This Open Access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, (...) yoga, and bhakti paradigms serve as starting points for bringing Hindu--particularly Vaishnava Hindu--animal ethics into conversation with contemporary Western animal ethics. The author argues that a culture of bhakti--the inclusive, empathetic practice of spirituality centered in Krishna as the beloved cowherd of Vraja--can complement recently developed ethics-of-care thinking to create a solid basis for sustaining all kinds of cow care communities. (shrink)

Here we introduce the theme of this issue of the Journal of Dharma Studies, namely, Dharma and Ecology, and give brief introductions to each article in the issue.

Contemporary Indian identification with Hindu traditions (whether more narrowly or broadly conceived) among champions of animal protection often invokes the well-known concept of ahiṁṣā—nonviolence, as the moral basis for the position against violence toward non-human animals. To foster a more informed comprehension of this notion, this paper sets out the complex character of religious practice as presented in the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-gītā, to explore how its tenets might meaningfully apply to the practice of animal experimentation.