Joyce, The issue of permitting cow slaughter in India is difficult to neatly compartmentalize. There is some scholarly opinion in support of the view that the ancient Aryans, when they came into India as conquering tribes of pastoral people, did eat the cow, as cattle-rearing was, for them, an economic activity. For the same reasons, modern Hindu leaders on the right like the late V.D.Savarkar, advocated that Hindus should forget their aversion to cow slaughter and, taking a more rational approach, treat the cow as an economic animal. Yet the fact remains that in almost all their history, Hindus have eschewed eating beef. Indeed, Hindus belonging to the higher levels of the Society, eschewed eating any meat, probably following teachings of non-violence and tolerance by teachers like Gautama Buddha and Mahavira, both of the 5th century BC. (Gautama Buddha died, the story goes, because he had eaten bad pork.) Sensitive to this, the Mughal emperors restricted -and sometimes banned as with Akbar in 1586- cow slaughter. One of the titles of the Maratha hero Shivaji, the founder of the his dynasty that later morphed into the powerful Maratha confederacy, was 'Go-Brahmana-Pratipalaka'- the Protector of the Cow and the Brahmin. These constraints against cow slaughter became somewhat loosened with the advent of the British but the majority of the Hindu population was never happy with it. Several movements arose in different parts of India to 'protect' the cow. Such movements, and others like the anti-alcohol movement, and (indeed) anti-tea movement were manifestations of the ire of the local population against the 'new' ways of life being introduced by the alien rulers and were thus different fronts of the Freedom Struggle. (One of my uncles, who, as a young man, had participated in picketing alcohol-vending establishments, was beaten senseless by the tommies sent to break up the agitation.) In today's India cow slaughter is officially banned in all states except West Bengal and Kerala, where offshoots of the Communist Party have been in power for almost 40 years. A demand is always in the air to make this ban applicable to the whole of India. One of the recommendations of the National Commission on Cattle (under the chairmanship of Justice Lodha of the Supreme Court) in 2002 was to prohibit cow slaughter by law throughout the country. The Indian Constitution lists cow slaughter ban under the Directive Principles of State Policy, with Article 48 providing that the State "shall endeavour to... take steps for... prohibiting the slaughter, of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle". While slaughtering cows may not be prohibited in some parts India, and eating beef so slaughtered may not be illegal in other parts of India, it would be wise for a beef-eater not to advertise that fact too much. For example, while a person may eat beef in the privacy of his house, he will generally not to serve beef if he invites friends to his house for dinner. As far as I know, beef is not available for open sale in most of India. That is why, in my last posting, I said that those who eat beef in India have to be secretive about it. This conventional cow-revering attitude often becomes a luxury for the poor farmer. Is it well-known that there is a thriving market for exporting cows to Kerala and West Bengal for slaughter. More that beef-eaters, the powerful lobby of leather-goods manufacturers support this illegal traffic. There are several rational arguments in favor of treating the whole issue as an economic and ecological rather than as a sentimental issue. But rationality and hard electoral politics rarely coexist. If they did, George W. should never have got his second term! Arvind Kolhatkar, Toronto, March 27, 2008.