There
has been much hullabaloo outside the academic circle over beef
eating in ancient India as if it were the most important problem
facing the nation . The purpose behind raising a hue and cry over
the matter is obviously to politicise it by suggesting, explicitly
or implicitly, that the practice is prevalent only among the
Muslims who are even today looked upon as foreigners by
communal political groups and parties in India. Those who argue
against this position are dubbed as Marxists or communists, whom
such groups and parties have been claiming to combat, little
realising that the arguments for the prevalence of the practice of
beef eating in ancient India are based on the evidence drawn from
our own scriptures which are replete with references to it.
The textual evidence, in fact, begins to be available from the
Rigveda itself which is the earliest Indian religious text
and figures in popular perception as being of divine origin. H.H.
Wilson , writing in the first half of the nineteenth century had
asserted that "the sacrifice of the horse or of the cow, the
gomedha or ashvamedha, appears to have been common in the earliest
periods of the Hindu ritual". The view that the practice of
killing of cattle at sacrifices and eating their flesh
prevailed among the Indo-Aryans was, however, put forth most
convincingly /forcefully by Rajendra Lal Mitra in an article which
was first published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal and subsequently formed a chapter his book entitled The
Indo-Aryans in 1891. Later in the early forties P. V.
Kane in his monumental work 'History of Dharmashastra' referred
to specific Vedic and later Shastric passages which speak of
cow slaughter and beef eating.
It is necessary to bear in mind that none of the above scholars
had anything to do with Marxism which the saffronised journalists
and publicists like Arun Shourie have been fighting through the
columns of the Asian Age. Wilson was the first
occupant of the Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford in 1832 and was not as
avowedly anti-Indian as many other imperialist scholars.
Mitra, a product of the Bengal renaissance and a close
associate of Rabindranaths elder brother Jyotindranath Tagore,
made significant contribution to India's intellectual life, and
was described by Max Mueller as the best living Indologist of his
time. Mahamahopdhyaya P.V. Kane was a conservative Marathi brahmin
and the only Sanskritist to be honoured with the title of 'Bharat
Ratna'.
The Sangh Parivar (including, of course, Arun Shourie who feels
quite comfortable in his blissful ignorance!) have never turned
its guns towards their writings. One is tempted to imagine that it
consists of total ignoramuses who are made to carry a heavy burden
of civilisational illiteracy and stupid arrogance by their
pontiffs.