When a cow dies, the untouchable caste take it away and scrape it, tanning the hide for leather, or taking it to a tannery. They are allowed to eat the meat, so are given a finesse they would not otherwise be able to afford (Harris). Christians and Muslims are not prohibited from eating the meat, so they can vitiate oxen or bulls from the granger and welcome them slaughtered for meat.
Oxen are usually better treated than cow because they are the ones the husbandman depends on the most for all his farming chores (Harris). In generation of food shortages, the oxen get fed preferentially over the cows, but the cows are rarely allowed to die, because they are the bug of more oxen, or replacement oxen if anything happens to the ones the farmer has already. The bulwark against beef eating inhibits farmers from slaying cows when they haven't enough feed for the oxen an
d cows as well, so provides insurance that once the drought is over, the farmer go out once again have a procreative cow.
There will no doubt come a time when modern methods will arrive in India, and with the increase urbanization taking place there, the present situation of individual, small, family-owned farms will become a thing of the past, as it has almost in America and other industrialized countries. Then perhaps the berth to the sacred cow will change. It is, after all, a comparatively recent tradition, and born of a need which may briefly be in the past.
Theoretically, the idea of sacred, untouchable cows in India, roaming the streets, and eating precious food resources where so many stay on the verge of starvation, seems counterproductive, yet studies of the economics of cows and oxen have shown it not to be so (Harris). One would look that it did not make sense economically, but the cows of India have been shown to be more economical than those of the United States. It has been argued that there are much more productive ways of breeding cows and oxen available now, and they could lead to healthier, stronger oxen, which could work harder and therefore could be shared between farmers, redu
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