OPINION ON THE BEEF BAN CONTROVERSY

The issue of beef ban is very controversial one and cannot be dealt in black letter laws. The ban
was originally imposed aiming at not hurting the sentiments of Hindus. This attracted lots of
backlash and criticism terming it against the secular spirit of the country and meant for
terrorizing and dominating Muslims and liberals. India is a secular country and a diversified
land, and it is fundamental right of every citizen to adopt and practice any trade or profession
under Article 19 of the Constitution. Hence, the ban was criticized for forcing opinion and
sentiments on others. But if we look at the ban objectively, one can clearly see that the pros of
banning beef are much more than the cons.

Apart from the fact that Article 48 of the Indian Constitution mandates the State to prohibit the
slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught animals, it must be noticed that the
profits a person can make by keeping a cow alive is much more than what he can make by
slaughtering it. Many studies have shown that the milk of cow is better than that of other dairy
animals. Apart from dairy benefits, cow dung works wonder when used as manure. It makes the
soil fertile and healthy to breed nutritious food. Even the urine of a cow, no matter how
ridiculous people believe it to be, is used for medicinal purpose. The International Journal of
Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science, in its article Diversified uses of cow urine1 has dealt
with the importance of it.

Coming to agricultural perspective, major part of Indian population lists agriculture as their main
occupation. Due to financial instability, modern farm mechanization technologies are
unaffordable and most of them depend on draught animals for ploughing the field. However,
without properly educating people why you are banning something and giving a biased reply
based on purely religious sentiments will have confusion in the society. People need to
understand that cows can be used in so many ways even after it stops giving milk and
indiscriminate slaughtering of this species, which has been a companion of numerous Indian
household, will endanger its very existence.

1
See www.ijppsjournal.com/Vol6Issue3/9051.pdf
Talking about secularity and forcing opinion on others, the argument does not hold much value
for one simple reason; Hinduism is one of the very few religions in the world which treats certain
animals as holy and attaches religious sentiments to it. Banning the slaughter of any other
animal, like pigs and goats, has never been an issue because they are not attached to the religious
sentiments of people. One cannot disregard the religious sentiments of 70% of people of this
country; after all, they too are part of the secularism we proudly talk about.