by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd

Ever Since the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine came to power in 2014 the deepest crisis it is facing is the Covid-19 dance of death. As of the end of April 2021 India has become the most Covid infected nation in the world and the prediction is that India will suffer the biggest human loss in the pandemic. Its vaccination programme is the slowest in the world. Given the human numbers (1.35 billion people) by the time the vaccination reaches all vulnerable people the disease will kill a massive number of people. Scientific predictions are available that India will be the epicentre of the pandemic. But the present RSS/BJP Central Government does not believe in scientific prediction. They mainly believe in panchangam (astronomy) and Sadhu and Sanyasi opinions.

Prime Minister Modi seems to be the most pro-science man among the RSS/BJP forces, but even his life time training was in cow urine therapy as a cure for every disease. There is a deep Hindutva anti-science culture in their upbringing and also in the being. This therapy was taught to them in every Shakha (organizational gathering). That shakha training has gone into every member’s mind and of his/her family. Even the small kids are trained in the shakhas that cow urine would cure every disease on the planet–existing and also future diseases. Their mind is full of that theory right from an early age and taught in the nation for more than 95 years. This line of thinking destroyed the scientific spirit in the nation. Even doctors and scientists got influenced by this cow urine theory. Even after the RSS/BJP coming to power at Delhi when its members propagated cow urine therapy the central Government did not object.

The urines of both animals and humans have certain chemicals that are useful for one thing or the other. Even human urine has certain health use elements that was the reason why a typical Brahmin Prime Minister of India, Morarji Desai, drank it everyday and lived for nearly 100 years on this planet. This kind of unique practice did not emerge out of scientific experiments that could be verified. They are aberrations. The cow urine therapy is the most unscientific aberration of Indian brahminism. This aberration propagated by the Hindutva Dwijas as medicinal destroyed the core principle of medical science. They have been testing the Shudra followers’ mental degradation level within their organization and in civil society by making them accept this kind myth. Unfortunately though no Shudra has written anything about the greatness of the cow urine therapy, many Shudras have become victims of this theory along with many other anti-human theories they constructed. The secular Dwijas have never opposed such theories. There is a caste cultural vested interest in promoting it by the Hindutva Dwijas and the secular dwijas silently allowing it. All of them have nothing to do with the animal economy and life process. Only Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi creative, productive and scientific thinking can negate this most destructive theory. In the long life of the Shudra agrarian experience it is well established that all animal urines improve the land fertility. This is verified, tested and proved. Cow urine is part of that use value but not human medicinal value. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis must be doubly careful with such theories than corona virus. The corona virus could be defeated with globally worked out scientific vaccines but cow urine theory is Indian Brahminic and the world does not bother about it. Such theories of the Hindutva dwijas must be fought when they are ruling India and when people are dying because of their unscientific cow urine cultural nationalism. Science is a secular domain. If secularism is killed science will also die. All religions have shown limitations in promoting science–particularly Hinduism and Islam have shown many limitations in promoting sience in general and medical science in particular.

The Dwija children read their literature and see their parents worshipping cows in their family pooja rooms. Over a period of time the Shudra parents also get this theory from the poojaris, peer groups and friends. Though most Dwija children do not see their parents taking care of the cow in its day today’s needs and survival they see the cow getting brought on a new house warming day and making it a Goddess in the new home. They otherwise see cows roaming on the roads in urban centres. Some of them may keep a dog or cat at home but never a cow for feeding and nurturing. The Dwija children were made to hate crop fields and cattle meadows. They were made to love gurukulas, now IITs, IIMS, Central Universities and private universities like Ashoka, O.P Jindal Global University. Cow urine theory, Ashoka. O.P Jindal kind private anti-reservation ( in essence anti-Shudra/OBC/Dalit and Adivasi) university nationalism, are quite amazing combinations. In this situation came Corona and hit the nation. Burning bodies everywhere has become the symbol of Hindutva nationalism. This has become the yardstick of merit.

The RSS is a deep down Brahminic organization with a belief that ‘Science is Shudra’ and ‘Belief is Brahmin’. This organization has drawn thousands of Shudra/OBC youth out of their Science tradition and trained them in belief tradition. They became an army of cow urine therapy propagandists. This has done a lot of damage to our scientific and medicinal thinking. Even during the Congress and coalitional rule before the RSS/BJP came to power the RSS forces were threatening the ruling forces from streets and communal vantage points to implement their theories. And also within the Congress and other regional parties there were cow urine therapists and they were in league with them.

Apart from this pure vegetarianism as spiritual and social pure food of Bharat has made India weakest in the world. Added to this they made the nation believe modern medicine is ‘English Medicine’. A kind of medical superstition was built all over India. Notwithstanding the limitations of pure vegetarianism in curing diseases and also its non-availability to vast rural masses, the Hindutva pure vegetarianism has done an added damage. They made the nation almost sick now.

Our health levels should be compared to that of China which has an equal number of people and is facing the same crisis of Covid-19 as India is. But see the difference in the number of Covid contracts and deaths in India and China. The RSS/BJP claim that they are the most nationalists but how does a nation’s health could be saved by cow urine as medicine? Their cultural nationalism that worked around cow urine, Kumbha Melas, vegetarianism, anti-agriculturalism has now brought the nation where it is. They did that not just after they came to power in 2014. All through the Congress and coalition rule before 2014 they held the cultural campaign fort. There were many such cow urine therapy believers, kumbh and pure vegetarian minds in the Congress and other regional parties, not just personal food taste but they want that nation should become pure vegetarian.

The leaders of these theories came from Dwija castes–Brahmins, Banias, Kayasthas, Khatris and Ksatriyas. They all had a vested interest in retaining power and want to control the nation. The Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis unfortunately became the mass followers of these Dwija forces.

Quite interestingly no authors of this theory came from the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis who grazed cow for millennia. The theory came from the Dwija pandits who never had an animal grazing experience and long time interaction with the animal life– its organs and products and byproducts. The Shudra farmers on the other hand had a huge animal interaction, experience and a lot of scientific observation about its birth, growth and death. But they never wrote a theory of cow urine medicinal therapy. They have developed several plant medicines to cure human and animal diseases. Though the Shudras work in the Hindutva organizations they are not accepted as theoreticians. They also simply follow what the Dwija intellectuals tell them. From Hedgewar to Mohan Bhagwat they became the directors and Shudras became the following actors. The drama has destroyed the nation with serious health consequences.

Unfortunately the Indian agrarian masses gradually fell into the trap of Dwija Hindutva theories and voted them to power. Though the Modi Government got an Indian vaccine made by Bharat Biotech but their cadres keep on promoting cow urine cure theory as a matter of their ideological agenda. For last 95 years (as the RSS was formed in 1925) the Dwija Hindutva theoreticians made the rural and urban Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses sufficiently superstitious by making them attend their Kumbha melas, ritual mobilizations, talking about only Vedic, puranic and mythological books as the national civilizational source and putting cow in the centrality of the national discourse. They never spoke about the science of agriculture, medicine, engineering and so on. This anti-science propaganda has gone deep down the national psyche.

The Hindutva forces have a great strategy to push the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis to a medieval status by allowing only Dwija children to learn English, eat good food and travel all over the world and survive by modern medicine. As they never looked after cows in their day to day life but projected cows as a divine animals they never cared for regional language education but tell the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis that they should study only regional languages. The Indian communists also believed this diabolical language sub-nationalism and propagated. While Hindutva theoreticians push the cow urine therapy into the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses who have only some regional language education they beleive it. Now people are dying for want of oxygen not cow urine. The Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis are being told that English language and English medicine are anti-national and they believe. Who discovered that oxygen can be produced in a factory and preserved whenever human beings need it ?

The Shudras were sent into the streets to campaign for cow urine, campaign against love marriages, and modern medicine . The strategy is to keep English medium global education and global cuture away from the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis. If English language education reaches them modern medicine also will reach them. Let us build a nation that practices science survives but the one that believes in myth dies.

This story first appeared on countercurrents.org