Story here. Love the photo of the vending machine.
“Don’t worry, it won’t smell like urine and will be tasty too,” says an official of a Hindu nationalist group. Mmm-mmm, who wants theirs? (I wonder if this should be in Cafe Society.)
At my school, they sell a brand of milk called Golden Flow. Jus’ saying.
I confess, I am so ignorant of modern Hindu culture that this entire story could be a total lie intended solely to smear Hindus and I would have no idea.
But even aside from the whole cow urine-drinking aspect, I have to question the rationale behind the proposed beverage. Ostensibly this is being promoted as a more authentically Hindu-friendly alternative to Western soft drinks. Which is all well and good, but has authentic Hindu culture ever had a soft drink industry? Frankly the notion of a soft drink market campaign targeted at a specific demographic segment, even if that demographic is cow urine-drinkers, is not that much less Western a concept than soft drinks that don’t contain cow urine to begin with.
Now I’m not trying to tell Hindus how they should run their culture here. Actually, I guess I am. Hindus, don’t put cow urine in your soft drinks. It’s a pointless gesture. You’ve got like a billion people over there. Coke and Pepsi aren’t going to just give up trying to sell stuff to you. They’ve already got dozens of specialty brands targeted to different markets. If you take up drinking cow urine, next week Coca-Cola will just roll out a new brand named Coke Whiz just for you.
On the other hand, if the whole thing was a joke to begin with, then Hindus, please feel free to have a good hearty laugh at my expense. “Look at this Western idiot on the internet! He thinks we drink cow urine!” Then you can get back to burning your widows or worshipping elephants or whatever it is that you really do over there.
Cow Whizz Cola! It Tastes Like That Because Its In The Water!
I don’t think it’s a joke. The Times generally doesn’t fool around. And I know Indians here who could tell you crazier stories.
I’m suddenly reminded of Mecca Cola, launched in France in 2002 and which has an office in Bangkok.
Holy shit!
Wups, I guess that would be holy piss, wouldn’t it.
I wouldn’t dump your nest egg into that IPO, if ya know waddimean.
I dunno. There’s maybe a billion people there who may be lining up for a bottle.
Well, piss does have electrolytes…
I’m speechless! :eek:
Well, I would have been, had I not read Terrifel’s post. So, on a more serious note, Hindus today generally do not drink cow urine, or any sort of urine, for that matter. I’m sure some do partake of the stuff, because there does exist a traditional background for the practice among certain sects, but they’re a small minority. I know through my grandmother, though, that cow urine is used in some traditional medicines.
As the article mentions, this zany soft-drink idea is the brainchild of a group known as the RSS. They’re a Hindu nationalist group who have come to represent the extremist side of Hinduism. They’re very anti-secular (read anti-Muslim) in their current avatar. The worst elements in the RSS have been responsible time and again for inciting racial riots in India. That’s not to say they’re a purely a militant body - they’ve done a lot of good in India, especially when it comes to disaster-relief - but still, there’s a lot of baggage.
Clearly they’re fishing for publicity with this press release but I think the timing is odd. They usually release tons of anti-Valentine’s, ‘O thou corrupting West’ sort of stuff around now. Maybe it’s related to a recent incident where some of their ilk savagely beat up a Hindu woman drinking in a pub. Sort of a ‘REAL Hindu women drink cow piss’ publicity thing? I wonder.
I’d love to be in the ad agency that accepts the marketing commission if this plan actually materialises.
Funny, I thought that you were going to talk about the Japanese drinkwhich in Japanese sounds like “Cow piss”
The cow urine thing actually doesn’t really bother me. I’ve heard stranger things. This is what bothers me:
I hate this principle India is trying to accomplish. Hate it-hate-it-hate-it. When are people ever going to understand that the more you forbid something, the more people will chase it?
Plus, India is not just Hindus.
Hey, it’s not “India” that’s trying to accomplish it; it’s just the frigging RSS and their Sangh Parivar idiots. I’d be only too happy to see them all taken to some quiet location in the middle of, say, the Bay of Bengal and fed cow urine for the rest of eternity. What is scary is that the Hindutva movement, which was a loony right-wing fringe in the early 80s, has now got such a strong vote bank behind it. I’m worried that the BJP will, at some point, get enough clout in Parliament to push through a Constitutional amendment abolishing India’s secularism, but even this low-level idiocy is bad enough.
Of course it is. They’re taking the piss!
Plus, wasn’t there a short-lived fad among the rich and stupid in the last few years that claimed drinking (your own) urine was good for you or something? Not that this compares to cow pee.
Even holy cow pee.
Some points:
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The RSS is a bunch of loonies. There is no reason to equate their ravings to Hindus or Indians in general.
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The RSS is like the “Pure Hindu-ness” counterpart of the PETA. If you pay attention to their antics, they win.
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Cow urine soda is not going to become popular amongst Indians or Hindus.
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Morarji Desai, who was prime minister in the late 1970s, drank his own urine. He was one of the few. The vast majority of Hindus or Indians don’t do this.
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Soft drinks have been available in India for a long time now. For a while, import brands were banned, so India has established local brands (Thums Up, Limca, Campa-Cola, Mirinda). So soft drinks are as much a part of popular Indian culture as anything else. Prior to carbonated beverages, India did have a tradition of sugar-added fruit drinks (like lemon “sherbet”).
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Pocari Sweat. … … … … … … … … … … … Nothing, I just like that name.
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There are a billion Indians and Hindus in the world. Hinduism and Indian culture tends to tolerate isolated cases of benign lunacy, so look hard enough and you’ll find every kind of freak somewhere. That doesn’t mean that any of them signifies anything important.
Y’know, if you’re going to make a beverage out of cow excreta, you’ll go a lot further with a milkshake, I think.
I’m trying to wrap my head around their internal logic here: is it that cow pee is extra super-duper Hindu-y in their eyes, or that cow pee would be more disgusting to non-Hindus than it is to Hindus, and somehow drive them off?
Bonus Idle Thought: I suppose the inclusion of bovine lemonade make it non-vegan.
Sure they do! They signify that Indian culture is somewhat tolerant of benign lunacy.
This is important because it means Indian culture is cooler than a lot of other cultures.
Wht really annoys me is how this kind of shit ALWAYS makes the news. My coworkers are always coming to me with some story of “woman weds dog”. I try to educate - no, India is not full of dumbfucks, no, we don’t all marry at thirteen and have twenty odd children - but it’s the same as when you show a movie in India. Slumdog Millionaire wasn’t about how much progress India has made since its independence. And we won’t even talk about that Patrick Swayze Calcutta movie that still makes me mad, twenty years later.
Everything produced by a cow is considered holy by (some) Hindus. There are religious ceremonies that incorporate cow urine, along with the other “outputs” of a cow. Reverence for cow urine is thus uniquely Hindu-y.
So they’re selling Coors Light in India now, big deal. 
The Indian version of “Mountain dew” is full-strength cow pee!