Mother's milk

What somebody told me was the real explanation behind why Hindus don't eat beef.

Tonight, I met somebody for dinner at a new Italian restaurant on University Road here in Pune. The menu was strictly vegeterian. (We shared a mushroom appetiser, followed by penne pasta in a red sauce with capers. The incredibly good food reminded me of Restivo's, in Chelsea, which, meanwhile, is both veg and non-veg.) Naturally, at one point, the conversation turned to the topic of veg versus non-veg food.

My dinner date told me that the reason that Hindus don't eat beef is because the first thing that nourishes a new born baby is mother's milk. And then the second thing is cow's milk. So, I immediately saw how a cow can take on a mother-figure role in a family.

In olden times, my dinner date added, when there was no access to healthcare during the delivery, a mother could be at risk of dying during child birth. In that case, the first thing that would nourish the surviving baby would be cow's milk. In this instance, a cow would be the surrogate mother, because it would be the sole nourishment for a baby.

So, especially in rural areas, where there was a lack of reasonable access to healthcare, the need to protect cows came to be a practical -- and I'm sure at some point, a spiritual -- necessity.

In some rural families, a cow takes on the role of being a member of a family, my dinner date said. He added that it would be the same way in which I treat my 3 cats. (While I acknowledge that my cats don't provide nourishment for human babies, but they do play a role as my surrogate family.)

I know I am over-simplifying very complex ideas, and I am not aware of the documented history of the role of cows in the Hindu religion, but I'm only writing what was discussed over my dinner tonight. And it instinctively makes me wonder why we don't respect our pets in America comparably the way that Hindus treat cows.

Did not Noah save a pair of all animals? What came to pass later, that made us not care about animals ?