The Cow in Anglo-Indian Religious Thought
Shambo: One damn thing after another,
the garland, the makeup, now this.
Well, “The Cow in Anglo-Indian Religious Thought” is not really what this note is about, but we at “Upper Italy” know that a pretentious title is already half the battle.
We also don’t feel any strong desire to speak of Italian politics, though we probably ought to. Today is “Family Day,” a day of “mobilization” and street marches organized by the Catholic Church in an ill-advised muscle flexing exercise intended to cause problems for the current Government over the same-sex marriage issue. “Ill-advised” because it looks like it really isn’t going off all that well. It will no doubt be reported as a success, but the vast crowds expected to reach the piazzas appear to have remembered that they had some shopping to do instead. Oh well.
(As is usual, the organizers are now saying that they at least had a “million people” in Rome’s Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano for their main event. This is at best a figure of speech. We have pointed out elsewhere – (here) – that the laws of physics do not actually permit the presence of more than 200 thousand people in that space. Fitting in a million would require stuffing twenty individuals into each and every square meter without any wasted molecules of air between them.)
It is interesting though that the Cardinals – not the St. Louis Cardinals – seem to have lost their historic touch for mass politics. They are still very good at hardball – not the baseball kind – in the figuratively smoke-filled wheeling and dealing rooms, but they have been silly to actually lay their busted flush on the table where everyone can see it. It is possible they believed their own propaganda. That happens.
The other feature of what is grandly referred to in Italy as “the political debate” is a curious dead-end effort of the Left to get its house in order by sorting itself into a new political entity to be known as the “Partito Democratico” – and yes, that does mean “Democratic Party.” This in any event appears to be a non-starter. When and if the thing actually does come into existence, supposedly in mid-October, it is more likely to be a new label for a coalition than a political party in the conventional sense.
Then there is a little issue that everyone wishes would go away. All political sides are busy burying it in platitudes at the moment. France’s new President, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, walked up and down the spine of his Socialist opponent, Madame Ségolène Royal, in the recent French elections. The Italians, who still manage somehow to believe things they read in newspapers, even after all these years, did not expect this defeat – or at least the clarity of its dimensions – on either the Left or the Right. It is a problem for both. Having got that one substantially wrong, Italian foreign affairs specialists and journalists have now moved on to suggesting that Mr. Barack Obama is a shoe-in for the American presidency…
The “progressive” press here is also attempting without much success to find an unpleasant label to hang on Sarkozy. They are trying “France’s Berlusconi” on for size, but that will not work, especially as it can be turned around to suggest that the former Italian Prime Minister might be “Italy’s Sarkozy,” an outcome no-one wants. The Italian Right is terrified that an idea like this might wake Berlusconi from the growing senile hibernation of managing his harem rather than Italian public life. He might, by God, think he wants to be Prime Minister again. The Right, with the possible exception of Silvio Berlusconi, does not believe the situation in Italy is really comparable to that in France and no part of it wishes to go to elections anytime soon.
But we were going to write about cows – as we have (here), (here) and (here). Some news has come up. The Edinburgh paper “The Scotsman” – (here) – has got the title about right: “Welsh Hindus fight to save sacred bull;” and Reuters does its usual solid job of getting the meat in: “Hindus in west Wales are fighting to save Shambo, a sacred bull, from slaughter after it tested positive for bovine tuberculosis. Followers at the Skanda Vale temple in Llanpumsaint, Carmarthen, are considering forming a human chain in an attempt to save the temple bull from the abattoir, and have launched a petition on their Web site” – that site is (here).
For the record, Shambo is a six-year-old British Friesian, part of a herd of 35 cows and bulls kept by the Welsh monks. Sacred cows being kind of thin on the ground in the UK, the faithful have found it necessary to grow their own. We are instead uncertain about just what a “human chain” might be.
At any rate, the Hindu order at Skanda Vale, the Community of the Many Names of God, said in a statement, “If we were to permit DEFRA (Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) to kill Shambo it would be an appalling desecration of life, the sanctity of our temples and Hinduism as a whole.”
Putting down cattle found to be infected with tuberculosis is standard practice in developed countries for the very good reason that the disease is highly contagious – both for other cattle and for people – and increasingly difficult to treat. Tuberculosis is making a major comeback all around the world and the newer strains are alarmingly drug resistent.
Still, Swami Suryananda, a senior monk at the monastery, told Reuters that the issue has “galvanised” Hindus. “We could no more allow the slaughter of Shambo than we could the killing of a human being. Ultimately, we will be willing to defend his life with our own.”
Though we’re guessing that that “ultimately” would have to be pretty “ultimate” indeed before blood actually starts to run in the streets, it’s hard to tell what a bunch of Welsh Hindus could manage if they really get going. Upper Italy will of course closely monitor this story as it, ah, breaks.