Sad to know that the rural poor were deprived of the supply of free buttermilk. The modern milk industry in India is based on refrigeration, which is based on electricity. That our country is celebrating ecologically destructive commercial systems as Green & White “Revolutions” and also demanding Bharat Ratnas for the “fathers” (M.S.Swaminathan and Verghese Kurien)behind them – is so deplorable that it beggars description. Today we do not know whether the white liquid base inside our morning beverage is milk or some chemical concoction! So we get a vegetarian map of India based on the availability of milk. Electricity is dependent on scarce mineral resources which are all rapidly depleting. Sweets made from milk or ghee are used as offerings to gods. B. In the South, only Brahmins and trading castes are vegetarians, with some exceptions. T. Vijayendra may be contacted at t.vijayendra@gmail.com, Tags: animal agriculture, bioregions, consumerism, consumption, diet & nutrition, farmers & farming, food security, India, Indian economy, lifestyle impacts, livelihoods & rights, local economy, meat consumption, planning & policy, rural India, rural-urban divide, T. Vijayendra, veganism, vegetarianism. Many people think that milk is normal good food. Whether the region per se is capable or not, they are guzzlers of everything and the waste they produce is a great pollutant. Diet in Hinduism varies with its diverse traditions. Secondly, there was a marked increase in the production of milk based sweets and sweet shops. But a large part of the world until recently never consumed the milk of other animals. Their argument is that milk is mainly for the babies and adults should not use milk. East Asia even today does not use milk. Milk Everyone knows what milk is. Therefore they're not pumped with hormones, etc. It was a 24-hour miracle. Another argument against the use of milk is that it should be used only for cow’s progeny to produce good draught animals. Many peasant castes here are vegetarians. This map is not very accurate and since 1970s great changes have occurred in India which has changed the availability of milk and wheat drastically. Milk in Hinduism The memory of cows in green pastures is one very strong within the collective memory and imagination of Hindus. In a new study, it was found that regardless of diet, participants with the highest dairy calcium intake, equal to 12 oz. Related Developments After the 70s, both agriculture and transport got rapidly mechanised. In the early morning of 21 September 1995, rumours of the elephant-headed deity Ganesha sipping milk from a spoon spread across the country. Show me feels like such a conspiracy that one of the largest religions in India Hinduism also says the cow is sacred and should be worshiped for the milk it provides, while as I stated the consumption of milk is harmful. The butter milk, which retains the proteins, was given away to the poor. “Yes Martha, some Hindus do that. Snakes are cold blooded and carnivorous animals, whereas milk is often consumed by the mammals.” “Not only that – I have seen even fake YouTube video showing that a snake drinking milk…” she replied. Ecologise | Giornalismo | Copyright ©2020 | Log in | Register, USAID, Monsanto and the real reason behind…, Noam Chomsky: Indigenous people are our only hope…, How Indians started drinking milk (and what it has cost us), The Great Water Grab: Wall Street is buying up the…, Indian environmental movements: Why they failed or…, The Bishnois, India’s original environmentalists, who inspired the Chipko movement, Odanthurai – Tamil Nadu’s energy self sufficient village, Analysis: Just four years left of the 1.5C carbon budget, Eating for a better world: Some questions and a guide. Ghee is clarified butter. A little milk was used for festivals and by upper castes. This is a valid argument for those regions which are historically rich in milk supply. 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The ghee, rich in fat, was for the urban and rich consumers. But didn’t rice growing regions need/have bulls and livestock in general? The processing route is different in Europe, which is a colder region. Bicycles and draught animals will become important modes of transport. Robert CLive the culprit behind cow abattoirs in India, later died a pathetic death at his native place LOndon, by commiting suicide out of mental deppression – the “pro-bovicidal environmentalists” must remember the karmic lessons from this!! In rice growing regions the milk was less, draught animals were very important and most of the milk went to the calves – both cows and water buffaloes. ... ‘if you need it then follow the Hindu rules on how and when to milk a cow.’ First, please bring about reforms in milking practises in India before you go about banning beef production/consumption. 4. Ghee is clarified butter and it is used in lamps for rituals. The Eastern region has practically no vegetarians. Rest of India was mainly a millet country with rice growing in low lying regions and Eastern coastal region. In non-milk-drinking northeastern India, the lack of protein in the diet is generally made up by the consumption of meat, eggs and fish. In India, the major fodder was straw (bhusa from wheat) and not green grass. If they did, how come they were not using milk in olden days in South India and in East Asia? So the world milk production will be drastically reduced both in quantity and in areas of milk production. As of 2013, India is the largest milk producing nation in the world. New Delhi. Karnataka Milk Federation has become the second largest milk producer after Gujarat even though, as we have seen above, it is not so rich in milk potential. Many Hindus follow a vegetarian diet (that may or may not include eggs and dairy products), that they believe is in sync with nature, compassionate, respectful of other life forms. Gone are all these excellent traditions and now replaced by the accursed reductionist White Revolution legacies – AMUL etc. Even then, it did not spread all over the earth. Can Hindus drink milk? Indeed it requires merely an elementary sense of rationality to disbelieve the claim that idols drank milk even if one could not find an immediate scientific explanation for what was observed. The fact is milk is not the most important product of these animals as it is considered in Europe. Thankfully, certain right-thinking, enlightened individuals have come up with cow-based enterprises that carefully avoid all the aforementioned evils associated with modern dairies but rather selling pure, healthy, unadulterated milk from cows that are well-fed(some feed herbs like aswagandha, satavari), allowed to graze a lot(which is very important, for only the products of grazing cows have all the benefits as mentioned in the Ayurvedic texts) and looked even after getting unproductive. It appears that, historically, the area of milk consumption coincided largely with wheat producing regions of the world. This is a fringe group mainly in the West. But a large part of the world until recently never consumed the milk of other animals. ... No wonder spokesmen for some Hindutva communal … In feed, what was fed was more of by-products like the bran, oil cake, broken rice, etc. Now, there are good reasons to conclude that this technology is not suitable to India. In Europe and Russia the draught animal is horse and camel in West Asia. And we now know that wheat is harmful to humans yet as like milk, wheat is also a huge part of the Indian diet. The killing of cows is not permitted in India, and Hindu's do not eat beef. Around 1970, we had Operation Flood which ushered in the milk revolution. Many milk federations will collapse. The short answer is that 99.9% of Hindus have never tasted cow urine in their entire life, myself included. It goes with so much of Hindu life. The same applies to poultry, where lack of surplus feed has limited it to the scavenging breeds and surpluses in the West led to cage-fed specialised egg and meat breeds. As of 2013, India is the largest milk producing nation in the world. 3. Ghee, a milk product, is offered during yagnas to Agni, said to be the hunger of the gods. if ( dropdown.options[ dropdown.selectedIndex ].value !== '' ) { Although Jainism was born in Bihar, majority of them are in Rajasthan and Gujarat- a region rich in milk production. ... Whilst I am in no position … Wheat was restricted to North West and Malwa region of Central India. Many people think that milk is normal good food. But even in USA the consumption of cow milk is pressured even by your doctors. While they share this aspect with other mammals, they also consume the milk of other domestic animals, such as cow, buffalo, goat, camel etc. Now, milk-based sweets sold in the market are probably the worst food both in terms of nutrition (sugar) and in terms of waste of resources (one uses an enormous quantity of milk to produce the little ‘mawa’ and cottage cheese used in the production of these sweets). The ancient and medieval Hindu texts recommend ahimsa—non-violence against all life forms including animals because they believe that it minimizes animal deaths. Where are the grazing grounds for cattle today? The Ganesha drinking milk miracle was a phenomenon which occurred on 21 September 1995, in which statues of the Hindu deity Ganesha were thought to be drinking milk offerings. [CDATA[ */ December 29, 2015 The Debate on Milk Today Many people are aware of this issue, particularly those who are critical of the Green Revolution and the White (milk) Revolution and practice organic farming. I truly agree with your say that “nothing comes from nothing”. /* ]]> */, Gujarat-based Amul kick-started the milk revolution in India. In the Eastern part of Central India, it is like the South – only Brahmins and traders are vegetarians. It is said in our Puranas that wherever the unworthy are worshipped and the worthy ignored there 3 things will prevail – Durbhiksham(famine), Maranam and BHayam. Excess milk is converted into butter, cheese and ice cream. We also considered that whichever animal’s milk we take for nourishment becomes equal to our mother and hence unfit for slaughter – whether it is of the divine gau-maata or the relatively inferior buffalo(we never drank buffalo milk, the British habituated this milk to us, while opening cow slaughterhouses. } This is what happens when the likes of M.S.Swaminathan are lionised by Governments and of all people organic farming activists and environmentalists too(one eminent Delhi-based lady Indian environmentalist who figures among the TIME’s world’s 100 influential women, calls Swaminathan her “childhood hero”. Hindus also offer milk to snakes on the auspicious day to negate their Kal Sarpa dosh- an astrological imbalance in the position of their planets caused by Rahu and Ketu. Traditionally Indian homes, by and large prepared kheer or payas which is a rice and milk based sweet for festivals. This is the sad era we are living in. This process involved enormous use of energy in refrigerating and so the price of milk and its products increased and only the city could afford to pay for it. Panchamruta contains five milk products – milk, both raw and boiled, ghee, butter and yoghurt. (function() { They introduced vegetarianism in India. For vegans, the drinking of milk is exploitative of the cow, who should feed her young that milk. Hindus even worship the cow as a Deity. In India, particularly, the vegetarians argue that we should have organic milk, that is fresh milk from free range animals and not this ‘factory’ produced milk. Science behind serving milk on Suhagraat. Increase in ecological degradation. Now, there is not enough milk to support everyone on a vegetarian diet. So there the cow is used mainly for milk and beef. Then, through a cold chain, the milk is homogenised and packed. Your email address will not be published. CEO Compensation and America's Growing Economic Divide, Sue Carpenter/Axiom Photographic Agency/Getty Images. And, yes, snakes do not generally drink milk. While the ban was eventually removed, the consumption of sweets stayed and even increased with the rise in the prosperity of the middle class and increased milk supply. Hindus use milk and its products for religious purposes because it is believed to have purifying qualities: ghee, or clarified butter, is used in lamps for rituals; milk is used to bathe Hindu idols on special occasions; sweets made from milk or ghee are used as offerings to gods. This tradition exists in food habits. Milk is also not good for human nutrition and health as can be seen by the example of the Chinese who do not use milk and therefore are free of some diseases. Increase in the gap between the rich and the poor and 3. As we have seen above, Gujarat is traditionally rich in milk and so the project succeeded even if it deprived the rural poor from the supply of free buttermilk. On the other hand some nutritionists consider milk as one of the five white poisons. It was only in North West India, where the cows gave more milk, was milk used in larger quantities. Have echoed my sentiments sir. Thus, the American Continent, the African Continent, Australia and East Asia did not use milk. Historically, the milk of domestic animals was mainly used in West Asia and spread to Europe in the West and up to North West India in the East. While human breast milk is … India As mentioned above, the use of milk in India spread up to North West India. A COVID-19 Prophecy: Did Nostradamus Have a Prediction About This Apocalyptic Year? agriculture spread all over India in a big way. TIM MCGIRK. (See the History of coffee.) Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Some of the modern critics of milk will also prevail and many more people will give up using milk and milk-based sweets. “Homo Economicus” asserting himself – “Human profits first and devil take the hindmost” attitude! Milk is very sensitive to heat and goes bad quickly. Thanks for your comments. Thank you for writing. The Future of Milk In the future, there will not be so much energy available. Majority of the world population will not consume milk, just like in the past. It will be more like what prevailed 500 years ago. In China and other East Asians regions other reasons may be operating because the whole region never ever used milk for human consumption. The main criticism is that this milk is not ‘real’ milk – it is homogenised using milk from different animals, it is not fresh, it can be several hours, days and even months old and therefore it is not healthy. It is also customary for Hindu's to offer milk at the lamp/prayer alter when praying to God. Can you email me at: t.vijayendra@gmail.com. It is used in lamps for rituals. Also we forget that historically India was neither a wheat growing nor a rice growing region. Internally I feel anger that culturally such a thing was pushed& pressured on me. It needed bullocks and so the cows were domesticated for production of bullocks and when the milk production was low it was mainly given to young calves and very little or none was taken from the cows. It has been historically assumed (not proven) that human diet requires some animal protein and that for vegetarians milk is a must. Later as an adult I learned I was lactose intolerant which explained me feeling ill most my life. But, i didn’t see from the energy point of view. It created the craving for sweets among habitual drinkers. All the four major stands in the debate mentioned above will feel justified. It has to be heated almost immediately and if you keep it till evening you have to heat it again. 2. It is true that upsurge in milk consumption in last 200 years is is due to ‘a conspiracy by the food industry.’ But milk may be ok in some ecological regions such as West Asia and Europe, the original home of animal milk consumption by human. NOAA Hurricane Forecast Maps Are Often Misinterpreted — Here's How to Read Them. I came across this article when I was browsing on the evolution of milk consumption in India. But as I mentioned I think this all started as a conspiracy by the food industry. So, for some, milk is the greatest food, while for others, milk is one of the five white poisons. That is why in India vegetarians tend to consume a lot of milk and milk products. /*