question: “Why so much blood?”

The king responds by promising to her: “I will put a stop to this flooding blood.”

Hasi called forth Tata and said: “Tata, let us wipe away this blood at once!

The King then said: “Yes my child… let me also help you.”

At the late night hours, Hasi breathes her last on the lap of the King.

Thenceforth, the king kept his promise to Hasi by officially banning all animal-sacrifices inside the temple premises in Tripura.”

FROM THE SACRIFICE:

JAISING। Drive me not from doubt to doubt. It is all the same, whether the voice comes from the Goddess, or from my master. – (He unsheathes his knife, and then throws it away.) Listen to the cry of thy children, Mother. Let there be only flowers for thy offerings, -no more blood. They are red even as blood, -these bunches of hibiscus. They have come out of the heart-burst of the earth, pained at the slaughter of her children. Accept this. Thou must accept this. I defy thy anger. Blood thou shalt never have. Redden thine eyes. Raise thy sword. Bring thy furies of destruction. I do not fear thee. King, leave this temple to its Goddess, and go to your men.[GOVINDA goes.]Alas, alas, in a moment I gave up all that I had, my master, my Goddess. [RAGHUPATI comes.]

(…)

ALL। Victory be to the King!

GOVINDA। Know you all, that I forbid shedding of blood in the temple from to-day for ever.

MINISTER। You forbid sacrifice to the Goddess?

GENERAL NAYAN RAI। Forbid sacrifice?

NAKSHATRA। How terrible! Forbid sacrifice?

RAGHUPATI। Is it a dream?

GOVINDA। No dream, father. It is awakening. Mother came to me, in a girl’s disguise, and told me that blood she cannot suffer.

RAGHUPATI। She has been drinking blood for ages. Whence comes this loathing all of a sudden?

GOVINDA। No, she never drank blood, she kept her face averted.

RAGHUPATI। I warn you, think and consider. You have no power to alter laws laid down in scriptures.

GOVINDA। God’s words are above all laws.

RAGHUPATI। Do not add pride to your folly. Do you have the effrontery to say that you alone have heard God’s words, and not I?

NAKSHATRA। It is strange, that the King should have heard from gods and not the priest.

GOVINUA। God’s words are ever ringing in the world, and he who is willfully deaf cannot hear them.

RAGHUPATI। Atheist! Apostate!

GOVINDA। Father, go to your morning service, and declare to all worshippers that hence-forward they will be punished with banishment who shed creatures’ blood in their worship of the Mother of all creatures.

RAGHUPATI। Is this your last word?

GOVINDA। Yes.

Rabindranath Tagore in the role of Raghupati in his play “Sacrifice”, 1893

Please find enclosed an attachment (PDF) documented with the cruelty on the gomātā for your kind perusal.

In this discursive formation, we have compared the condition of victims of financial abuse due to abrupt bankruptcies (Yes Bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, DHFL, PMC etc.) with the conditions of exploited gomata.

Lastly, we are praying to you for अहिंसा, without being distinguished among human and animal, caste and creed, gender or race, by reiterating a mantra from the यजुर्वेदः:

“पिता नोहसी

पिता नो बोधि

नमस्तेहस्तु

मा मा हिंसी: ।”

The above mantra, put into tune by Rabindranath Thakur, was sung by Subinoy Roy and is being attached with this humble appeal as well.

OM PITA NOHSI” BY SUBINOY ROY

Yours Obediently,

Dr. Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay

Mrs. Rupa Bandyopadhyay

Mr. Akhar Bandyopadhyay

ON BEHALF OF ALL ANGUISHED, AILING DHFL FD HOLDERS [USUAL DISCLAIMERS APPLY]

COPY TO:

1. The Honourable Prime Minister, Government of India

2. The Honourable Minister of Home Affairs, Government of India

3. The Honourable Minister of Education, Government of India

4. The Honourable Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Government of India

5. Smt. Maneka Sanjay Gandhi, Member of Parliament, Government of India

6. The Honourable Chief Minister, Government of Uttar Pradesh

7. Dr. Mohan Bhagwat, Sarsanghchalak, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)

8. The Honourable President, Bharatiya Janata Party

बहुजनहिताय बहुजनसुखाय च॥

(“For the happiness of the many, for the welfare of the many”)

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