DNA Edit: Back to the basics – PM’s stress on cow and Om makes several points

In 1580, Ralph Fitch, an English merchant and one of the earliest British chroniclers of India, wrote a letter home stating, “they have a very strange order among them — they worship a cow and esteem much of the cow’s dung to paint the walls of their houses.” The cow, he concluded, was considered part of the family. Quite literally, the situation has not changed much. With 70% of India still living in rural areas, the importance of the cow can scarcely be underestimated. By invoking cow and ‘Om’, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has harked back to the days when the BJP’s predecessor, Jana Sangh, was making it’s mark in North Indian politics more than four decades ago. 

While launching the Rs 12,652-crore National Animal Disease Control Programme campaign in Mathura, he invoked mythological references to stress the need for balancing economic imperatives and the environment, and took a swipe at critics who, he said, believed that the gau (cow) represented a regressive past. Politically, Gandhi used cow as an abiding symbol of India — a symbol that propelled him as the foremost Indian leader after he returned from South Africa. After 1947, Congress used cow and her calf as their election symbol during Indira Gandhi’s time to connect with Indian masses and to be sure, she did. 

The cow has been an intrinsic part of the BJP and earlier Jana Sangh campaign and Modi’s stress on the importance of cow and Om, are a not-too-subtle dig at dyed-in-the-blue liberals, who have coined terms like ‘cow belt’,  a pejorative reference to the Hindi speaking states. In the process, the Prime Minister has highlighted the need to cut down on plastic usage, citing the deporable conditions of the cow at the animal health fair.