Six Affirmations on the Dharma of Cow Care
[…] Keeping within a Hindu vocabulary, I return to the notion of dharma. Dharma will be used here as a balancing sensibility, giving priority to practices of cow care that foster balance among the conflicting interests that surround bovines. To this end, I draw on a non-Hindu, contemporary Western typology of six “moral foundations of political life” developed by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues (Haidt 2012).
Drawn from his extensive empirical research, Haidt identifies five positive foundational moral themes underlying and energizing political discourse. Each positive theme has a negative counterpart—conditions or principles sought to be avoided or suppressed. These five positive/negative moral theme pairs are: (1) care versus harm; (2) fairness versus cheating; (3) loyalty versus betrayal; (4) authority versus subversion, and (5) sanctity versus degradation. A sixth moral foundation awaiting more empirical confirmation is liberty versus oppression. Haidt and his colleagues have found definite correlations between one’s political leanings and which of these five or six moral foundations one will value or, negatively, abhor, above other foundations. Here, our aim is to see how, in the practice of cow care, all six positive moral foundations can be honored, such that the interests of bovines are upheld and cow care becomes an important means by which the expanding moral community is fostered and sustained.
Taking each positive moral foundation in turn, what follows will be in the form of affirmations—present-tense positive as-if-statements—that aid in sparking the imagination to envision a possible better future that is rooted in the pursuit of self-integrity:
1. Cow Care and Care. The first of Haidt’s six moral foundations is care, the opposite of which is harm.
We frame our care practices in the general terms identified by Vrinda Dalmiya in relation to bovines. More specifically, we have instituted a certification system (through a network similar to that of worldwide organic farmers) to monitor and ensure that all institutions and individuals who care for cows and wish to have the monitoring agency’s seal of approval must follow minimum standards summarized in the five “basic rules of the care-system” for lifelong care of animals (Meyer-Glitza 2018).
Further, and as an integral aspect of this monitoring system, we observe standards of care for all humans serving as cow carers, in terms of appropriate remuneration and medical care. In caring for cows, we further strive to realize, as far as feasible, the nine aspects of citizenship for bovines. We do not discriminate types of bovines with respect to care, either by breed or by species, but we do have programs to preserve indigenous breeds of various regions and countries. We pursue the ideal of go-seva—service to cows in a spirit of selfless dedication that characterizes the bhakti ethical paradigm. By all these practices, we seek to minimize harm to bovines and to the planet’s biosphere and, rather, to foster regenerative practice that sustains bovines, humans, and the earth.
2. Cow Care and Fairness. A comprehensive monitoring system ensures that any physical products or byproducts from bovines are obtained only under strict conditions of respectful and caring treatment: milk in particular is never denied to a dam’s calf; cows are preferably milked by hand; and no artificial means of increasing milk are used. Under similar strict monitoring, working oxen are engaged in traction services such that they are never overworked.
In the interest of all recipients of goods received from our bovines, we label all products accurately, including indication of the type or breed of cow (and whether cow or buffalo) from which the products originate. Further, our accounting of cow care expenses is transparent: all donors can know how their donations are being used, and they can be informed of any challenges the cow care organizations face.
On a deeper level, we pursue social justice and environmental justice by showing how cows deserve to be protected, thus approaching the ideal of proper respect and dignity for domestic and farm animals, in a way analogous and pursuing the ideal of citizenship. Further, in the interest of fairness to persons suspected of breaking any laws related to bovines—in matters of welfare or protection from slaughter—we respect and uphold the rule of law and we condemn any illegal and violent acts of “cow vigilantism”; rather, “neighborhood watches” are trained to inform authorities of improper activity involving cows.
3. Cow Care and Liberty. Cow care activists recognize that all people are at liberty to follow the diet of their choice, within various sorts of constraints. If they are accustomed to eating meat, we encourage them and explain reasons for reducing meat consumption and we appreciate and applaud the work of any environmental activism that explicitly confronts the environmental cost of carnism.
We also urge anyone consuming dairy to source their dairy products from cow care families and institutions that are authorized (as described in point 1 above). Persons unable to source ahimsa dairy are encouraged to move toward this goal in a progressive manner. Madhava Candra Das (Seattle and Bangalore) suggests a five-stage progression to “liquid dharma”: (1) One continues to buy commercially produced milk while becoming aware of the hidden “karmic cost”—the consequences of one’s action (karma); (2) one buys organic commercial milk, and sets aside the equivalent amount spent as “cow credit” to be donated in support of an ahimsa dairy; (3) one makes arrangement with a local dairy farmer to keep one’s own cow(s), to be protected for life, whatever the cost; (4) one creates a community ahimsa dairy together with local like-minded persons, pooling resources and hiring the necessary management and labor; and (5) one has one’s own cows, caring for them at or very near one’s home.)
To persons accustomed to eat meat, we explain traditions of animal sacrifice, and where this is legal, we encourage them to restrict meat to animals thus immolated (by qualified priests), preferably having been personally present at the event. (This suggestion is bound to be controversial, as most modern states prohibit ritual slaughter of animals—ironically so, since they strongly allow and support the non-ritual, factory slaughter of animals. Numerous questions arise regarding how such ritual slaughter would be done in practice. In this positive affirmation exercise, suffice to mention that in a Hindu context it would be done according to the appropriate ritual texts; it would be regulated by an appropriate agency; and it would surely involve a system of state taxation.)
To dairy farmers in particular, we offer free workshops on methods of converting their operations into nonviolent, cow care-based establishments. Similar workshops and information events, as well as media, are available for the public for learning to adopt a nonviolent vegetarian or vegan diet. Anticipatory communities have well-organized outreach programs, especially to schools and colleges, explaining how cow care is vital to a culture of human liberty that is not anthropocentric and speciesist. On a deeper level, the moral foundation of liberty is served by education in the principles and processes of yoga, the aim of which is final liberation from the bondage of temporal life. We show how cow care can be integral to realizing this aim.
4. Cow Care and Loyalty. Loyalty of cow carers to their own nations is encouraged, as is loyalty to their particular communities. Dharma-based cow carer culture is such that these loyalties are not energized by antagonism against other nations or communities. Rather, by caring for cows, these persons make a deep connection with the earth and their environment in such ways that they cultivate knowledge in the quality of goodness and illumination, as described in the Bhagavad Gita: “Knowledge in goodness is that by which one sees a single unchanging reality in all beings, undivided in the divided” (Bg. 18.20). In turn, this knowledge nurtures cow carers’ dedication to the bovines in their charge, such that they do all that is necessary for the bovines to be cared for properly for life, thus never to have their trust in their carers betrayed. Such knowledge also protects carers from the tendency to commodify bovines and their products against their own interests, which would also be a form of betrayal. Thus, cow carers, who are well trained and practiced in their duties, are dedicated to the cause of cow care as a key means of bringing well-being to the world. In their dedication to this cause, however, they do not make the mistake of holding abstract cause above interpersonal duties. The possible danger of tribalism being fostered in the name of loyalty associated with cow care is avoided by eschewing the quality of passion with its tendency to sharpen tribal identities.
5. Cow Care and Authority. Authority in relation to cow care is specifically located first and foremost in persons with extensive experience in all aspects of cow care, including cow-based organic agriculture. Indeed, these persons are recognized and accredited as teachers of cow care, in learning institutions connected with cow care centers and cow-based organic farms and village communities throughout the world.
At a few larger such centers research projects related to cow care and cow-based organic farming are undertaken, with results published in peer-reviewed journals and disseminated to other educators, farmers, and cow carers. Such educational and research facilities serve the purpose of bringing knowledge and education forward as requirements for protection of cows, as expressed by M.K. Gandhi. Cow care organizational entities network extensively with a variety of organizations dedicated to deep reform of human-environment relationships, sharing knowledge and experience. All levels of practical knowledge related to cow care are, in turn, supported by the spiritual knowledge in goodness mentioned previously, namely the recognition of a “single unchanging reality in all beings.” As farmers realize practically the advantages of cow care for sustainable farming (possibly supported by various schemes in connection with goshalas and community agriculture organizations), the subversive activities involving cow smuggling or other illegal or abusive practices are replaced with effective local communities of cow protection. For persons and communities who do not understand the importance of cow care and therefore allow or take part in bovine abuse, there are substantial dedicated staff of “animal police” with special training in all relevant skills. At the same time, the cow care community is deeply challenging to and subversive of self-destructive lifestyles centered in the consumption of animal bodies.
6. Cow Care and Sanctity. Those who care for cows regard them as bearers of sanctity in that they are unique in their ways of creaturely being in the world such that humans can care for them. For many Hindus, cows are special because they are regarded as especially dear to the supreme divinity Krishna. Therefore, they are practiced to give cows special attention. Such special attention is not at the cost of other creatures (indeed, in the bovine family, Krishna is said to have a pet buffalo); rather, to again quote M.K. Gandhi, “We can realize our duty towards the animal world and discharge it by wisely pursuing our dharma of service to the cow. At the root of cow-protection is the realization of our dharma towards the sub-human species” (Gandhi 1999). Cow care practitioners “wisely pursue” such dharma by balancing sanctity with care, the first of these six moral foundations of political life in which cow care is practiced. In this way, they realize the true sanctity of all life, and thus they contribute significantly to protection of the biosphere from degradation—the direct result of the absence of a sense of sanctity.
These six affirmations serve to point us in a positive, and not implausible, direction toward a bright future for cows and thereby for other creatures and for human beings on this planet.
Again, these affirmations are nourished by a sense of dharma as a cosmic principle of balance, which in turn supports action characterized by the mode of goodness and illumination. Conscientious Hindus pursuing such a dharma culture would claim that the aim of sustainability (which is also a feature of this mode) on all levels, including environmental and political, is achievable. Anticipatory communities in which these ideals are pursued need to be supported and their examples followed to spread the awareness that an alternative way of living is available, and we have much to learn from well-cared-for cows about how to realize this alternative.
—From the book Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics by Kennth R. Valpey (HH Krishna Kshetra Swami), published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. The legal open access download version is available at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-28408-4