"Cow Care"

Bombay, August 14, 1976



Prabhupada: Fortunate vrsti. Still India fortunate. I'm coming from London, Paris, and Tehran. All fields yellow. And Europe, so much scorching heat and sunshine, I never seen. Especially in London. This time I saw everything has become yellow. Greenness gone.

Dr. Patel: The non-monsoon countries can produce more food than the monsoon countries. The monsoon comes only three months in a year. Those people get rain all year 'round, they can grow better crops. This is how so many parts of North America and Europe, they can have sufficient crops all the year. We can't have it here.

Prabhupada: No, there is scarcity of water also. They are killing the animal premature. They cannot do it. It has come to this point.

Dr. Patel: (indistinct) in favor of vegetarians. We are fools raising fodder and this thing and again raising animals on that and feeding on that. Why can't we directly feed on poor animals? I think the human race will survive more that way than by eating animals, but economically it is more sound.

Prabhupada: Certainly. In the Bhagavad-gita it is recommended, annad bhavanti bhutani [Bg. 3.14]. Krsna never said mamsad bhavanti bhutani. Krsna never said. This is artificial. In the lower stage of human civilization when they cannot produce food they do not know how to do it, so the animals are killed. What can they do? But actual food is anna, food grains. Even for the animals. Annad bhavanti bhutani. Yajnad bhavati bhu... So there is no yajna. There is no yajna. So this sankirtana-yajna is the only yajna in Kali-yuga. So if they perform, everything is all right. There will be cloud, there will be rain.

Dr. Patel: Yajna karma samudbhava.(?)

Prabhupada: Yajnaih sankirtana-prayair yajanti hi su-medhasah [SB 11.5.32]. In the Kali-yuga, the other yajnas are not possible. First of all, there is no yajnika-brahmana and paraphernalia, so many things. Perhaps if we perform yajna and pour ghee on it, immediately government arrest. Ghee can be produced immense. I have studied. Immensely, you can produce, by keeping cows. Krsna has recommended, go-raksya. Krsi-go-raksya. The go-raksya is essential. It is not that animal slaughter stopping, no. Krsna could have said pasu-raksya. No, Krsna has not said. Go-raksya. Those who are animal eaters, they can indulge in eating other insignificant animals.

Dr. Patel: I think go-raksya must be the backbone of the economy.

Prabhupada: No, health, brain, everything. Milk is miracle food. And we are practically experiencing in our farms that if the cows are protected nicely, they can supply immense milk. We are getting in our farms, extra milk. Everyone is eating so many preparations, sandesa, rasagulla, rabri. They are surprised. In their history they have not eaten all these things.

Dr. Patel: They are eating the milk-producing animal so milk will not...

Prabhupada: No, they advertise milk is bad.

Dr. Patel: Who?

Prabhupada: These Europeans, Americans.

Dr. Patel: Really?

Prabhupada: Yes. "Don't eat milk." Do they not? And they cannot drink also. In Bengal there is a proverb, kule pete ghiya(?) (indistinct). If you supply preparation made of ghee to the dog, he cannot digest it.

Guest: (quotes proverb in Bengali)

Prabhupada: Ha! They cannot digest factually. They get, what is called? That disease?

Harikesa: Jaundice.

Prabhupada: Jaundice. They cannot eat much milk product.

Dr. Patel: Yes, sir. Cow is the biggest factory to produce protein, first-class proteins for human beings. Instead of taking advantage of the products of the factory, they eat out the factory itself.

Prabhupada: So we see practically in our farm the cows give more milk than other farms.

Dr. Patel: The satisfaction of the animal.

Prabhupada: They are very satisfied. You have been in New Vrindaban with me? No, you were not. So the cows are so happy that... Just like in India. They are walking here and there.

Dr. Patel: They don't do anything. Now they have, they have (Hindi), brought some crossing and each cow, Jersey cows and Indian cows, they have crossed and they are producing more than thirty, forty liters of milk every day.

Prabhupada: One liter means?

Dr. Patel: Two pounds.

Prabhupada: So we have got cows, they are supplying more than hundred pounds.

Indian: This cost is three thousand rupees, one cow. Four thousand. (Hindi) pure cows five thousand rupees.

Dr. Patel: They have brought some Holland bulls and Jersey cows and then Indian bulls, and brought some genetic researchers brought out a new hybrid.

Indian: It is very good cow, very good. Giving thirty to forty liters per day.

Hari-sauri: Those cows we have in the Pennsylvania farm, the two best ones, they're the two best pedigree cows in the whole of America. They have their pedigree traced back two hundred and fifty years to when the first cows came to America. Purebreds.

Prabhupada: In our Philadelphia farm we are selling fifteen hundred dollars extra milk. Fifteen hundred dollars per month. So if cow is properly protected, it can supply immense milk.

Dr. Patel: It was Mr. Nehru, he said that we cannot prohibit cow slaughter. Therefore he made so many wrong things. [break] (Hindi)

Prabhupada: (Hindi) This is maya. We are...

Dr. Patel: We are praying to end rebirths by krsna-bhakti, and so there is no question of rebirth if we do it sincerely, and it is for the parama-bhakta...

Prabhupada: Tyaktva deham punar janma naiti... [Bg. 4.9].

Dr. Patel: Mam eti so'rjuna.

Prabhupada: That is perfect. Samsiddhim paramam gatah. That is the highest. Why these people, our own people, in spite of possessing Bhagavad-gita, we are so rascals, we are not taking that?

Dr. Patel: I think the degeneration of this country are from the foreign people, foreign domination.

Prabhupada: Yes. No, it was their propaganda, Macauley's, that "If you keep Indians as Indians, you'll never be able to rule over them." So British policy was to make propaganda so that "everything Indian is bad."

Dr. Patel: I think Max Mueller (indistinct).

Prabhupada: No, it was necessary for them to Anglicize the Indians to rule over them.

Dr. Patel: Our differential, or (Hindi) has created all this rot.

Prabhupada: It is not our, it is human society's.

Dr. Patel: (Hindi) We allowed everyone to be here unawares. If public corporation, trading company, becomes the ruler of this country, I don't understand how it could be.

Prabhupada: Because we have no, that catur-varna system. Catur-varnyam maya srstam guna-karma-vibhagasah [Bg. 4.13]. You have given up Krsna's instruction, now you have to suffer. You do not train brahmana, ksatriya, vaisya, sudra. So anyone who is in power, he is good. That is Kali-yuga. Kali-yuga means anyone gets vote, he's in power. They can misuse the power. There is no ksatriya.

Dr. Patel: I think that is a wrong system (much airplane noise-indistinct) this open Democracy is not a (indistinct) by consensus...

Prabhupada: No, no. Now, either democracy or monarchy, the population is sudra. So either you make it democracy or any "crazy," sudra will be on the power. So they can...

Dr. Patel: In Kali-yuga, sir, the sudras will rule according to the...

Prabhupada: Everyone is sudra. Kalau sudra-sambhavah. Who is going to become brahmana? We are inviting everyone, "Come here, become brahmana." Who is interested? He'll go to the factory. Instead of becoming brahmana he'll be hammerman. In America no students are coming to the philosophical class or higher mathematics class.

Dr. Patel: Mathematics?

Prabhupada: No. Higher studies, nobody comes. Only technology. The higher class, higher studies class, they are being closed. The professors are getting no job. We have a friend, Dr. Henderson, he is a doctor in higher mathematics, he is not getting job. No students, nobody is interested in higher... Similarly, many other things, and literatures.

Dr. Patel: Here also the same thing, nobody. And Sanskrit practically nil.

Prabhupada: And philosophy class, closed. Here I think also. Nobody... They think "What is the use of speculation?"

Indian: At Kuruksetra, one Sanskrit university they are planning.

Prabhupada: Vedic university. So that is our plan. We have asked government to give us land.

Vasughosa: We had a big article in the Times of India about it.

Prabhupada: Provided government gives us land. [break] ...in Bombay. (Hindi) Palm trees, within the palm trees, such buildings will not have this advantage. I think in this quarter our, this land is the best. This Juhu and Birawallah(?) Scheme, this land is the best. Twenty-thousand square yards full of palm trees, and we have made this garden. This advantage is not available by everyone. They divided the property, this side five lakhs and the vacant side nine lakhs. Fourteen. So anyway, we took both the sides. Taking this side, five lakhs, now this one building is worth five lakhs. There are six buildings. Very high. And we have got six buildings.

Dr. Patel: I put up a foundation of my new house here, it has cost me only foundation sixty thousand. Only twenty-one square feet. Twenty-one hundred square feet. Foundation has cost (indistinct).

Prabhupada: No, it is very costly. (Hindi) So let us go down. (the remainder, meeting with Mrs. Birla and friends, is in Hindi with a little English.) (end)

>>> Ref. VedaBase => Morning Walk -- August 14, 1976, Bombay