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Surveying the Cow Care Field In this chapter, I look at current cow care practices in India. By "cow care" I mean, minimally, intentional arrangements for bovines to be protected for the duration of their natural lives. My primary aim is to provide an overview of issues that concern persons-in particular persons who identify more or less as Hindus-who are directly or indirectly engaged with cow care. Of course, the issues are centrally about the protection and wellbeing of the cows these persons are involved in caring for. Specifically, we want to consider what are the essential components of Hindu cow care. What makes this practice different, or similar, to any practice of cattle husbandry such as agribusiness dairy farming or ranching? What are the special challenges and constraints of Hindu cow care, and what are its rewards? Pursuing these questions, we will look at some specific cow care projects in India, and we will listen to some of the persons involved in these. It would be presumptuous to claim these vignettes to be fully representative of thought and practices in the wide scope of present-day Hindu cow care. Still, they show an important cross-section of mainly Vaishnava Hindu practice, especially in northern and western India.

Cow Care and the Ethics of Care My aims in this chapter are, first, to show a way of approaching animal ethics broadly speaking through the lens of Hindu thought, while keeping the focus on cow care as a value to be pursued and realized. Here the question can be phrased, how can Hindu thought contribute to a general discourse on animal ethics? The second aim is to bring non-Indian (Western) animal ethics thought to bear on Hindu animal ethics (including the pursuit of cow care). What elements of Western animal ethics discourse can complement and make more comprehensive, persuasive, and comprehensible, the traditional Hindu (or Indic) discourse, leading toward a more inclusive and comprehensive vision of nonhuman animal care while also giving appropriate place for cow care in particular? Our discussion will revolve largely around three key terms found in Hindu traditions, two of which we already encountered in Chapter 2, namely dharma and bhakti. A third term, yoga (briefly alluded to in that chapter), will also be important. These terms, each with their respective (and overlapping) semantic fields, are central to early brahmanical Hindu texts (also already introduced in Chapter 2) including the Mahabharata

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