Cow urine and auto-urine therapy (sipping one's urine) have been a part of India's folklore for centuries if not millennia, but the fact that the Hindutva-loving BJP parented by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is in power is such that a random statement of the kind Dr Kamakoti made is interpreted politically.
Published Jan 27, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jan 27, 2025 | 9:00 AM
Cow urine vs Toddy Tamil Nadu stirs a healthy debate on unhealthy politics.
You can raise a toast to Tamil Nadu this week. Not the Western-style wine, whisky, or cognac, but some time-tested local drink. Which one? That is the question. What I am raising a toast to this week is the idea of a “healthy” debate on the health benefits of drinks not considered your average beverage.
First up, we had the director of the Indian Insitute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Professor Veezhinathan Kamakoti, stirring a controversy over cow urine, which found critics and anti-BJP politicians turning up their noses (literally, one presumes) at his view that he drank an ayurvedic concoction that contained cow urine because of its health benefits.
Rationalists, leftists and modern science fanatics do like that, not least considering the context of Hindutva politics.
Cow urine and auto-urine therapy (sipping one’s urine) have been a part of India’s folklore for centuries if not millennia, but the fact that the Hindutva-loving BJP parented by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is in power is such that a random statement of the kind Dr Kamakoti made is interpreted politically.
Kamakoti is not a doctor, physician, or health expert but presides over a prestigious engineering school. He has no authority to be quoted on the subject, even if what he says is correct. Therefore, it is natural to view what he said as a way of endearing himself to the powers that be in an act of elegant sycophancy.
However, that should not detract us from the merits or demerits of urine therapy. Kamakoti found informed backing from Sridhar Vembu, founder of Chennai-based global software firm Zoho, whose fondness for the Hindu-Right is well documented. Vembu points out not-so-gently that faecal pills made from the excrement of healthy individuals are for medicinal use for improving gut health by ingesting beneficial gut bacteria.
With that kind of science, you cannot dismiss his words as a load of s….t!
“IIT Madras Director Prof. Kamakoti…cited scientific papers supporting the beneficial properties of cow urine. Modern science increasingly acknowledges the value of our traditional knowledge,” Vembu said on Twitter–turned-X.
“Excretionary excellence” is thus now part of a debate that mixes clean medicine with dirty politics.
What strikes me, however, is the disproportionate importance given to controversies over hard facts. From a political point of view, that is justified because it is indeed strange when an IIT director speaks of something that we would rather hear from the mouth of a National Medical Council (NMC) executive or a public health expert.
Modern medicine based on scientific evidence is now the default option for global medical practices and any attempt to question or change that must include science in the right context. When an engineering school professor talks out of turn, it must be ignored, mocked or interpreted in a political context.
I noted that the official IIT website lists Kamakoti’s topics of research interest to include “software aspects of (Very-large-scale integration) VLSI design, cluster computing, high-performance computing, algorithms, data structures and computational geometry.”
I could not quite locate medicine or Ayurveda in the list, nor any other credential to support his competency — even though it is undeniable that science supports urine therapy of some sort.
It is relevant to note that Kamakoti was talking of the “anti-infective properties” of cow urine at a go-shala (cow shed) in Chennai on the occasion of “Mattu Pongal” —the day of the auspicious Pongal week that marks a reverence for cows. The occasion is such that we could give him the benefit of the doubt, though you may still wonder whether a director of animal husbandry would have made a better special guest worth reportage by news outlets.
On X, Kamakoti also found support from a neurologist, Anand Venktararaman, (slightly more qualified in medicine than a computer expert) who said: “The hate for cow urine is dumb and irrational. Cow milk is far dirtier, and has more pus cells, bacteria, skin, and hair than cow urine. …Urine from healthy cows is sterile and contains antibacterial compounds.”
That argument is hard to digest but there it is for you: Science at work.
But then, science has many dimensions in traditional knowledge. In this, I found some thought-provoking words from the controversial Tamil sub-nationalist leader of the Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK), Seeman, who spoke in favour of the Tamil Nadu Toddy Movement to demand that the state government decriminalise the tapping of toddy from palm trees and announce it as a healthy, medicinal drink.
He pointed out that the DMK-led state government was happy to see people spend money at state-authorised liquor outlets even as toddy tappers languished for want of support.
The pro-DMK Dinakaran daily showed Seeman sipping toddy from a biodegradable palm leaf cup and telling reporters: “The one who drinks milk is called an intermediate caste, the one who eats beef is called low caste and the one who drinks cow urine is called upper caste. This is the social structure of this country. We need a political revolution to escape this system. The Dravida and Aryan (Hindutva) ideologies are not different. They are the same thing.”
Seeman wants toddy to be designated as the Tamilian’s “national drink” on the lines of Russia’s vodka and also describes it as a herbal drink.
Inspired by his words, I Googled the health benefits of toddy and found a traditional medicine website that said coconut palm toddy is a “very common Ayurvedic drink” and becomes harmful only when consumed in excess.
The site says coconut palm toddy collected early in the morning is non-alcoholic and becomes alcoholic only when fermented. Palm toddy contains Vitamins C, B1, B2, B3, and B6, besides proteins and carbohydrates and is good for the eyes, heart, hair, nails and skin. It even reduces the splitting of cancer cells, says Dr Akhil on the website run by the Kochi-based Ayurveda Gurukulam, a school for traditional medicine.
It is beyond the scope of my column now to compare coconut toddy with its equivalent tapped from royal palm trees — or to argue whether fermented toddy is good for health. However, I did find a Cambridge University Press research paper on “The Nutritive Value of Coconut Toddy.” Enough said.
We should thank Kamakoti perhaps for “engineering” a healthy debate. Since this also involves aspects of caste hierarchy and social ostracisation, I consider the debate healthy for both politics and medicine. Let’s drink to that.
(The writer is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, The Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He tweets on X as @madversity. Views are personal. Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
