Cash Cow

And we think here in New York State we have problems with a state-imposed curriculum?

According to a report in the New York Times, India’s students had been studying hard for a big test on cows, as part of a new government-imposed curriculum, until a barrage of ridicule and protest forced the exam’s abrupt postponement. The curriculum, devised by the National Cow Commission established by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government in 2019, is seen as a move to push Hindu ideology, which regards cows as sacred, thereby undermining the country’s constitutionally guaranteed secular character.

The Times writes that “since Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, his party has embarked on a steady, intense, and divisive campaign to make India more of an overtly Hindu state,” in keeping with a citizenry that is 80 percent Hindu. The government has changed official place names to Hindu from Muslim and a little over a year ago, passed a citizenship law that openly discriminated against Muslims, provoking nationwide protests.

But many Indians have simply refused to be cowed. “This is very weird, this exam,” said Komal Srivastava, an official for the India Knowledge and Science Society, a nonprofit educational group. “They can say anything about cows: that radiation is reduced by its dung, which is unscientific. If we want to teach kids about cows, it has to be scientific knowledge and not mythology.” That bit about protection from radioactivity is surely the most positive thing anyone’s said about cow manure in millennia, at least since the Pelishtim opted for the dung of Yitzchak’s cattle over Avimelech’s gold and silver (Bereishis Rabbah 64:7) — and maybe now we know why.