Gender and Animals under Brahminical Patriarchy

Abstract

The way we think about meat-eating in the west is very different from the way we think about it in the Indian subcontinent and among the south Asian diaspora. A deeper understanding of what meat-eating means in the South Asian context will go a long way towards expanding our framework for critical animal studies. The crux of the issue is caste, the inherited hierarchically-ordered status of a human being, and the form in which it shapes south Asian culture has been termed “Brahminical Patriarchy.” Under Brahminical Patriarchy, vegetarianism is associated with purity and endows high-caste men with power to dominate women and lower-caste men. This provides nuance to the more familiar idea that it is meat-eating that is associated with male domination. This indicates that patriarchal domination is based not only on physical power but also the idea of sanctity. Furthermore, caste classifications supersede species lines such that different animals are subsumed under different castes. This contradicts the more straightforward ordering of humans above non-human animals, and so challenges the idea that some human groups are subordinated by being “animalized.” Animal comparisons may be used to justify the contempt towards marginalized groups, but ultimately animalization is not be the causal factor in their marginalization.

The way we think about meat-eating in the west is very different from the way we think about it in the Indian subcontinent and among the south Asian diaspora. A deeper understanding of what meat and meat-eating means in the South Asian context and the politics of meat and beef in India will go a long way towards expanding our framework for animals’ rights. In this chapter, I will attempt to outline how South Asian vegetarianism makes us rethink some of our favorite ideas about meat in our diet. The crux of the issue is caste, the inherited, inborn, hierarchically-ordered status of a human being. Caste determines the cultural milieu of the human, from what they eat, where they live, to what jobs they do, from birth through death and, ostensibly, beyond. Considering that South Asians are a large proportion of the world population, and considering that ancient human migration patterns draw clear links between the ancestral stock of current day South Asians and westerners,[1][2] it is important to ensure that our theorizing is inclusive of eastern understanding of animals in our world.

The form that patriarchy takes under the caste system has been termed “Brahminical patriarchy,”[3] where Brahminism is defined as the root of what has evolved into Hinduism. Understanding Brahmanical patriarchy will cause us to question our notions of how meat is related to masculinity, and what masculine power and patriarchy really are. While brute physical strength is deployed within Brahminical patriarchal power, it is matched and often superseded by the authority of sanctity. As contemporary social scientists have noted and demonstrated, social power is split between the martial and the clerical functions. Masculinity is associated, superficially, with physical power and assertion, but I argue that sanctity or divinity is a neglected dimension of patriarchy. Purity or sanctity is vitally important to Brahminical patriarchy. It designates what is “sacred” and what is “polluted.” In Brahminical patriarchy, vegetarianism is a proxy for upper caste purity. Theologian Arvind Theodore muses[4] about the power wielded by upper caste men who might not be “masculine” in the physical sense:

“…men not only derive the power to control and dominate other bodies through their maleness or muscularity but also by their caste affiliations…in the process of ‘othering the other’ — in the monitoring and disciplining of bodies of women and Dalits — dominant-caste men construct a “pure” self.”

The codes of Brahminical patriarchy[5] comprise explicit rules on the subjugation of women and the lower castes. But also included within its hierarchical ordering are non-human animals. Animals hold great importance in Hindu myth-making. It is fair to say that among existing major religions, Hinduism makes other animal species an integral part of its worship. Yet this elevation of other mythologized nonhumans coexists with the dehumanization of both women and oppressed caste people. How are we to reconcile this with rather simplistic notions of “animalization” as a form of dehumanization? In what follows, I critically evaluate the western idea of animalization, and argue that contemporary animal rights theory confounds dehumanization with animalization. Including caste-based dehumanization within our framework expands our understanding of the true place of other animals in human culture.

Ternary Societies and Patriarchal Dimensions

In Capital and Ideology[6], Thomas Piketty describes a fundamental distinction between social groups into three roles, what he terms as the “ternary society”: the clergy, the nobility and the third estate. This tripartite social system is, he argues, a general form that is replicated in many premodern societies around the world, with some minor variations. The clergy is the spiritual leadership, the nobility or warrior class provides protection and security, and the third estate is the common people who do the day-to-day work. Such partitioning of society is seen in premodern Europe, as well as in Hinduism, Islam, and much of the far east. In these societies, the clergy and the nobility generally owned the majority of the land, and thus held power over the remaining people.

Piketty notes that the Hindu varna system is more explicitly a quaternary system of Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (warriors and nobility), Vaishyas (land-owning farmers and craftspeople), and Shudras (mostly landless serfs). However, even in Europe, the laboring class is in practice divided into two subgroups, the land-owning and landless workers, or free peasants and serfs. So, this is a minor classificatory variation on the fundamental ternary scheme.

The Vedic scriptures describe further categories below the four varnas, called “avarna” or not part of the varna classification. These people lived outside of society, in tribes deprecated as “uncivilized” and “untouchable.” Today these people are referred to as Dalit (“broken people”) or Adivasi (indigenous people).

Each of the varnas were held to be born of different parts of the godhead, as shown in Figure 1.[7]

Source: BBC

In comparison with other premodern social systems, a unique feature of Hinduism is that social hierarchy and class inequality is based on an ethic of purity: “Among its distinctive features were an emphasis on ritual and dietary purity, strong endogamy within jatis,[8] and separation and exclusion dividing upper from lower classes (untouchables).” (p 319)

Vegetarianism Does Not Challenge Patriarchy

Western analyses of masculinity, especially within the animal rights framework, has observed that eating meat is the cornerstone of masculine power, male dominance and patriarchy. By far, the work that is most often cited to connect patriarchy and meat-eating is Carol J Adams’ 1990 book, The Sexual Politics of Meat.[9] This work is clearly not intended to represent Brahminical patriarchy, which, as discussed above, is closely associated with vegetarianism. This is not to deny the association of some types of patriarchal power with meat-eating, or that Adams’ work may not accurately describe some forms of patriarchy. Nevertheless, within the Indian context, the clergy held patriarchal power, and in Brahminical patriarchy this is expressed through the purity of vegetarianism.

For anyone living under Brahminical patriarchy, statements cited in The Sexual Politics of Meat such as “meat is for brain workers” or “meat is a symbol of patriarchy” ring as inaccurate. Through history, Brahmin males are those who entrusted themselves as custodians of the scriptures, to preside over important ceremonies and to intercede between humans and the gods. Education was the prerogative of Brahmins (and other privileged castes) but was denied to Shudras and Dalits. To this day, Brahmins hold a disproportionate number of positions as knowledge workers — in administration,[10] academia,[11] media[12] and other professional posts.

Elsewhere in her book, Adams draws attention to the language used to describe women and their bodies — as “pieces of meat.” She connects meat-eating culture to violence against women’s bodies. But despite the hegemony of vegetarianism, India is still a place of violence against women, and all forms of violence including rape threats are a common way to silence and control women. Given the prevalence of victim-blaming, we have every reason to suspect that the reported rates of rape (88 a day in 2019) are underestimations.[13]

Adams’ thesis in The Sexual Politics of Meat is that the oppression of women in patriarchy is linked to the oppression of animals, and the consumption of meat; that by freeing yourself from one, you can free yourself from the other. It also holds that vegetarianism and veganism challenge patriarchy. From the vantage of Brahminical patriarchy though, we can see that this thesis is misleading. Vegetarianism does not challenge patriarchy; on the contrary it is one of the very pillars of Brahminical patriarchy. In The Sexual Politics of Meat, Adams is tacitly focusing on white, western patriarchy, whereas the Indian context demonstrates that patriarchal oppression of women can also be virulently oppressive when it is vegetarian.

The idea that meat-eating is an expression of male supremacy is influential in critical animal studies, and continues to be referred to widely without the type of nuance that I attempt in this chapter.[14] Recently Adams has engaged in activism in the context of the #metoo movement, to speak out against the sexism, sexual harassment and sexual assault of women within the larger animal rights community.[15] What these types of gendered violence make clear is that, contrary to the views expressed in The Sexual Politics of Meat, veganism/vegetarianism, even when combined with a concern for animal welfare, is not sufficient to overthrow patriarchal attitudes and behaviors among some male leaders in the animal rights movement.

How Did Vegetarianism Become Associated with Brahminism?

Let us for a moment reflect upon some of the nuances in who does or does not eat meat in India today, and, who eats what type of meat. As we can see from Table 1, by far it is the Brahmins, only 5% of the population, who have the highest reported rates of vegetarianism at 65%. Other Forward Castes and Other Backward Castes are two categories that consist of the remaining varnas (Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) of varying privilege. For both sets of groups, the incidence of vegetarianism is about a third. The lowest rates of vegetarianism are seen among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which are Dalits and Adivasis respectively.

Table 1.

Vegetarianism by Social Categories

IHDS Data 2011–2012[16]

It is critical to note that even when privileged castes eat meat, as a rule the diet will not include beef. It is traditionally only the Dalits, and the Adivasis, who are beef-eaters. Outside of the Hindu fold, Muslims and Christians also report higher levels of beef-eating.[18]

Overall, and at first glance closer to Adams’ thesis, women are more likely to be vegetarian in India than men (in one survey, 29% among women vs 20% among men). Across all caste categories, women report 10 percentage points higher incidence of vegetarianism than men. This indicates that in addition to caste-based practices, gender norms also influence reported incidence of meat-eating. Within a patriarchal system, it is women of the household who are most involved in food preparation and therefore uphold caste divisions (see below).[19]

Taken overall, no more than 30% of Indians eat a vegetarian diet, and in practice is might be closer to 20% given the stigma attached to meat-eating.[20] How did it come to be that only the “uppermost” caste shows a high incidence of vegetarianism? According to historical records, Brahmins did eat all kinds of animal flesh including beef but at a certain point in time, they relegated meat eating to the lower castes and took up vegetarianism. B. R. Ambedkar described the theory that best fits historical facts and current customs and I draw upon it below.[21][22]

The earliest scriptures of Brahmanism, the religion that would develop into Hinduism, include descriptions of animal sacrifices. Such practices were not always a part of the civilization in the Indus River Valley. Rather, they were introduced by Aryans, nomadic pastoralists who migrated into the subcontinent from the Eurasian Steppe in the second millennium BCE.[23][24] They instituted a varna system that attested to the superiority of the Aryans over the native inhabitants of the area. Horses and cows, as well as other animals like goats, were killed in ritual sacrifices that were presided over by Aryan priests, who came to be known as Brahmins. Because the cow was central to the pastoralist’s way of life, it was the main sacrificial animal. But in the agricultural society of the Indus River Valley, sacrificing a “useful” animal is necessarily expensive, and together with the inherent violence of sacrifices, there rose up a resistance to Brahminism. Buddhism and Jainism were part of the resistance, and these disciplines were preaching against both the needless slaughter as well as the assumed superiority, spiritual and otherwise, of the Brahmins. In order to counter these objections, but still remain in a position of power, Brahmins adopted vegetarianism in a stroke of one-upmanship. At the same time, those outcaste communities who lived on the margins of society by scavenging dead cow carcasses became further discriminated against with an additional burden, that of untouchability.[25]

Purity

The concept of purity in moral psychology has received a great deal of attention recently,[26][27] perhaps because it taps into moral compulsion that is quite distinct from doing/not doing direct physical or emotional harm to an individual. There is a clear evolutionary basis for a mechanism to avoid disease contagion. It is possible that avoiding contact with dead bodies and contaminated food has a strong selection basis. What is not clear however is whether all types of moral condemnation can be related to disgust mechanisms. For instance, Brahminism allows and encourages marriages between a man and his sister’s daughter, but this would be considered incestuous and immoral in other cultures.

Conceptualizations of purity in the literature have been varied, but the immorality of certain acts can only be explained by appeals to natural order, sanctity, and defilement in a primarily religious context.[28] For our purposes, the four-fold varna system describes a divine natural order, the contravention of which is an immoral act. A patriarchal culture built on the foundation of purity necessarily manifests its concerns through restrictions on women’s bodies. Two of the primary ways in which Brahminical patriarchy imposes purity rules on women’s bodies is through restrictions on their sexuality and their diet.

Endogamy is the means by which caste is maintained over time.[29] If a group means to split itself off from others, it can only do so by restricting members’ marriage partners to within the group. Without enforced endogamy, members may marry individuals from outside of the group, thereby destroying group integrity. This endogamy is maintained primarily by a strict control of women’s sexuality. Indeed, the religious texts exhort us to keep a stringent sexual control of women by projecting upon them an innately promiscuous nature. The opening lines spoken by Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita state that the immorality of women leads to mixing of castes, leading to a hell on earth where all family values are destroyed.

“When irreligion is prominent in the family, O Krsna, the women of the family become corrupt, and from the degradation of womanhood, O descendant of Vrsni, comes unwanted progeny.

When there is increase of unwanted population, a hellish situation is created both for the family and for those who destroy the family tradition. In such corrupt families, there is no offering of oblations of food and water to the ancestors.

Due to the evil deeds of the destroyers of family tradition, all kinds of community projects and family welfare activities are devastated.”[30]

As the Brahmin caste is most concerned with maintaining purity of its lineage, it does so by imposing the strictest prohibitions of sexual expression among its women. Ambedkar speculates as to the reasons behind the Brahminical practices of child marriages and prohibition of widow remarriage.[31] Early betrothal of children is intended to bond the couple together even before any temptation to stray outside caste can arise. Widows were kept from remarrying through the infamous practice of “sati,” or burning widows at the deceased husbands’ funeral pyre. Another, more mundane method is through social degradation of the widow, to enforce a compulsory widowhood upon her. A Brahmin widow undergoes a social death, thus becoming a type of outcaste herself. Similar rules did not apply to the lower caste widow, who was encouraged to remarry to maintain numbers among laboring castes.

As noted previously, women report a higher incidence of vegetarianism within each caste group.[32] It is no stretch to note that this is related to their position as upholders of patriarchy by embodying its purity rules, not just in sexual relations but also in diet. Thus, although women are more likely than men to be vegetarian in India, this does not undermine the link between vegetarianism and Brahminical patriarchy. As the anthropologist Leela Dube has noted, food is a critical element in the ritual idiom of purity and pollution. Women, who are in charge of procuring meals, are therefore in a prime position to play a critical role in the hierarchical ordering of castes.[33]

Animalization or Dehumanization?

As human societies subjugate both humans and non-human animals, the relationship between these two types of oppressions is an important question for study. In the American context, animal rights activists often compare animal use to human slavery, in not always a sensitive or considerate manner.[34] However, some influential scholars have theorized this relationship, not just to promote animal rights but to analyze and understand race relations in the west.

Let’s take, for example, Claire Jean Kim’s thesis in Dangerous Crossings.[35] Kim writes that the conventional wisdom is that people in power have used animalization to “dehumanize” less powerful groups. Kim states that some human groups, specifically people of African descent, Native Americans and Chinese people, were considered animal-like, animality being integral to the production of human racial difference. She describes these racialized groups as inhabiting the “borderlands” between human (defined as the white race) and the animal. People of African descent were likened to apes, imagined as the “missing link” between humans and other primates. Slavery was said to “civilize” people of African descent by rendering them more tractable, similar to domesticated animals. Native Americans, on the other hand, were likened to wild creatures, the wolves in the forests and the buffalo on the plains, giving white colonists license to appropriate their land. The Chinese laborers entering the US were likened to swarming pestilential beasts or insects, or dragon-like monsters, needing to be exterminated.

To take a slightly different example let us consider the Aph and Syl Ko’s nuanced ideas in their book, Aphro-ism.[36] They suggest that Eurocentric models view “human” and “animal” as a binary, and that African Americans are placed somewhere in between them. As they write:

“A human being is fundamentally opposite to animals. With these poles set in place — the former as extreme superiority and the latter as extreme inferiority — those who authored this system placed themselves in the former position and from there divided humanity along a spectrum that went all the way “down” to “the animal.”[37] (page 67)

In Racism as Zoological Witchcraft, Aph Ko takes this argument a step further, describing animal oppression as a form of racism: “The zoologo-racial order is the true foundation of white supremacy.” [38] (p 58)

These authors elaborate on their position to suggest that just as some humans are animalized, some animals are “racialized.” Pit bull dogs for example, are raced as Black and discriminated against similar to racialized humans.[39],[40]

Despite minor variations in these and other similar theories, it is evident that scholars in the field of critical animal studies have held that animalization was an integral part of racial discrimination, especially in the context of white supremacy in the USA.[41] By considering caste divisions, however, we can see quite a different mechanism at work. It is much less obvious that discriminated groups of humans are placed in a “borderland” between humans and other animals. No obvious dimensionality between human and animal exists in ancient India when the varna system was devised. In fact, animals are classified along with humans into different varna groups. For this part of my thesis, I rely on the scholarship of Brian K. Smith in the book, Classifying the Universe (1994),[42] which examines the Vedas — religious texts composed, broadly, in the millennium before the common era — to ascertain the roots of the Indian classification system.

The Vedic varna divisions operate not just among humans, but also among different species of non-human animals, among plants, among elements, and everything else in the physical and non-physical universe. Smith explains, “varna might be regarded as the “root metaphor” or “master narrative” of Vedic thought…the varnas functioned as supercategories which cut across the boundaries of the species or discrete classes…Varna thus describes the classificatory scheme in which components were vertically or hierarchically ordered and interconnected as well as horizontally categorized, linking together components from different species.”[43] (pp. 12–13)

In the Vedic literature, each varna group was associated with certain animals. Some humans were identified with certain animals in order to classify those people as altogether uncivilized and outside the realm of proper humanity; other humans were associated with other kinds of animals in order to reinforce the divisions of the ideal civilized society and to extend the varna system to the animal kingdom.

Animal sacrifices were the key sacred rites of Vedic Brahminism. Indeed, according to mythology, the very cosmos was created from a primordial sacrifice performed by the creator. The distinction between domesticated “village” animals and the free-roaming “jungle” animals is very important, and scriptures detail that the most auspicious animals for sacrifice are domesticated animals. The very function of religious rituals and sacrifice was to impose order on the universe, and the sacrifice of jungle animals was believed to lead to chaos. Jungle animals might well be hunted, but ritual sacrifice could only be performed on domesticated animals.

Humans are also considered domesticated animals. The ritual power of the Brahmin associated him with the preeminent sacrificial animals, the goat and the cow. The Kshatriya, the man of physical power and strength, was associated with the horse and the bull. Vaishya are associated with sheep as it is a fecund animal always found in large herds. Vaishya are also associated with the cow — but here, not because of the cow’s sacrificial quality but because cows are food animals raised by Vaishya. A lower-class or Shudra animal is the ass, as the “least of animals,” a bearer of others. The humans occupying the margins, the outcastes, were associated with undomesticated wild animals. “However, some humans are assimilated to the non-sacrificial, inedible wild animals of jungle, beyond the pale of “proper” humanity altogether.” (p. 255) The wild counterpart of the domesticated (cultured) human is termed as a pseudo-human, or barbarian of the jungle. They are “empty shells” of the real human beings.[44]

The Aryans saw themselves as sacred beings, and their non-Aryan neighbors not as non-human animals but as a lower order of men, a nonsacred counterpart, a degraded being.[45] We can see that this is quite different from the way western scholars have theorized Black and Native dehumanization, which is predominantly in terms of animalization.

One might dismiss this distinction as merely different ways in which groups are othered and discriminated against, but I suggest that it tells us something fundamental about the ways in which dehumanization works and doesn’t work. Recent work is questioning the assumed causal relationship between dehumanization and animalization, that humans are devalued via being compared to other animals.[46] Harriet Over has delineated several challenges for the dehumanization hypothesis, especially via a direct animalization process.[47] Racialized groups may be ascribed negative characteristics by comparison with animals, but at the same time, the oppressor groups may ascribe positive characteristics to themselves in the same manner. For example, even as the Nazis compared Jews to rats or lice, they compared themselves to predators like wolves and eagles. Even the same animal can be used to denote positive characteristics in one context, and negative characteristics in another. The snake is often used to signify treachery, but during the American Revolution the Gadsden flag depicted the American people as a snake to indicate their own defiance against the British.[48] Animal comparisons may be used to substantiate or justify contempt towards marginalized groups, but ultimately animalization may not be the causal factor in their marginalization. The use of animals in othering groups tells us more about the language of metaphors in general, rather than about a specific animalization process.

It is important to note at this juncture that the oppressed group has often chosen to express its resistance by associating with an animal. Dalits themselves have chosen the buffalo as their symbol, as a display of their own endurance, and to claim their history and inheritance.[49] The Indo-European migrants brought with them the cow, but the buffalo is an indigenous domesticated animal that predates the cow on the subcontinent.[50]

A unique implication of the Vedic classification, the remnants of which we still witness today, is that some animals are elevated above some humans. Despite beef being standard fare for Dalits and Muslims, the butchering of cows has become banned in most Indian states over the last decade.[51] While this is ostensibly seen as protecting the cow, it is really about advancing the ruling party’s Hindu-nationalist project. This has given rise to vigilante groups who attack Dalits and Muslims on the suspicion of eating or trading in beef. These vigilantes state that a cow’s life is more important than that of a human.[52] Victims’ families are deterred from pursuing the matter as they are threatened with counter-charges of cow slaughter.

It is self-evident that subjugation of human groups by an oppressor group is a process of casting the oppressed as inferior relative to the oppressor. But it is highly questionable whether animalization has a direct causal role in human discrimination. Syl Ko has reinterpreted and refined her ideas more recently[53] to state that “to fail to be a Human [that is, white or Brahmin] is not to be a nonhuman animal. There are two reasons for this. First, because the subjugated group cannot embody the failure to be fully human if they are a non-human animal. Second, to fully cement the oppressor’s project, the oppressed need to internalize their inferiority, and this can only happen if both oppressor and oppressed are of the same broad category. It is noteworthy that Syl Ko’s analysis mirrors that of Brian Smith’s interpretation of Vedic classification of outcaste groups as “pseudo-men” or “empty shells of real human beings.” [54]

To summarize, my study of the varna system’s oppressive tactics indicate that we need to look beyond animalization to understand how human groups are devalued.[55] The same conclusion has been reached independently by other authors [56],[57] who have surveyed at least two fields of study that are different from the caste system.

Conclusion

This chapter has enumerated a few of the important ways in] critical animal studies has neglected to consider the Indian context and how Brahminical patriarchy challenges common arguments within critical animal studies. Western thought has tended to focus on “masculinity” as a force of physical power. Considering Brahminical patriarchy, I have suggested that we expand our conception of patriarchal power by including sanctity/purity as an important dimension that is separable from physical power. Western thought has tended to view humans and nonhuman animals as occupying either ends of a bipolar continuum. In contrast, the Brahminical varna system categorizes and ranks both human beings and other animals, sometimes elevating certain animals over oppressed human communities.

This is not to suggest, at least at this stage, that Brahminical patriarchy follows radically different principles from patriarchy in the west. Rather, these are variations on a theme that reveal the underlying machinations of a controlling power. The clergy has wielded patriarchal power in the west in premodern times, and we can still see vestiges of its reach today.[58] That clerical power became associated with purity and vegetarianism in Brahminical patriarchy is a context-dependent variation. Dehumanization is a process by which those in power have rationalized the subjugation of other humans, and “animalization” is just one example of the ways in which dehumanization has been accomplished. White supremacy exacerbates ill health and shortens life spans of a population by imposing a meat- and dairy-heavy diet, and Brahminism does the same by imposing vegetarianism on a largely undernourished population.[59] In both these cases (and others) groups marginalized by gender and species have been subject to a master narrative that justifies their oppression.

REFERENCES

[1] (Reich 2018)

[2] (Narasimhan, et al. 2019)

[3] (Chakravarti, Conceptualizing Brahminical Patriarchy in Early India 1993)

[4] (Theodore 2021)

[5] (Chakravarti, Gendering Caste: through a feminist lens 2018)

[6] (Piketty 2020)

[7] (BBC 2019)

[8] I will use “caste” to mean varna classifications in this article. The four-fold varna system is a scriptural construct, and in practice social categories are lot more complex, numerous, and sometimes more porous. There is a large number of occupational “jatis” or professional guilds, each forming a regional endogamous group. Although the details are intricate, both sociological and genetic studies indicate that we are justified in clustering jati groups around the four varna classifications — especially at either end of the stratification, Brahmins and Dalits, as shown in recent genomic analysis by Narasimhan et al (2019).

[9] (C. J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat 2010)

[10] (Saxena 2021)

[11] (Subramanian 2019)

[12] (Suresh 2019)

[13] (Times of India 2020)

[14] (C. J. Adams 2022)

[15] (C. J. Adams, No Means No: A Call to Boycott ARNC2021 2021)

[16] (India Human Development Survey 2012)

[17] (Natrajan and Jacob 2018)

[18] (Natrajan and Jacob 2018)

[19] (Dube 1986)

[20] (Natrajan and Jacob 2018)

[21] (Ambedkar, The Untouchables: Who They Were and Why They Became Untouchables 1948)

[22] (George and Anand 2020)

[23] (Reich 2018)

[24] (Joseph 2018)

[25] (Shepherd 2019)

[26] (Haidt 2013)

[27] (Curry 2019)

[28] (Gray, et al. 2022)

[29] (Ambedkar, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development 1916)

[30] (Prabhupada 1968)

[31] (Ambedkar, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development 1916)

[32] (Natrajan and Jacob 2018)

[33] (Dube 1986)

[34] (Harper 2010)

[35] (C. J. Kim 2015)

[36] (Ko and Ko, Aphro-ism 2017)

[37] (Ko and Ko, Aphro-ism 2017)

[38] (A. Ko, Racism as Zoological Witchcraft 2019)

[39] (C. J. Kim 2015) see also Kim’s Murder and Mattering In Harambe’s House (2017) for further elucidation of her ideas on race and animalization (C. K. Kim 2017).

[40] (Ko and Ko, Aphro-ism 2017)

[41] The animalization theory for race is often misinterpreted in lay advocacy and in the media to suggest that dismantling the human-animal boundary will automatically annihilate racial discrimination. Street advocates claim that raising children to respect animals will eradicate racism (Earthling Ed, 2016 https://youtu.be/ZXu74W8A8BQ) and newspaper headlines claim going vegan will combat racial violence (The Cornell Daily Sun 2016, https://cornellsun.com/2018/02/23/veganism-a-way-to-combat-race-based-violence-says-columbia-lecturer/). These are simplistic arguments not borne out by observations, see Donaldson and Kymlicka, 2014).

[42] (Smith 1994). See also Embodiment of Dharma in Animals by Andrea Guttierrez in The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmasastra (2017)

[43] (Smith 1994)

[44] (Smith 1994)

[45] (Smith 1994)

[46] (Over 2021)

[47] (Over 2021)

[48] (Over 2021)

[49] (Ranjan 2017)

[50] Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd in Buffalo Nationalism (2004) further speculated the light color of cows in contrast with the dark buffalo further plays into the divide, based on the distinction between light-skinned Indo-Aryan settlers and darker skinned native Dravidians.

[51] (Ganesan 2021)

[52] (Jodhka and Dhar 2003)

[53] (S. Ko 2019)

[54] (Smith 1994)

[55] I am not overlooking the idea that in a fundamental way humans hold all non-human animals in an altogether different category of “lesser” being. That is, the varna system categorization might be superimposed on a more essential distinction where non-human animals are held beneath humans of all castes. Even though cow vigilantes state cows are more important than (some) humans, we know that the value of the cow is merely symbolic. Cows are still mistreated in the dairy industry, in slaughter for export, allowed to die on the streets, etc., which belies the claim that cows’ lives are valuable. Exploring the idea of superimposed categories is however beyond the scope of this chapter.

[56] (Over 2021)

[57] (S. Ko 2019)

[58] (Piketty 2020)

[59] (Banerjee 2020)