Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India

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Notes

1 Protected is in scare quotes here because, according to Narayanan, even when cows are kept in so-called sanctuaries like gaushalas they are regularly milked and subjected to difficult living conditions. Acts of cow protectionism also often have little to do with protecting cows themselves but rather with protecting the Hindu state.

2 These are spaces regularly understood as shelters for stray or discarded cows but, as Narayanan argues, they should more accurately be understood as spaces of animal welfarism, a discourse that maintains it is possible to exploit animals humanely.