Cows are white so they're holy? Our case against buffaloes

Satish Yadav, 32, belongs to village Latapur near Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. While he works as a gardener in Delhi, his parents still live in the village, looking after their ancestral five bigha land, two cows, two bulls and two buffaloes.

What do they call their bovine pets? Yadav says, "Eh?" I can swear by all the Sarat Chandra novels I've read that villagers always name their cows (typically, Shyamoli, in Bengal villages). But Yadav clearly says, "They have no names."

Something is not adding up. "Your family must be very fond of the cows?" Yadav smiles and starts talking about the buffaloes: how they close their eyes when they cross roads ("You have to stop. For, they won't"), how they love to bathe in the river ("We used to ride them as boys in the water"), how much they eat.

Also read: Why Gandhi opposed legislative ban on cow slaughter

And the cows? "They're ok." That's all he says. Then he goes into raptures over the thick and plentiful milk the buffaloes give twice every day ("Five-five litres"), which the family sells for Rs 30 a litre. And the cows? "Oh, they give much less. Not that thick, too. Sells for Rs 20 a litre."

A buffalo these days sells for Rs 30-40,000, he adds. A cow sells for Rs 7,000, while a bull for Rs 5,000. "People are buying tractors. Bulls have no work. They loiter around happily. Cows don't give much milk. But if you have a buffalo, you don't need to worry."

Clearly, Yadav has more feelings for his buffaloes than his cows. "Cows are gentle, no? Buffaloes are more aggressive. Do they fight?" Why should they fight? Yadav sounds surprised. "They have always lived together."

Yadav must be one in a million. While the whole country is singing paeans to the cow, neighbours are bumping off people they have always known on mere suspicion that they may have eaten beef, state after state is bringing in tough laws against cow slaughter - here is this man who is unabashedly favouring his buffaloes over his cows.

Also read - Dalits are fed up with the holy cows of nationalist India

Doesn't he know that the cow is sacred - gau mata, kamadhenu - while the buffalo is not? The god of death, Yama, rides a buffalo. Devi Durga kills a buffalo-headed demon, Mahishasur.

Yadav falls silent when I remind him that there are 24 states in the country, where you can't kill a cow without permission (if at all) but you can slaughter buffaloes, eat their flesh and turn their hide into bags.

Even in Maharashtra, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal, Rajasthan and Gujarat - where killing a cow (genus) invites greater punishment than, say, drunk driving, molestation, causing grievous hurt or evading income tax, according to the Indian Penal Code - you can kill a buffalo without blinking an eyelid.

Poor Yadav. Or is it poor buffalo? In this land of dark-complexioned people, where white skin is aspired for and venerated as sattva guna (divine virtue), this dark, uncute beast with lumbering gait has no hope - even if it nurtures more Indian children every day with milk than its scrawny white barn mate, the cow.