Commonplace: Milk Consciousness
The main question was to examine the uses of milk as the most perfect food. All over the world, both in the West and in the East, there is a new wave of milk consciousness. Nations that once believed only in maintaining liquor bars have now begun to encourage milk stalls. Country-wide campaign is being carried on in many Central European Countries demonstrating that both in cost and, in food value, milk was any time superior to eggs, fish and meat. India has believed in the efficacy of milk as a perfect food for centuries past. The constant impact of western ideas has influenced a small section of the people to believe that non-vegetarian food was more efficient than milk but it is gratifying to note that milk has re-established its supreme place once again all the world over.
The dangers accompanying the use of non-vegetarian food stuffs in India are of a serious nature. As against the one advantage of easy assimilability of the nitrogen, the disadvantages are overwhelming. The abnormal heat of the tropical climate coupled with the want of strict sanitary control and cold-storage makes the use of non-vegetarian food a very risky one. There is no doubt that meat of all kinds, beef and pork particularly, are cheaper in India than in Europe or America, firstly because of the religious scruples (of the Hindus who would not touch beef and of the Mohamedans who would not take pork) and secondly because for want of control one does not know whether the meat on the market comes from a diseased, dead or a slaughtered animal. The fish and the egg are not open to less serious objections.
It is also worthwhile examining another serious aspect of this non-vegetarian question. This involves the consideration of the tremendous amount of vegetarian food that must be consumed by cows, buffaloes and goats etc., before it is assimilated and converted into a raw material for slaughter-houses. In the interests of national economy, would it not perhaps be more useful for man directly to use this vegetarian food in other forms rather than convert it into non-vegetarian food and then reuse it?
The problem of milk supply in India is an extremely perplexing one. There is no other country in the world that worships the cow as a sacred animal. Indeed according to one orthodox view in Hindu India, the cow is the home of Thirty-three crores of Gods and Goddesses (making an average of one Deity per Indian!). In all provinces in India, even today, the cow is specially worshipped by womenfolk once a year in the evening, two days before Divali as a token of peace and prosperity. It is equally a paradox, however, that very little of pure and unadulterated milk is available in the country. The Indian agriculturist and the Indian milkman who look upon cow-slaughter as a religious crime do not seem to think that dilution of milk with water (or vice versa) is a still greater crime. The explanation for this mentality is to be found more in the economic conditions than in religious beliefs. Though not in intellectual pursuits, poverty is certainly a bar in the economic struggle for existence.
It would be a great mistake to interpret the religious importance attached to the cow as being a superstition. In India, religion is very often only a garb and a cover to disseminate cultural, sanitary, scientific and economic ideas. The value of the cow and the bullock to the Indian agriculturist cannot be minimised, the former for its milk and the latter as the beast of burden. The importance attached to the horse in the west as a valuable beast of burden both in agriculture and in war is a parallel-conception. Though not on religious grounds, the flesh of the horse scarcely finds a place in western menu, except in times of a siege. The horse is as indispensable in the west as the cow and bullock are in the east. The religious significance attached to the cow in India is synonymous with the economic sanctity attached to the horse in the west.
Even in a country like Japan where the science of drinking milk was unknown, and people were afraid of taking it lest horns might grow on their heads, there is now country-wide awakening in favour of milk and the production of milk, butter and condensed milk has reached appreciable figures. In the year 1930, for a total population of 64 millions in Japan, the production of milk amounted to 110 millions of litres, condensed milk amounted to 13 millions kilogrammes and butter amounted to 4 and a half millions kilogrammes. For a country that did not dare to take milk even in its tea, the above figures are certainly praiseworthy.
The following pages are written with a view to examine the question of milk from all aspects. No attempt is made to appeal to sentiment in preference to scientific reasoning. It is hoped that they will serve the purpose of disseminating the correct knowledge of milk as the most perfect food.
N.N. Godbole, Milk, The Most Perfect Food (Illustrated) (Benares Hindu University, 1936), xv-xvii.
