India, the world’s largest producer and consumer of milk, deifies cows. Contemporary Hindu religious beliefs bestow upon the cow the status of a mother who provides humans with life-sustaining food—milk. However, the role of this culturally shaped human–animal dynamic in Indians’ routine dairy consumption remains largely unknown. This study aims to understand the role of cow-related religious beliefs in Indians’ intentions to consume cow dairy products using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) model. A quantitative survey was conducted involving 559 Indian adults, utilizing a snowball sampling method. Employing structural equation modeling, the findings indicated that Indians’ dairy consumption intentions are affected by their attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control towards the dairy products (p < 0.001). Subjective norms had the most notable influence on dairy consumption intentions (β= 0.29, p < 0.001), and cow-related religious beliefs were a significant moderator of this link (Δβ= 0.11, p < 0.01). These findings show that consuming cow dairy products is a religiously shaped social practice in India. They reveal a conceptual and physical ‘culturalization’ of the cow in Indian society through which the animal is simultaneously sacralized and commodified. This highlights a paradoxical situation where the demand for cow dairy products, which arises significantly from the cow’s sacred, mother-like status, in turn perpetuates the growth and sustenance of the same dairy industry that compromises her wellbeing (Mother-Milk paradox). This irony, therefore, challenges the assumptions surrounding the use of cow dairy products as a normalized socioreligious practice in India, questions the abuse of the cow’s acclaimed sacrality for capitalistic purposes, and calls for further research on Indians’ awareness of the cow’s animality and of the implications of the cow’s religious commodification on the animal’s wellbeing. In this way, a deeper appreciation of the role of sociocultural dynamics in human–animal relations can be obtained, and generate culturally sustainable human–bovine relationships which promote both human and animal wellbeing.
Chirantana Mathkari (Sun,) studied this question.