India has over five million stray cattle, as per the 20th Livestock Census released by the Union Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying in January 2020. Increased mechanisation and the national ban on cow slaughter have further added to the problem. In states like UP marauding cows have become a problem like the wild boars, raiding standing crops. It is also now not uncommon to hear about deaths by goring. UP alone now has over a million stray cows. The Yogi government has built about 5000 cow shelters with an average standing capacity for about 200 cows. The condition of the shelters is pathetic and they have become yet another place for corruption.
In the annals of India's social reform, two luminaries stand preeminent: Jotirao Phule and E.V. Ramasamy, colloquially known as Periyar. Their endeavours, ensconced in the 19th and 20th centuries, continue to sculpt the contemporary struggle against the entrenched caste system. Phule's educational renaissance Phule, born in 1827, was an intellectual vanguard who perceived education as the ultimate equaliser. He inaugurated the inaugural school for girls from lower castes in Pune, subverting the Brahminical hegemony that had long monopolized erudition. His Satyashodhak Samaj endeavoured to obliterate caste hierarchies through radical social reform. His magnum opus, "Gulamgiri" (Slavery), delineated poignant parallels between India's caste system and the subjugation of African-Americans, igniting a discourse on caste as an apparatus of servitude. Periyar's rationalist odyssey Periyar, born in 1879, assumed the mantle of social reform through the Dravidian moveme...
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