I was quite sad all day yesterday after I learned that the rights of a Hindu family in a small town in upstate New York had been trampled upon. It seems that in every direction that we gaze these days someone else in America is losing a fundamental right that our founding fathers believed in and bled for. In this case it is the right to bear cows for protection. The New York Times recently reported on this gripping story:
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The Voiths lament on their front porch. Their cow may now be fifteen minutes away, but they still have their faith and each other. |
To Stephen and Linda Voith, keeping cows at their home on Main Street in Angelica, N.Y., a tiny rural village, is a central facet of their Hindu beliefs.
To local officials, though, keeping the Voiths’ growing herd outside village limits is a matter of law, not religion.
The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Rochester recently agreed, upholding a lower court ruling that prevented a lawyer for the couple from raising the issue of religious freedom when the village won an injunction against them. In 2003, an acting State Supreme Court justice found the Voiths in violation of a law against keeping livestock on parcels smaller than 10 acres.
“We’re being denied our right to practice our religion, because it seems like such a threat to the status quo in this country,” Mr. Voith said, calling attention to a dairy farm across the street behind their home.
The village attorney, Raymond W. Bulson, said the law does not single out any religion and described the dispute as a quality-of-life matter.
“You move to a village because you want the amenities,” Mr. Bulson said. “If you move there to have those amenities, you don’t want a cow next door. I’m sure their religious beliefs are sincere, but that was never an issue…” [Link]
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p>Bigots. They aren’t even ashamed. They just come out and say it. “You don’t want a cow next door.” I guess it doesn’t even matter to Mr. Bulson that the cow in question is both young and in love. This isn’t just a story about religious discrimination but also one about forbidden love.
The dispute began after the Voiths bought a house in 1999 on two and a half acres in Angelica, about 80 miles southeast of Buffalo. They initially boarded their cow, Chintamani, on a neighbor’s farm, partly inside the village but exempt from the livestock ordinance because the farm predates the 1986 law.
In 2001, after Chintamani was impregnated by one of the farmer’s bulls, the Voiths took her and her offspring to their house and leased a 12-acre field down the street for grazing.
The Voiths and their cows soon became a frequent sight on Main Street and in the village square. Some neighbors complained about odors, while the Voiths said they were harassed for their religious beliefs. [Link]
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p>Ahhhh, now it becomes clear. You guys can see the bigoted subtext here right? The local all-American bull impregnates the smelly “idol-worshiping” cow and the God-fearing townsfolk want none of it. Bullshit I say. Deepa Mehta needs to bring THIS story to the big screen next instead of some story about a ship full of Punjabi immigrants in Canada. Luckily both the Hindu American Foundation and the World Hindu Council filed amicus briefs on behalf of the Voiths.
The couple has kept the cows in accordance with the Hindu belief of goraksha (cow protection) and for a religious procession known as a padayatra. In traditional Hindu society, bovines are kept on private property only for agrarian purposes. Cows which are used for religious ceremonies are housed in special constructed goshalas or cow protection shelters…“The purpose of HAF’s efforts in these proceedings was to ensure true religious freedom for all faiths, including Hinduism,” said Nikhil Joshi, Esq, member of the Hindu American Foundation Board of Directors. “The governmental restrictions that have severely limited the Voiths’ right to foster and protect their cows casts an unconstitutional prophylactic blanket upon the Voiths’ ability to espouse freely their religious beliefs…” [Link]
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p>We may have suffered a temporary setback in the battle over California textbooks, but THIS battle isn’t yet over, not while “unconstitutional prophylactic blankets” are being cast about with impunity, and not while there is a drop of milk in Chintamani’s udders or a drop of blood in the fingers that I use to blog awareness about this issue.
If any of you drive through Angelica, N.Y., roll down your window and yell “Mooo.” Yell for all of us.
as much as i’d like to condone the religio-curious urge to harbor cows in the name of bhagwan, i must conclude a different opinion, that, as a hindu who lives on a cow farm here in the U.S., that there’s more than meets the eyes with these dung factories. Although the article itself isn’t compelling in either direction, the fact remains that the upkeep and caretaking of cows in an albeit rural setting requires a) sizeable acreage b) GOOD traditional and/or electric fencing c) and regular and complete feed cycles, especially in the winter.
i know i’ve had my share of late-night round-ups when a cow breaks a fence post and leaves the perimeter as the rest follow (not intentionally, but because they use fencing/trees/etc to itch themselves and eventually wear things down) or because there’s no more grass off which to graze (i.e. winter) they look beyond the periphery and escape when not properly fed.
and the smell? no worries. thanks to modern farming implements like the SHIT SPREADER, we can easily re-distribute gober on those mucky mid-summer nights when the stench is too thick and resilient to ignore. sure, i’d rather be whooping it up with peers partying at the latest NYC disco, but when you’ve got dad waiting at the “wheel”, who’s to refuse a little farm fun?
thankfully, a religion as rich as hinduism affords those who practice it the many valences of its faith to be embraced. please don’t make keeping pet cows one of them. it’s just silly.
leave that to the Pros.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand why everyone is jumping down each other’s throats?
In upsatete New York, Cow tipping is the major activity. I don’t understand why a court would have to remove any citizen’s property? This doesn’t make sense to me. When these creatures roam freely.
In addition that that, once again, I’ll state it’s UPstate New York… the only traffic these type VILLAGEs get are tractors and jeeps.
And I should know, I am currently UPstate new york.
“you donÂ’t want a cow next door.” Next, it will be “you don’t want a black dude next door” The point being, you can’t dictate what’s not YOUR property.
What exactly is the issue here, legally? It looks like there might be a law against keeping livestock in small areas of land. This, I’m guessing, has to do with basic animal disease and health issues.
Some referred to this as a “private property” or even religious issue… well my friends, since the Voiths are not a bonafide livestock business or producer (like that dairy farm referred to), how can state and federal agriculture make sure they’re following the law? Meaning, in order to even keep certain types of animals there are a ton of permits and licenses you gotta get… because a huge animal like that has the potential to spread disease.
How? Well, imagine that this cow wanders over the corner of its pen. Drops it like it’s hot… er, the feces are left close to say, a stream of water which connects to other streams… and let’s say this cow happens to be very sick. Well… we may just have an issue on our hands.
And the 10 acre issue? Not sure, but that may be related to health and contamination issues as well… someone may have to research it. Basically, I support religious freedom but if it’s a basic agricultural law issue, well… yeah, the Voiths will have to move.
i>Apologies for the poor wording of this… brain no worky today.
Convenient that the government’s interference in these citizens’ animal-raising doesn’t extend to factory farms in any significant way, eh? Must be nice to be a big animal-‘processing’ corporation with lots of dough. At any rate, these people seem kinds of daffy to me.
I’m inclined to agree with this analysis of the situation. American Christianity has historically (and presently) placed a lot of emphasis on material manifestations of religiosity.
The Loiths obsession with their little suburban dairy farm Smells of Hare Krishna WASPy wannabe Hindu BS to me… 😀
I dont think any real brown Hindus would be bolshy enough in the good old US of A to stand up and say “we want a dairy farm in our backyard”. Probably get a beatdown from the cops in the middle of the night for their trouble.
Re: http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/003030.html We now have: Verma backs bounty for Danish cartoonist http://www.ibnlive.com/news/verma-backs-bounty-for-danish-cartoonist/9600-4.html
One can only be born a Hindu, you can’t convert to Hinduism. So, technically these people aren’t Hindus, they just love cows, more than many real Hindus back in the motherland.
I agree with Jatin and Idharaobeta.
These people don’t sound like real Hindus. They sound like WASPy, Hare Krishna Hindu-wannabes. shakes her head
Although we’re going a little far-field (no pun intended) of the legal issues of keeping cows… as a Hindu, a Hare Krishna, and someone who has a pet-peeve with generalizing, I’d love for some of our self-acclaimed Hinduism scholars to answer a few questions to enlighten me:
~ What do you have to do to be a “real Hindu?” If a family who is willing to fight court battles and face neighbors hurling insults at them just so that they can practice a tenet of their beliefs (whether you agree with those beliefs or not) makes them “wannabes”, then to be real you would have to…? Drive your new Camry over a coconut? Talk loudly during your cousins’ weddings? shakes his head
~ How have you determined that one can only be born a Hindu and not convert? And has anyone broken the bad news to the (white-skinned) (sannyasi) editors of Hinduism Today, that they are genetically damned to live out banal lives as Jewish stockbrokers and Christian truckdrivers? Poor souls… maybe they will be re-born in nice Gujurati families in Ediscon, New Jersey and be “real” next time around. shakes his head some more
~ Are the hundreds (thousands?) of “goshallas” (literally “cow sanctuaries”) operating in India and elsewhere in the world also doing so on the basis of “materializing an abstract concept (because they can only conceptualize their religion in material terms)” or are have they been brainwashed by those persistent WASPy Hare Krishna wannabes? And did they add in all those weird references in Hindu texts that do speak of cow protection? Here’s one, for example: In the Bhagavad Gita (18.44 if you want to look it up) Krishna tells Arjuna that “ploughing, cow protection, and agricultural trade are sacred duties for a farmer.” The actual sanskrit words used are “go-rakshya” (lit. cow-protecting) and “karma” (lit. prescribed duties). Or do “real” Hindus skip reading the Gita and get their knowledge straight from B.R. Chopra’s “Mahabharata”? shakes his head until he gets a migraine
Sorry if I sound a bit snide here. I have no interest in ramming my own personal beliefs (Hindu, Hare Krishna, or otherwise) down anyone’s throat. You can agree, disagree, or not particularly care about keeping cows on your property for religious reasons. But smugly concluding that someone is “not a real Hindu” because they happen to be white and care passinately about their cause? That’s just lame.
Okay, well I have to take the new Avalon to the Subzi Mundi and buy myself a coconut. 😉
keeping it real, Desi Dasa
Well this case is getting highlighted on a lot of nationalistic sites in India, and it seems Voith dude also wrote to the voceferous christian bodies crying murder in India because some enlightened folks are returning to heathenism because their holy food and money ran out. lOl.
The Hindu is not by birth , but by “karma”. Hindusim is a lifestyle and way of living life according to certian principals. Much more then just worshipping or praying.
This statement is so stupid that a “white” cant be a hindu , I agree to disagree to that.
Family like Voiths ,who struggle so hard and agaist such a hostilily are worth a lot more then just my Praise.
I am a Hindu Brahmin ,but I can openly state that Voiths are more Hindus then most Indians , who just practice Hinduism in namesake.
Voiths deserve such respect because they have this vision in much hostile conditions , under which most will call then nothing but morons I guess.
Voiths belive in their principals and execute them to the best of their ability , may they have the courage to do so always .
And most of us here who do blog , just do it with a chunnel vision or aim to ridicule there. What a pity , there are ways to put your points, but I dont think the pretex of humor or sarcasm can be used to ridicule others.
Well thanks to all those who are reasonable here and everywhere. Our family now resides ten minutes away from Angelica, NY in the town of Belfast, NY 14711, where we were able to purchase a nice 20-acre farm in May, 2009. And the cows are very very happy. Especially because the Hindu Swayam SevakSangha purchased a 75-acre farm/retreat center directly across the street from us; and our cows get to graze on unlimited pastures – very ecstatic. You can visit anytime, we’re even preparing a guest facility. We have the best milk in the universe, thanks to Cintamani and Nrtti Cows. ph. 585 808 6427. Jai Sri Krishna!