When Ravana was abducting Seetha, Jatayu, the valiant bird asked him, “If someone abducted your wife, how would you feel?” Similarly, we human beings have to place ourselves in the position of a cow to understand the sufferings we have caused her. From birth to death we have snatched her right to live in dignity and peace.
If you are a cow:
You are scared of death even before your birth. The demonic men may kill your mother with you as fetus in her uterus. They would make vanity bag from your tender skin.
They separate you from your mother soon after your birth. When you sprint towards her, they restrain you with ropes. Men tie you up next to your mother and cheat you of your rightful milk.
Your bondage grows with you. You have no joy of freedom. A length of rope controls your life. To eat when hungry and drink when thirsty is the natural right of all living beings. But men snatch away from you this godly gift. You are to eat and drink what they give and when they give.
Your lineage is incomparable. None can match you in love, service and sacrifice. Yet,
When you grow up, the governments declare that the Desi breed is useless and inseminate you with the semen of foreign breed cattle.
These alien seeds are sick and have no strength and yet they are preferred because you are now seen to be just a milking machine or a lump of meat. Your lineage, the best of the creations, has got polluted.
Imagine if scientists or the honorable rulers declare that the Bharathiya human race is useless and that the European white race is far superior to us and promote artificial insemination with foreign breed of men, what would be our fate?
Oh cow, your nose is for breathing. But, men pierce a hole and insert crude strings so that you can pull loads and carts to make them wealthy. When your nose bleeds, don’t you repent this gift of nose from God?.
In rain and shine, severe cold and scalding heat, you toil life-long, day after day, mutely suffering hunger and thirst, yet all you receive is a heap of curses and beatings.
Oh cow, “from frying pan to fire” may be a saying born of your sufferings. When you grow old, you are sold to a butcher- from cruel life to torture and death.
Human values subscribe some peace and respite to a dying being. But man has thrown to winds your right to live and die in dignity. He talks of human rights, who is to talk of the rights of the cow?
When transporting you from place to place, you are handled worse than a lifeless commodity. Huddled together, piled on top of one another in a truck, with broken limbs and hearts you are driven to your final destination. How can a “thinking” man understand the sufferings of a pious soul like you ?
You feed the man throughout your life. He starves you for days before you breathe your last. Having milked you for life, how can man put up with the monstrous cruelty of slowly slashing your throat to collect your blood? The act of peeling your skin while alive could be the ultimate torture .
Oh cow, you bring the heaven to earth; but for you, life here is hell and death is deliverance.
Oh man !
Have you reflected for a moment from the cow’s point of view? Remember that God resides in every living being, like He resides in you. When you hurt a being you hurt the divine spirit living within it. Jeeva endures but the Deva suffers. No one can escape the consequences of an action committed. “A reaction to each action” is the law of nature.
What you give to other beings of the world will be returned to you in hundred-fold.