Sentientism 160: "Mother Cow, Mother India" - Yamini Narayanan - International Development A/Prof - Sentientism
Yamini is Senior Lecturer in International and Community Development at Deakin University. Her work makes substantive contributions to the rapidly emergent field of South Asian Animal Studies through a twin focus on animals in political and urban life in India. It addresses species as an explicit identity category in Indian national politics through the intersections of #anthropocentrism, #sectarianism, and #casteism. Her book Mother Cow, Mother India offers one of the first empirical critiques of India’s cow protectionism discourse and politics from a #criticalanimalstudies standpoint. Yamini publishes widely in media on issues related to animal rights, including the Animal Liberation Currents, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, Huffington Post and Animal People Forum. She has been interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, BBC Brazil, and for documentaries on cow protection politics and animal advocacy in India.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
Welcome
Yamini's Intro
- Researching gender-sensitive urban development (e.g. urban transport in New Delhi & risks to women)
- "It was entirely by mistake... a twist of events suddenly led me to the world of animals"
- Animals and urban planning... then animals and nationalistic & identity politics in #india
What's Real?
- Being asked "how do you know?" when researching non-human animals
- "It's also a question we need to reflect on ourselves... how much of projections... biases... are we bringing into our analyses"
- "To do justice to the subjects of the work... we actually got to be very carefully reflective on this question of 'what is real?'"
- Confronting "scenes of really visceral extreme physical violence & suffering"... #dairy farming, animal labour in brick kilns
- Humans with "the flimsiest of protections... virtually none... but in the case of animals they have been completely disregarded as labour subjects at all"
- "For me it has always been the eyes... of an animal... it is impossible to sustain any form of differentiation when we look at the eyes"
- "The eyes are possibly one of the most real aspects of connection between two #sentient beings"
- "When I'm talking to a butcher... or to a self-identified Hindu right-wing cow vigilante who is actually practicing a very authoritarian form of politics... when I look into their eyes... it is again difficult for me to cancel or reject them completely... a window of an opportunity of connection... the eyes are a pathway into something real."
- Critical studies: valuing the subjective other "any being with a perspective"
- "In an Indian dairy farm animals are heavily restrained constrained... almost like concentrated animal feeding operations (#CAFO / #Factoryfarm ) of the west"
- "There is very limited avenue for... expressing individual behaviour... and yet they manage..." curiosity / repulsion / impatience "almost tired of futile interventions"
- Subjective and objective value and truths
- The "charge of emotionalism" levied against dairy researchers (vs. rationaity and intellect)... "The separation of the mother and the infant... the visceral suffering that both the infant and the mother experience as a result... when you're seeing it on a farm it is undeniable... how loud and how charged a calf's bleating for its mother can be"
...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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