The People of Bihar- Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

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The People of Bihar- Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

 The faith and devotion of the Biharis are beyond description. I know well your love for mother cow. You are the admirers of Tulsidas, supreme among devotees. You follow the religion of compassion. There is only one golden way of saving mother cow you should help your Muslim brethren in saving that other cow which is the Khilafat. Conquered thus by love, our Muslim brethren can save the cow. Our religion does not teach us that in order to save an animal we should take a human life. We should sacrifice our own lives for the life we wish to save. Our religion calls it tapascharya. We can follow religion only through tapascharya. Tapascharya emerges out of compassion and in compassion alone is dharma. How can we say anything whatever to others so long as we have not rid ourselves of sin? Do we not kill cows with our own hands? How do we treat the progeny of the cow? What crushing burdens do we not lay on bullocks! To say nothing of bullocks, do we give enough feed to the cow? How much milk do we leave for the calf? And who sells the cow to the butcher? What can we say of the Hindus who do this for the sake of a few rupees? What do we do about it? Cows have always been slaughtered for English soldiers. What have we done about it? Taking all this into account, why should we be angry with our Muslim brethren who slaughter cows considering it a matter of religion? Then least we can do is to clean our soiled hands. It was a great mercy that on the day of Bakr-i-Id our Muslim brethren maintained complete calm, were very considerate to us and, so far as they could, refrained from slaughtering cows. We are grateful to them for this. But it is necessary to make sure that this is so in future years also. Therefore we should give up [eating] goat’s meat, etc. If we do this, the price of these animals will go down and the price of cows will rise. We should make the very trade in cows impossible. We can do all this only when in our work we show discrimination, compassion, reason and self-sacrifice. You have great faith in religion. Living in the sacred land which produced Janaka, Buddha and Mahavir, holding to patience and your religion, you can do great work and show to the whole of India the righteous path which will lead to the saving of mother cow.

Reference:

 

Hindi Navajivan, 2-9-1921