When cows are being brutally slaughtered why does Krishna not intervene?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Krishna is said to be the protector of the cows and yet so many cows are being slaughtered and brutally slaughtered. So why is it that Krishna is not intervening? This world is a place where adharma can occur in terrible ways. Lord Ram is going through the forest when he is in exile.
He comes to a place called Ramtek in Maharashtra, Nagpur area, that area. So it is said that there he encounters a whole mound of bones and these are bones of the sages and the sages have been eaten by the Rakshasas. The Rakshasas were cannibals.
They were eating, eating not just human beings but the sages in the forest and at that time Ram takes a vow, you know, I will rid the world of these demoniac Rakshasas. But still that means at that time such terrible things were happening. People being eaten up by sages.
The sages also maybe they had their families and they left it and they went to the forest to attain God and then they get just eaten alive. What can you know? Last rites performed also just become quite a brutal end to it. So even this kind of terrible dharma siglani or adharma is described.
So in that sense if Ramanas are eaten alive, then cow slaughter is not that ghastly or terrible. But so from the point of view of the cosmic time scale there are phases when adharma prevails. Adharma prevails at that time sometimes the adharmic people become very powerful.
Adharmic people have to practically run for cover. So in due course of time this changes. They said that Ravana ruled for a considerable amount of time before eventually Ram came and fought with him and freed the world from demoniac Rakshasas like him.
Till then he was in charge and there was a lot of trouble because of that. Similarly and Kali Yuga, this is the age when the souls who are rebellious of God, they are given an opportunity to play out their fantasies, to play out their desires. That is the purpose of Kali Yuga in one sense.
At one level you could say why do these four yugas have to be there? Why can’t Krishna always have Satyug only? But the point is the material world is given for souls who want to enjoy separate from God and different souls have different degrees of desires to enjoy. So some souls desires cannot be facilitated in Satyuga. That’s why they need Kali Yuga.
And when the souls do wrong, they also get the consequences for their wrongdoing. And those consequences come in various forms. Some of them are like, some of them involve, you know, say millions of people getting slaughtered in holocaust or in some warfare like that.
So in this world, it’s not dharma is there always. Sometimes dharma can prevail and it can prevail for a fairly long time also. So when we say that Krishna is the protector of the cows, there are three different aspects to it.
One level is that Krishna does this, that he does by taking care of the cows in Vrindavan. Another level is because Krishna does this, that is the role that he does and that is what we should also be doing. Like Prabhupada, he took Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s prophecy as his own responsibility.
He didn’t say that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s holy name will spread all over in every town and village. He said it’s my responsibility to make it spread. Similarly, devotees can see this as our responsibility to do cow protection.
And we can do our part in cow protection as much as is possible for us. And thirdly, it is that we also have our own ordained duties. Now if we see, even when the Rakshas were doing such terrible things, and surely all the sages in the forest knew about it.
So Vishwamitra, he was earlier a Kshatriya, now he was a Brahmana. He actually, he did not fight against the Rakshasas. He got Rama and he asked Rama to fight against the Rakshasas.
And during that whole period, the Rakshasas might have wreaked some more havoc also. But he did not fight against them. So the thing is that sometimes Brahmanas, if they have a particular role in society, they may stick to that role and they may not actively oppose.
Of course, we have the other example of Maharaj Vena being removed from power by the Brahmanas. But that’s an exception. So depending on whatever is our position, we can do our part in furthering a cause that is dear to Krishna.
There is fighting by Shastra and there is fighting by Shastra. So the warriors, the Kshatriyas, they fight with Shastra weapons. But we, as Brahmanas, fight with Shastra.
We try to share spiritual knowledge and by that enable people to come closer to proper conduct. So Krishna’s protection, Krishna as the protector of cows means, we should say that, oh that means cows are dear to Krishna, therefore we should try to protect the cows, we should care for the cows. But usually it is not that Krishna intervenes in this way.
Krishna expects us to follow His system and in that system their protection is there. So even also Krishna always says, He says that, I give the knowledge to Sun God, from Sun God it is coming down. Vasvateyogam proktavanahmauveyam evam paramparapraptam.
Basically He says that the knowledge is coming down like that and then the knowledge is lost. Now Krishna doesn’t mention for how long the knowledge has been lost. He says, therefore I am giving you this knowledge once again.
So the idea is that Krishna is the, when things become very emergency, Krishna may Himself descend and He may set things right. But at other times, it is that Krishna lets, Krishna creates within the material world itself systems by which people can be protected. So like there were Kshatriya kings who were virtuous, who were dharmic and they would protect dharma.
In Kali Yuga, the system that He has provided is Harinam Sankirtan. So by that also people can be purified. But it may take, but they may have to in this life, bear the troubles because of other people who have misunderstandings.
So that is just a part of the way material world is. So at the end of Kali Yuga, Krishna will come as Kalki and He will save the world. He will start Sthiva.
But the principle of the Lord wanting to get all souls to Him, that should not be confused with the idea that everything here is going to be perfect if we are sheltered in the shelter of the Lord. This world is always a broken place, whether we are devotees or we are non-devotees and things will go wrong, dharmically wrong also over here. So some of such wrong things, one of such wrong things is that there is a terrible cloud out there.
So we do our part according to our Brahman, Kshatriya, whatever nature we have. But along with that, we focus on our practice of bhakti and Krishna according to His plan will change some things.