Why Hindus Don't Eat Beef?

My personal take on this as a Hindu and a writer

There is a popular statement about Hindus around the world.

“They worship cows.”

And there is a lot of truth in that. Hindus worship cows and treat them like gods. They have extreme privilege in India particularly to the point that they can roam freely on the roads without restrictions, they can shit freely as they like and wherever they want.

In fact, some people even pay the farmers to make their cows shit in their new homes. The Hindu ritual of housewarming has a segment where the cow enters the house along with the owners and will shit and pee in some corner of the house.

So, why do they worship cows so much? After all, in the rest of the world, the cow is mostly seen as a delicious piece of meat on the plate.

It might be in a tasty bowl of ramen in the easternmost part of the world or it might be a luxurious piece of steak in the best pink shade on the plate.

So, why are Indians, particularly Hindus so set on worshiping the animal that the rest of the world is enjoying deliciously?

The more popular reason was that in Hindu religious texts the cow was always put in a noble position.

For example, Kamadhenu the holy cow that has divine powers. She could give whatever her owner desires. From the immense wealth to an invincible army, from lands to kingdoms, from the angelic beauties to the otherworldly treasures, she can gift whatever her owner wants.

Another example, Lord Krishna the god was known as Gopala which essentially means cow protector.

The third example is about the male counterpart of our holy cow, the bull. Lord Shiva the destroyer has Nandi who is actually a bull.

Many of the Hindus actually believe these stories and gods. That might be the primary reason for them to not consume this animal.

This is also the reason the rest of the world, sneers, and snickers, and even disdains the Indians or more precisely hindus for not eating beef as they don’t believe in these myths.

And it cannot be blamed on anyone that they don’t believe it.

After all, as a person grown in a Hindu household, even I have some reservations for some stories and I take most of them with a pinch of salt or even treat them like Schrodinger cats.

Not worrying about the truth of the matter and caring more about what those stories have to offer.

But for the sake of the article, let’s assume that all these stories are indeed myths and let’s pretend that all these characters are made up and all these stories are indeed stories that are written by some old age writer of those ancient times into religious texts.

Then another question arises. Why Cow? There are other animals that are considered to be gods, like the garuda an eagle who is the mount of the god Vishnu, peacock as lord Karthikeya’s mount, and every god has a mount of their choice.

But none of these animals are as worshipped as cows.

So, what were the writers thinking? Did they foresee that their descendants will be invaded by different cultures that enjoy this delicious animal, so they made up these stories, to preserve them for the rest of the world? After all, there is a custom in India, that the guest is to be treated like gods and India has a high population even in those days.

It would be trouble.

Or is there any other reason?

I thought of it to see if there is any logical reason and surprisingly, I came to a relatively more logical explanation on why Hindus don’t eat beef and why these writers wrote these crazy stories and went as far as making them gods.

The explanation is quite simple actually.

I believe the cows and bulls, are worshipped and revered not because they are gods or divinity. It is because of the contributions the cows and bulls offered the people at the time.

India has a large expanse of fertile land before any other race, religion, or person invaded the country. And agriculture is one of the key professions in India. They are the food source after all.

And cattle have been the most important contributors to that food sources. They gave milk which gave other by-products like the butter which is then made into ghee, the most commonly used fat in India, then the cow dung which is used as manure for the crops and made into cow pies and then used as fuel for their cooking and keeping warm, after which came to their counterparts bulls that are used to till the land and cultivate.

At that time there are a large number of farmers that used the cattle in cultivation and the whole nation was fed by them. As a sign of respect and gratitude, they must have just let the cows go. In fact, that is one of the main reasons for me to abandon any thoughts of eating beef in this lifetime. After all, my ancestors until my great-grandfather’s time are all farmers and even though we are now an ordinary middle-class family, I still decide to respect the race that helped my ancestors.

As for why write all these mythical stories about them to glorify them, assuming all of these are false, there is an even simpler explanation.

At that time in India, education was not accessible for every person. People divided into casts based on professions and only a few casts are given necessary literate education like the Brahmans and some select few among the Kshatriyas belonging to the political and royal families. The rest of the people will just earn their trade and continue the family tradition. Since those people wanted to pass this tradition of respecting cows to the future generations, they must have decided to create these stories so that they would pass through the generations easily and of course, as humans, we tend to exaggerate every story and by the time it reached the more modern era they might have been like this.

This is my take on this, so what do you guys think of that.