The declaration of February 14 as “Cow Hug Day,” had come in a statement from the Animal Welfare Board of India, which called cows the “backbone of Indian culture and rural economy.”
For centuries, cows have been considered sacred by India’s majority Hindu population, a symbol of both the Earth and the divine. Indeed, so revered are the animals that authorities had planned to rebrand this Valentine’s Day as “Hug a Cow Day”, hoping the move would both boost citizens’ “emotional richness” and strike a blow for local heritage over what is seen as a western cultural import.
An agency for the protection of cows, known as the Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog , was set up in 2019 by the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying. Two years later, the RKA was forced to indefinitely postpone a national “cow science” exam after the curriculum prompted widespread criticism over its unscientific claims about the animal.
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