Belief can make you drink and eat Animals' Excrements

While I wrote about a very serious political issue here in India yesterday, today’s issue might make you laugh. Or shudder and cringe. Or both. It is something which is now promoted even by government agencies and of course Hindu fundamentalists even though there is no scientific proof for any benefits: the consumption of cow urine and cow dung!

Oh yes, there are a lot of people here in India that believe that consuming the excreta of cows could be beneficial to them. They actually think it could heal hundreds of different diseases. Apart from that it is, of course, holy. Holy because it comes from the holy cow, whom religious Hindus even call the ‘mother of humans’.

This is not actually something new. In fact, quite ancient scriptures mention that a mixture of five cow products – milk, yoghurt, ghee, urine and dung – can be ingested in a ritual which will purify the body. Here in Vrindavan, Krishna’s town, the home of the ‘divine cowherd’, products made of cow pee and poo have been popular for years already. Now, with a party in power that promotes Hindu religion, tradition and values, all those products have suddenly boomed!

Obviously there is a lot of nonsense in the advertisements: not only do they claim that the excrements of cows have healing effects, up to healing cancer – the most popular claim for miracle cures. No, they even have the nerve to lie, saying the NASA had accepted the benefits of taking into your body what came out of the rear end of a cow! I would really like to know what would prompt the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the US to examine cow pee!

On a more serious note, I believe it is a way to keep people’s minds focused on cow excreta and thus avert their attention from real problems in this country. With the whole idea of the cow being holy however I cannot help but notice once more how hypocritical these believers are! They call cows their mother, worship them on special occasions and drink and eat everything that comes out of them with the feeling of holiness – but they don’t care what happens with cows once they don’t give milk anymore, they don’t care that they roam around the streets eating plastic and garbage and they use leather products like leather shoes and belts without a second thought! Where is your divine cow mother now?

It is the disturbed view of religion making one animal’s excrements holy! There has been a certain popularity to people drinking their own urine for treatment as well. Now you are drinking cow urine – you could drink donkey or monkey urine as well! Any good enzyme in cow urine could be in there, too!

Seriously, though, I would not recommend that! Dung and urine are products that the body has expelled because they are not needed, they are waste! After having been through several organs, these products could not be used anymore! So why would you drink or eat that? I have even heard of a certain danger of infection due to bacteria of the intestines which is found in cow dung!

This is the real power of religion! It can make you drink an animal’s urine and eat an animal’s dung. It is the same religion that keeps you from accepting a glass of water from the hand of a human being who is considered ‘untouchable’!

Don’t you think something is wrong there?