India's Sacred Cow by Marvin Harris Summary

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India’s Sacred Cow by Marvin Harris
A Marvin Harris essay explaining why Hindu peasants in India consider the cow as sacred is one of the illuminating attempts at explaining a pervasive cultural practice that to supposedly more enlightened western minds looks utterly irrational and even detrimental to society. He dissects the role of the cow (and the ox) in the life of agrarian peasants and comes up with groundbreaking observations that that neither western nor oriental thinkers had proposed up to that point.
The radical observations that Harris makes regarding the sacred cows comes through his consideration of the facts through an economic perspective that clarifies confounding aspects of cow love and unearth several parallels with western life hitherto unrecognized. On the surface, the culture of the sacred cow comes down to the vegetarian ethos of the Hindu religion and dietary demands of the Vedas. Hindus seem to embrace cow worship because cows are a symbol of Mother Nature just like Saint Mary the mother of Jesus is the symbol of the spiritual community to Catholics.
However, a deeper examination reveals some interesting observations that ordinary westerners or outsiders do not see and many Indian peasants do not consider. First, Indians hold the cow sacred, but the ox is a useful tool in the peasant scheme of things, helping with farming and transportation. The ox does not live its life unmolested, like the cow. It works hard and is central to the success or failure of Indian peasant farmers who requiring it for farm cultivation and harvest transportation to markets. Indians do not eat the ox, but they regard it as more of a tool compared to the cow. Second, there is a perpetual deficit of oxen in India, according to government statistics and the only way to bridge this gap is by encouraging as many cows as possible to breed and produce them. At this point the economic ramifications of cow love start to emerge. The cow is sacred because it produces the most important tool in the peasant farm setup: the oxen. Third, the cow produces two byproducts, vital in the domestic Indian life: dung and ghee. The dung is useful for domestic heating and construction while the ghee is useful for cooking and dietary balance. In addition, dung collection provides employment for the poorest villagers in the countryside and the sweeping castes in the cities, who amass it and sell to farmers, homemakers and construction workers.
It is therefore conceivable that the wise men or women who declared the cow sacred in India, understood its central role in the agrarian economy and knew that if the peasants consumed it, would precipitate an economic upheaval.
Drawing parallels between the cow and the tractor, Harris describes various scenarios that would prevail if the machine replaced the animal in Indian agriculture and the conclusion is that as currently constituted, the cow is more important and useful to Indian peasants than a tractor would be. Furthermore, what an Indian homemaker achieves in domestic labor and care giving through the simple reliance on cow dung fuel, an American homemaker would have to achieve through reliance on multiple electronic devices.
Considered through the econom...