Welcome to Revise and Resubmit, and this is your Weekend Book Review. Today, we’re journeying into a bold and unsettling new perspective on one of India’s most revered symbols—the cow. The book? Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India by Yamini Narayanan.
Narayanan is no stranger to controversial subjects. As an Associate Professor of International and Community Development at Deakin University in Melbourne, she’s dedicated her career to unraveling the often invisible connections between human and animal exploitation in ideological and political frameworks. She’s also the founding convenor of the Deakin Critical Animal Studies Network and a Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Now, she brings us this hard-hitting ethnography that challenges the very foundations of cow protectionism in India, asking how a creature so sacred can endure such a contradictory reality of reverence and brutality.
In Mother Cow, Mother India, Narayanan pulls back the curtain on the dairy industry, revealing how the cow—celebrated as ‘mother’—is exploited for profit while the narrative of her sanctity is wielded as a tool for political oppression. Her research, covering 12 states across India, exposes how the dairy industry depends on the subjugation of both bovines and marginalized human communities, creating a tapestry of casteism, communalism, and hidden violence. How does a society justify worship and exploitation in the same breath? Can India, a global leader in dairy, envision a post-dairy world based on compassion and equality?
Thank you, Yamini Narayanan, and Stanford University Press, for this crucial exploration. Remember, dear listeners, to subscribe to Revise and Resubmit on Spotify and tune in on our YouTube channel, Weekend Researcher. We’re also streaming on Amazon Prime Music and Apple Podcast.
Reference
Narayanan, Y. (2023). Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India. Stanford University Press. https://www.sup.org/books/asian-studies/mother-cow-mother-india
Shyam Benegal Interview with Samdish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG4Xld6ops4 (Benegal's Work-Desk has this book on the top)
Youtube channel link
https://www.youtube.com/@weekendresearcher
