Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1900-09-12
DARE NOT EAT BEEF
Natives of India Starve with Mil
!. lions of Cattle.
Religious Observances Prevent Them
from Gratifying the Cravings
of Nature - Famine in
Years of Plenty.

In large districts of India to-day
millions of cattle could not be sold for
SO cents a head. The country, yellow
and parched. has been turned into a
desert by the failure of the Monsun
rains. There are grass lands and fod-
der in other parts of India, but the
poor animals are too weak to be driven
to them, even if there were cattle buy
ers to take them away; so they die
like flies, succumbing to starvation far
more quickly than their owners The
thought has never occurred to the 49,
100000 Indian peasantry now suffering
from hunger that the cattle would
have been a food resource to tide them
over the months of crop failure. They
have plenty of cattle. Among all the
animals of India the various breeds of
horned and bumped cattle hold the
first place. They are the draft ami
mails in the little field of the poorest
peasant. All the transportation of the
inland roads depends upon them. The
household that has not it's cow is in the
direst poverty.
Suppose these natives, when the
signs pointed Enthusiastically to a sea-
son of crop failure, had cured under
their hot sun many thousand tons of
beef by sun-drying, as jerked beef is
prepared in South America, indescrib-
able suffering and thousands of lives
would have been saved; but the very
idea Of making such provision as this
against the horrors of famine would
be inexpressibly shocking to the $780,
10 5000 people of India, who base their
religious beliefs upon the Vedas. They
would never dream of such a profana-
tion of the teachings of Brahminism.
They would rather swallow dirt and
gnaw roots than eat beef, and yet they
are not strict vegetarians, for all eat
butter and milk, and also fish and NUT
ton when they a procure them.
The Hindus and those who share
with them their religious beliefs are
just what history tells us their fathers
were, three and twenty centuries ago.
The highest law that concerns the Hin
du is to eat correctly, and beef is one
of the prescribed foods; so with this
food resource in every farmyard, priced
highly, as it is, by most of the world,
the Hindu dies of hunger rather than
partake of it. These facts are perhaps
as impressive an illustration as can be
given Of the profound influence which
religious injunction and custom have
upon the habits, tastes and .prejudices
and consequently upon the commerce
of whole nations.
The value of East Indian cattle for
food has been amply demonstrated.
The 57,OC0,00O Mahometans living in
India have no qualms or scruples about
beef eating. Some years ago we read
almost daily for a time of bloodshed
between the Mahometans and Hindus
of northwest India. Beef was the
cause of the incipient warfare. The
Hindu neighbors of the Moslems de-
cided that their feelings had been out
ragged too long by the repugnant spec
tacle of cattle shambles and beef eat
ing. They resolved to put an end to
them, but the undertaking was too
large for the comparatively small num-
Der of z%ealots who engaged in it.
In this vast region, so densely peo-
Piled that the specter OF famine is not
far away ever in years of plenty, no
meats are imported except for Euro
pean consumption. If there is a par
tial failure Of rice, wheat, maize, barley
or the indigenous grains on which the
laborer lives, starvation begins at once; |
and so while India sells to the world
every year from $25O,OO0,OOO to $780,
0OOO, 900 worth of products, and buys
about three-fourths as much as she |
sells, her purchases are almost wholly
textiles, machinery, railroad material
and coal, ever when hunger stalks
abroad; and the main reason why the |
great evil of famine is not averted or
m%itigated by food imports is because
the religious tenets Of most OF the
people confine them to the few cereals |
they raise themselves as the mainstay (
- Mo- ~ oAC ACSPeCV AOWCVcIS Ic-
prejudice is a blessing to the
country. 1t is to the lasting shame Of
some modern nations that they de-
stroy thousands of barbarous or semi
civilized men and women by selling
them poison in the form of the purest
qualities Of alcoholic liquors; but they
find no market for their fiery gin and
forty-rod among the hundreds of mil
lions of East indians, because Islam
throughout the world is a vast teetotal
society, and among the Hindus to touch
liquor is a sign of the lowest caste.
Thus certain religions which we do
not include among the highest forms
have happily reared an insurmountable
barrier against one Of the worst evils
Of wpstArn civilization