ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the perspectives towards nonhuman animals that are exemplified by SwadhyayisSwadhyaya practitioners in the Indian state of Gujarat. The Swadhyaya movement arose in the mid-twentieth century in India as a new religious movement, led by its founder, late Pandurang Shastri Athavale. Extending the bovine dharmic discourse further, Athavale cites the famous Bhagavad Purana verse in which all the Upaniadas are called cows, Ka as the milkman supplying milk to Arjuna. Swadhyaya is one of the least known new religious movements, arising in the mid-twentieth century in the Western states of India. Athavale cites a Sanskrit verse to show that seven forces sustain the earth, cows, Brahmins, Vedas, Satis, truthful people, charitable people, and people without lust and greed. The cow gives all of her belongings to humans: milk and other dairy products strengthen us, bullocks are utilized in farming, cow dung is utilized as a fertilizer, and urine is used as an Ayurvedic medicine.
