By: Supratik Sen

Drawing upon a wide range of Hindu textual resources and thinkers, Valpey’s work explores our moral obligation to animals, and by extension, the non-human world. Valpey approaches the subject by focusing on a “constructive” approach to the ethics of what he terms “cow care”, the practice of keeping and caring for cows throughout their natural lives (Valpey, 2020, p. xvi). He uses the term bovinity to capture the pan-Hindu notion that cows are more than animals and are, in an important sense, privileged beings and therefore worthy of special reverence, care, and protection. Valpey writes that his treatise primarily functions as “an extended commentary” to the Bhagavad Gītā’s (5.18) characterization of a wise or well-educated person as one who sees all living beings with “equal vision”, and through his multi-faceted scriptural exegesis, he endeavours to highlight the implications of this worldview for animal ethics (Valpey, 2020, p. 3). Admittedly, Valpey’s book is a “wide-ranging overview” (Valpey, 2020, p. 5) of a sprawling topic; nonetheless, it makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning discipline of Hindu animal ethics (and Hindu ethics) for four reasons.

Read the whole Review [PDF]: Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics. Kenneth R. Valpey. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020

By: Clive J. C. Phillips

Curtin University Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute, Curtin University, Kent St.,
Bentley, WA 6102, Australia; clive.phillips@curtin.edu.au

Simple Summary: Cattle production has received significant criticism, particularly in Western countries, on account of its contribution to environmental pollution; the ethics of practices such as premature slaughter, particularly of male calves, and invasive procedures to control reproduction and dock tails and horns; and the poor welfare of cows in industrialised farming systems. However, in the country with the largest cattle population in the world, and one of the largest human populations, India, there is a culture of respect for cows, which has a long historical tradition. This culture is now growing to ensure that all cows are treated ethically. In his recent book, ‘Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics’, Kenneth Valpey describes the widespread advantages of such an approach, including a recognition that all beings are equal under a divine presence. The adoption of the Indian approach to cow care on a broader scale is considered, and it is recognised that whilst it generally provides for cow welfare and ethics better than Western farming systems, the adverse effects on the environment would be potentially magnified.

Read the whole Review [PDF]: Are There Lessons from India about the Management of Cattle? A Review of ‘Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics’ by Kenneth R. Valpey