| Kali Prasad |
Posted
on 10-Aug-01 01:51 PM
Indian Court Temporarily Bans Professor's Book Challenging Vegetarian Past
By MARTHA ANN OVERLAND
A civil court in India has temporarily banned the publication of a history book because it suggests that several religious groups, long revered for their vegetarian principles, at one time ate meat.
The City Civil Court in Hyderabad has stopped the release of Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions, written by Dwijendra N. Jha, a noted professor of history at the University of Delhi, and published by Matrix Books. The court will have another hearing on the matter on August 17.
Mr. Jha uses historical texts to document that meat-eating was practiced in ancient India. His findings are highly controversial and considered inflammatory in a nation where dietary restrictions are central tenets of many of the country’s religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. India's Hindu majority reveres the cow as sacred.
Last month, Mr. Jha received anonymous telephone calls threatening dire consequences if he went ahead with publishing Holy Cow. One editor, fearing reprisals, recently dissociated himself from the book.
The petition to stop the book's publication was filed by the Jain Seva Sangh, an organization representing the Jains, a small but influential religious group whose followers avoid all animal products. Many Jains will not eat root vegetables for fear that bugs will be harmed when the plants are pulled from the ground. The petition is supported by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (V.H.P.), an extremist group that promotes the idea of a pure Hindu race.
"It is propaganda against the Hindu," Mosan Jossi, the central secretary of the V.H.P., said of Holy Cow. Mr. Jossi said that he had not read the book but had read the Vedas, the ancient texts of Hinduism, and that they contain no reference to beef-eating Hindus. "This is an attack on us," he declared. "If this book comes in the market, we will burn it."
Mr. Jha believes the court case is simply a tool of intimidation by Hindu extremists promoting their idea of an unsullied Hindu history. The V.H.P. is upset, he said, because his book challenges their claims that Muslims were responsible for bringing beef-eating to India. According to the documents he cites, Hindus ate beef long before the arrival of Muslims. To say otherwise is to try to use dietary history to pit Muslim against Hindu, he said. "Food is something that should not be politicized," he said. "Whatever I have said in this book is very well documented."
"From the beginning, I was aware of the sentiments, so I was quite careful about citing the evidence. It seems they [the V.H.P.] are afraid of history, they have an inherent fear of history. That's why they are doing this."
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Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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