Indian leaders’ backing for cow dung cure-all angers doctors

Customs officers who found cakes of cow dung in passengers’ bags were afraid of foot and mouth. Turns out there’s a bigger worry.

A child dries cow dung cakes in Gurkhabasti, on the outskirts of Agartala, the capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura.

For the customs officers at Washington Dulles airport, the search of a passenger’s bag from New Delhi revealed unexpected contraband: cakes of cow dung.

US authorities warned of the risk of importing foot and mouth disease. But the seizure had a significance they may not have realised.

As the pandemic sweeps through India — which reported an average daily rate of more than 350,000 new Covid-19 infections and 4,000 deaths last week — doctors have urged people to reject advice promoted by allies of Narendra Modi, the prime minister, championing cow dung and urine as a cure.

Cows are sacred to Hindus, but using their by-products as “therapy” is “humbug and inauthentic”, said Mona Desai, a senior doctor in the Indian Medical Association (IMA). People who consume or smear their bodies with cow excrement or urine risk further infections, she said.

Desai works at a hospital in Ahmedabad, the largest city in Modi’s home state of Gujarat. A few miles away, at a Hindu temple foundation, home to a “holistic hospital” opened by Modi, devotees have gathered regularly to paste cow manure and urine on their bodies in the belief that the mixture bolsters immunity against Covid.

“Cow dung is nothing but body waste,” said Desai. “Applying cow dung and urine can never boost immunity or protect you from coronavirus. The dung also carries several fungi that could give you other infections, including mucormycosis.”

Indian Hindu Holy men perform rituals sitting surrounded by burning dried cow dung cakes during Magh Mela festival in Allahabad, India. Picture: AFP

Mucormycosis, or “black fungus”, is a brain and lung infection found among some Covid-19 patients whose immunity may have been weakened by steroid treatment. It can be caught by inhaling a mould found in soil, plants and manure. A severe outbreak in Ahmedabad has raised fears of a link to dung “therapy”.

Among prominent advocates of cow urine and dung as a Covid-19 panacea are politicians from Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Harsh Vardhan, the health minister, has ordered government scientists and senior officials to provide data justifying the therapeutic and cosmetic merits of products of “pure indigenous” cows.

“It is not just because we are emotionally attached to cows, there is a lot of economic potential in promoting indigenous cow products as well,” Vardhan said. “People these days want scientific validation.”

The IMA, which represents 3.5 million doctors, has slammed Vardhan for “inflicting a fraud on the nation and gullible patients” .

A woman dries cow dung cakes, a bio fuel used for cooking in Allahabad, India. Picture: AFP

But the belief in the curative powers of cow waste is widespread and powerful. Swami Chakrapani, a Hindu nationalist leader, organised a gaumutra (cow urine) party in an early stage of the pandemic

“All our [Indian] leaders and officials consume gaumutra,” he insisted. “But they do so behind closed doors and only when they are sick. They are ashamed of the gift gods have given us. Every person should drink it.”

He urged global leaders to add the “miracle elixir” to their diet. But there was a caveat: they must import the gaumutra from India. For “the almighty resides only in the Indian cow and not in any foreign breed”, he explained.

The Sunday Times