1 - Hurting over What? Examining the Character of the Cattle and Livestock Economy within sentiments of hurt in Colonial India (1890-1940)

The late 19th century in colonial India witnessed two distinct but related developments in Empire’s approach to address cattle mortality/productivity. On one hand lay the crisis of diminishing grain yields and cattle deaths that were exacerbated by famine like conditions across India, Africa and China. The other and more specific character of the cattle question in the rural north in India was the gradual shift away from the economistic formulation of the problem towards a nativist view based on the sentiment of ‘cow protection’. The paper uses the debates in the legislative council of United Provinces and the cattle conferences of the 1890s to examine the changing lexicon of the cattle economy in India. The paper shows how the period marked the formalisation of a century long process to criminalise and control agro-pastoral caste groups associated with meat, dairying, grazing & livestock. The nativist demand to ban cow slaughter informs legislations and regulation on meat and dairying. Arguably also perpetuating the veneer of an agrarian dominant property regime and an industrial approach to meat and dairying. Tellingly, was this nativist turn an anomaly to colonial liberalism? As the paper shows the nativist position on cattle borrows from an existing template of liberalism and empire that from the 18th century justified the rule of property based on the incessant manufacturing of custom. The native view on cattle offers a microcosm to understand not just colonial imperialism but also its inheritance as a property regime in post-colonial societies of Asia and Africa.