The optional exam will take place annually, mainly for school and university students, although the general public can also take it, said the country’s Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog (RKA), an agency set up in 2012 to protect cows. under the Ministry of Fisheries. Livestock and dairy.
“The science in cows needs to be explored,” said RKA chairwoman Vallabhai Kathiria said at a news conference on Tuesday. “I’m a cancer surgeon myself, so I can testify to that.”
“Even if a cow does not give milk, cow dung and cows’ urine is so precious,” he added.
An opposition Indian National Congress party member, Priyank Kharge, has criticized the move on Twitter.
Cows are a controversial topic in India, and many among the country’s majority Hindu population consider the animal sacred. Most states have banned their slaughter.
The political push to enforce this ban has intensified since Prime Minister Narendra Modi – whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) strongly supports conservative Hindu nationalists – came to power in 2014.
Clean and smart
The RCA has released a 54-page study guide that covers topics such as ‘religious significance’ and ‘medical significance’ of cows.
“The cow is not only a living heritage of Hindus, but also of mankind,” the document reads. “In world traditions, the cow stands for fertility, prosperity and life, and is often called the mother-ancestor, perhaps because he is the first man-made mammal.”
The document claims that large-scale abattoir activity is leading to major earthquakes, an unproven assertion suggesting that pain released by mass slaughter may cause enough tension to elicit a seismic response.
It also states that indigenous (Indian) cows produce the best quality milk on earth, compared to ‘exotic cows’.
“The quality is not good at all, but the quantity is more,” says the Jersey cow. a breed commonly associated with high-quality creamy milk.
According to the document, native cows are “smart enough not to sit in dirty places” and they are also more emotional than Jersey cows. “When an unknown person comes near Desi (Indian) cow, she will stop immediately,” the document reads.
Propaganda tools?
“After the rise of the extreme right-wing government in India, the cow became a political beast,” Ghosh said. “The cow is used as a tool to divide people, and the exam is seen as a way to put the cow on a pedestal. These politicians do not care about cows, they only care about politics.”
During the 2014 national election campaign in Modi, he made a promise to end a ‘pink revolution’ – a phrase he used to describe the slaughter of cattle across the country.
Other lawmakers from BJP have taken it a step further.
“I have promised to break the hands and legs of those who do not consider their mother to be cows and to kill them,” Vikram Saini, a lawmaker from Uttar Pradesh, told a rally in March 2017. said.