This week we speak with Dr. Yamini Narayanan, author of Mother Cow Mother India, to explore the uneasy intersections of animal exploitation, cultural symbolism, and state power in India. Our conversation moves through the hidden violence of dairy practices, the gendered and colonial roots of animalization, and the figure of the cow as sacred, feminine, and hyper-visible—yet relentlessly exploited. From constitutional promises and nationalist myth-making to factory farms, breeding regimes, and everyday neglect, this episode asks what a more honest, compassionate politics might look like—one that confronts suffering directly and imagines new spaces of protection and solidarity across movements. References: Visakha Society for Protection and Care of Animals, information available here - https://vspca.org/ ; Donation page - https://vspca.org/donate/Yamini Narayanan, Mother Cow Mother India, available here - https://www.amazon.in/Mother-Cow-India-Multispecies-Politics-ebook/dp/B0BS47ZVNPYamini Narayanan, Rolling-stone multispecies ethnography: Intuition, intimacy, and violence in illegal animal production, available here - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398217561_Rolling-stone_multispecies_ethnography_Intuition_intimacy_and_violence_in_illegal_animal_production?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7InBhZ2UiOiJzY2llbnRpZmljQ29udHJpYnV0aW9ucyIsInByZXZpb3VzUGFnZSI6bnVsbH19Kathryn Gillespie, The Cow with Ear Tag 1389, available here - https://www.amazon.in/Cow-Ear-Tag-1389/dp/022658285XKathryn Gillespie, The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves, available here - https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-sound-of-feathersYamini Narayanan, Animal Suffering in Global Development and Antipoverty Praxis: Enforced Animal Labor in the Peripheral Capitalism of Indian Brick Kilns, available here - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24694452.2024.2369595
