Quote:
Originally Posted by RHYMEFESTkillah
I highly doubt that India is a big exporter of cow hide, considering the dominant religion is Hinduisn which views cows as sacred...
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Well, that's only really (female) cows, rather than bulls which some Hindus are happy to kill for leather. Also, in many areas of India, not killing cows is a practical thing, rather than religious as live cows produce milk. For some people its fine to use the remains of a dead cow for what you need. Also, something like 15% of the population is Muslim, who have no religious affinity for the cow, plus a lot of sikhs and christians. As the Indian state is secular and areas like the north-west are prodiminently muslim/sikh and Kerala is mostly Christian, in these parts of the country at least they would have a certain freedom to do what they want with cows.
In India I bought two pairs of leather shoes and a leather jacket, all made in India and definitely of some kind of leather (I was told it was cow). Also, I was told that the next town from where I stayed was a 'big leather producing town', so I think there is a lot of cow (well, bull probably) hide production going on there... and that was in Tamil Nadu which is a very Hindu area.