Jawaharlal Nehru visiting a Goshala during his Gujarat tour in 1949

Gaushalas or Goshalas ( hi, गौशाला, gauśālā) are protective shelters for

stray cow Stray cows or stray cattle are animals such as cows, bulls, oxen and buffaloes that roam freely. A cow is considered "stray" when its owner no longer claims ownership or its owner cannot be determined. Cow slaughter is banned in many places in ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. Stray cows are unproductive. Government grants and donations are the primary source of income of the cow shelters in India. Since 2014, when BJP government came into power in India, India has spent on cow shelters in two years between 2014 and 2016. Gosala in Guntur, India

Description

Goshala, a

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

word ("Go" means cow and "Shala" means a shelter place: Go + Shala = shelter for cows), means the abode or

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred place, such as a shrine. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This secondary use can be categorized into human sanctuary, a sa ...

for cows, calves and oxen. Goshala at Chandigarh

History

India's first goshala is thought to have been established in Rewari by Raja Rao Yudhishter Singh Yadav. There are now goshalas all over India. The first ''Gaurakshini sabha'' ( cow protection society) was established in

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...

in 1882. The movement spread rapidly all over

North India North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...

and to

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...

, Madras presidencies and other central provinces. The organization rescued wandering cows and reclaimed them to groom them in places called gaushalas. Charitable networks developed all through

to collect rice from individuals, pool the contributions, and re-sell them to fund the ''gaushalas''. Signatures, up to 350,000 in some places, were collected to demand a ban on cow sacrifice.''Vishnu's crowded temple, India since the great rebellion'', pp. 67-69, Maria Misra, 2008, Yale University Press, . Between 1880 and 1893, hundreds of ''gaushalas'' were opened. Pathmeda godham is the largest Gaushala in India with over 85000 cows being sheltered in the small town of Pathmeda in southern Rajasthan.

Government grants

Since the BJP government came into power in India in 2014, India has spent on cow shelters in between the years 2014 and 2016. To prevent unproductive cows being sent to the

abattoir A slaughterhouse, also called abattoir (), is a facility where animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a packaging facility. Slaughterhouses that produce meat that is no ...

, the government started the Rashtriya Gokul Mission in mid-2014, a national program that involves constructing havens for retired cows. Proceeds from the animals' bodily waste are intended to pay for their upkeep. In May 2016, the Indian national government held an inaugural national conference on goshalas. The Niti Ayog is working on developing a roadmap for Gaushala economy to develop commercial use of cow urine and cow dung for various purposes.

Other sources of income

Donations are the only source of income for the Goshala. Some goshalas offer

yoga Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consci ...

and music lessons for additional income.

References

External links