Dairy is a builder, not a cleanser.

Dairy is used as a prelude to some Ayurv

edic cleansing. It gives grounding, mass, sweetness, and usually coolness to mea
ls. For these reasons, it is excellent for children, teenagers, pregnant and nur
sing mothers, those seeking calm and grounding, and convalescents. It is superb
for Vata, miserable for Kapha (with a few key exceptions) and at times quite ben
eficial for Pitta. It offers calories, calcium, protein, and some vitamins. It b
uilds bones and teeth, and in Vata strengthens the heart and nervous system. In
Kapha it can do the opposite for the heart, adding congestion where it is not ne
eded. Its cool sweetness is good for tonifying Pitta, if the appropriate dairy p
roducts are used.
As Robert Svoboda points out in his excellent book Prakruti, Your Ayurvedic
Constitution, dairy has gotten a bad name in health circles more through its met
hods of preparation and mode of consumption than through its innate qualities. I
n the West, it is usually served cold, unspiced, homogenized, with other foods,
and in excess. Its high-fat content, heaviness and coldness does not lend it to
these uses. Served in this way, it can increase one's risk of heart disease, can
cer or obesity. Dairy needs to be used skillfully and not in excess.
Cow's milk was highly regarded by the Ayurvedic sages, being lighter and eas
ier to digest than most dairy. It invigorates and works well for both Vata and P
itta, so long as they are not allergic to it. Unfortunately, cow's milk was intr
oduced extremely early to Western babies of the post-war period, for widespread
sensitivities to it as a food now. If it agrees with you (i.e. does not cause di
arrhea, gas, congestion, or other discomforts) it is an excellent and balancing
food, when properly prepared.
Preparation is the key. There has been a lot of controversy over raw versus
pasteurized homogenized milk in the last few decades. In Ayurveda, raw milk is r
ecommended whenever possible, and milk is always boiled before serving. This hig
h heat effectively kills bacteria in raw milk. It may also denature the proteins
of pasteurized milk further, causing their breakdown into shorter amino acid ch
ains which are then easier to digest. In general, boiling makes it safer and eas
ier to digest; this is especially true when it is raw. The boiling process also
warms a usually cold product as will the addition of warming spices such as cinn
amon, cardamom, ginger, and black pepper. A bit of honey added after heating wil
l also balance the qualities of the milk, warming and drying it.
MilkPasteurization has made the consumption of mass-produced dairy safer in
terms of eliminating the chance of bacterial infections for large groups of peop
le. But its lower heating point (15 seconds at 161 degrees Fahrenheit or 30 minu
tes at 145 degrees Fahrenheit) does not make the dairy more digestible nor does
it eliminate the risk of potential viral contamination. The incomplete heating o
f pasteurization seems to cause the partial breakdown of proteins into tangled c
oils. These disorganized tangles are difficult for digestive enzymes to hold on
and break down. For some people, this raw dairy does not. The homogenization pro
cess is another controversial one. It apparently splits the fats down into small
enough globules that some pass into the blood stream whole, initiating a comple
x process which may lead to a greater tendency to create atherosclerotic clots.
Whether such a tendency actually exists is still being hotly debated in medical
and health circles. In any case, the cow's products extolled by the ancients is
not the same as that sold in most markets today.

Cow Protection
Means Good Ecological & Economic Sense
The National Commission on Cattle, presided over by Justice GM Lodha, re
cently submitted its recommendations to the Union Government. The report, in 4 v
olumes, calls for stringent laws to protect cow and its progeny in the interest
of India's rural economy.
As is only to be expected of people with Western mindset, a national dai
ly's correspondent has slammed the report and its recommendations in satirical t
erms. The tenor of the report, however, did not surprise me at all, since such w
esternised minds suffer from an inveterate habit of condemning all things associ
ated with India, Yoga or Ayurveda, till there is an approval from the West. Igno
rance is the mother of their arrogance and it leaves its imprint on the issue of
cow protection as well. They distort it either to make it appear as a contentio
us Hindu-Muslim issue, which it is not, or treat it solely as a matter of Hindu
sentiments.
Even Islamic scholars aver that Islam gives no compulsive directive for
killing of cow either for religious or mundane purposes. The British shrewdly fo
isted this issue. They were beefeaters and had no compunctions about killing cow
s to meet their taste. To their pleasant surprise, they found they could co-opt
the Muslims into that category and widen the latter's gulf with the Hindus. The
first War of Independence in 1857 erupted as a sepoy mutiny, when an Indian sect
ion of the British army refused to teeth cartridges supposedly made from cow/por
k fat. Its extreme manifestation was a Brahmin soldier Mangal Pandey, who shot d
ead Sergeant Wheeler, thus beginning the uprising prematurely.
Bahadur Shah 'Zafar', after regaining Delhi in 1857 for a brief interlud
e, made the killing of cow a capital offence. Bahadur Shah was not the first Mug
hal king to make such a proclamation. Babur may have been an ardent Ghazi of Isl
am, but he, in his letter dated 935 Hijri, advocated his son Humayun to stop cow
slaughter in India. As recorded in his famous firman of 1586, Akbar too complet
ely forbade cow slaughter throughout his empire. Then Emperor Jehangir promulgat
ed an order that on Sundays, when Akbar was born, and Thursdays, when Jehangir a
scended to the throne, no animal should be sacrificed. Even bigoted Aurangzeb al
ways refrained from making cow-sacrifice during Bakr-Id. We are also aware how i
n Maharaja Ranjit Singh's kingdom the only crime that had capital punishment was
cow slaughter.
Religious and cultural sentiments associated with cow are too well known
to bear repetition. But its economic and ecological aspects elude these second-
hand Western-minders. In an agrarian country like India, bovine population was c
onsidered an asset and an index of prosperity. While cows yielded milk, oxen til
led in the fields or drew carts. India's voice has been one of peaceful co-exist
ence with flora, fauna and rest of humankind. There was an inclination towards c
omplete vegetarianism as reflected in Jainism and Buddhism. Since these philosop
hies put their faith in transmigration of soul, they desisted from animal slaugh
ter since an animal was also a Buddha in the making. And cow was a mother-animal
by every conceivable standard for them.
Serene by temperament, herbivorous by diet, the very appearance of a whi
te cow evoked a sense of piety. Apart from milk, the excretion of cows too was n
ever allowed to go waste. Cow dung, also known for its anti-septic value, is sti
ll used as fuel in its dried form. It is used in compost manure and even in the
production of electricity through eco-friendly gobar-gas.
The Article 48 of the Constitution says: "The State shall endeavor or or
ganise agriculture and animal husbandry on modern and scientific lines and shall
, in particular, take steps for preserving and improving the breeds, and prohibi
ting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle." In th
e 1950s, the Jana Sangh voiced the demand for cow protection as per Article 48 a
nd Mahatma Gandhi's declaration: "Cow protection is more important than even Swa
raj." A 1958 decision of 5-member bench of the Supreme Court upheld Article 48 a
s fully legitimate. One of the members who happened to be from Muslim community
called for making Article 48 mandatory since it was still liable to misuse.
 Agricultural is still the mainstay of India's economy - cow breeding and
cow preservation are integral to it. 75 per cent of Indians live in villages an
d derive the greatest benefits from cows and bullocks. Despite the compulsions o
f modernism, tractors are not suitable for Indian land holdings unlike in the US
and the UK. In US the land available to each person is around 14 acre; in India
it is around 0.70 acre. A tractor consumes diesel, creates pollution, doesn't e
at grass nor produces dung for manure. So for Indian conditions ploughing is sti
ll ideal. Even Albert Einstein, in a letter to Sir CV Raman, wrote: "Tell the pe
ople of India, that if they want to survive and show the world path to survive,
then they should forget about tractor and preserve their ancient tradition of pl
oughing."
While India gets trapped in the fad of non-vegetarianism, there is move
towards vegetarianism in the West. There is a widespread belief that beef has hi
gh protein content and cannot be supplanted. A clinical dietician's chart will s
how that beef, with 22 per cent protein, ranks far below vegetable products like
soybean (43), groundnut (31), pulses (24). Moreover, excess intake of protein i
s not good, as it only contributes to obesity, a bane of modern civilisation. To
procure 1 kg of beef (or for that matter flesh) it takes 7 kg of crops and 7,00
0 kg of water. This contributes to water shortage in regions where beef is preva
lent.
Long back, scientist James Watson Scott had noted that if food shortages
were to be banished from populous countries, the food habits of the people shou
ld be altered to vegetarianism, which is fast catching up in Europe. Thus protec
tion of cow makes good economic and ecological sense.
Courtesy: The Pioneer, August 15, 2002
links:
http://hkrl.com
http://mothercow.org
http://iscowp.com
http://varnasrama.org [self-sufficient farms]
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Un
til we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
-Thomas Edison