The word “Hindu” makes us think of popular religion, which worships many god forms and is mostly vegetarian. Not all Hindu religious people are not vegetarians, they do eat chicken, mutton, fish, etc. But “Beef” is not common and mostly they avoid it. “Beef” is meat of cow. They also say that they never eat it. But! Why? If this is asked, every Hindu says different answer for that.
So, the answers are “Cow” is considered as goddess and it is called “Gomatha”. Hindus worships cow. They believe cow has some spiritual powers. Many regions in India have festival (Pongal), they celebrate it grandly and worships Cows. Cow has special place in their heart. Also, cow's urine and dung have antibiotics and they are good. Some people drink the urine and they believe it keeps them healthy. Even cow dung cakes are used for cooking in place of fire woods.
There are some reasons that really touches the heart. Generally, new born child drinks mother’s milk and then they drink the cow milk. Cow may be the animal but it feeds the child as their mother. So, it is also considered as second mother. Hindus have lot of respect to this animal. During any festival or pooja only cow milk is used and other animal’s milk is not accepted. They think it is holy animal.
Cow is most friendly animal to farmers. They do agriculture with cows. They have special bond to this animal. Farmers considers cow as their mother, which works along with them and feeds their stomach with her sweat. They love, care and respect her very much.
Now coming to the main reason, there is a king named “Pritu Chakravarthy”, the avatar of lord Vishnu. At that period farming is not there and people eats the animals. Slowly, the human population increased and animal population decreased. It then resulted a drought. Then the king came up with the idea of farming and to plough the land. They needed strong and mild animal, which should not harm humans and a friendly natured i.e., cow. After that people stopped eating cow as it is helping them.
There also another reason that Hindu is not a religion because the word Hindu comes from the Himalaya and river Indus. So, the word is more geographical than a religion. In ancient time people who lived in that place is called “Hindus”. Then many people started involving in religion like Jewish, Christian, Islam and many more. The people who remain pure Hindus without any religion they called themselves as Hindus and taken it as religion.
In ancient India, people did eat cows while wandering the grasslands. But the cattle were always a sign of wealth and status. Once the new religion like Buddhism and Jainism started preaching vegetarianism, Hindu ideologies also started to change. Both as an influence of these new religion and in order to survive against them. Then cows became holy animal.
Eating Beef – The taboo for Hindu has different reasons and opinions for individual. But every reason is linking to one common point that cow is helping humans in many ways and they are respecting it. But this taboo topic is quite hot in India. India has many religion people and is secular country. Regarding “Beef” there were conflicts has happened between with other religions and it became serious.
The thing is in Hindu’s point of view, it is holy animal but other religion has different view. Since each and every religion has their own laws or belief, we need to respect each other. Respecting other opinion is basic law for all humans regardless of religion.