Soap, Face Pack & Cleaning Liquids – All The Cow Dung Products You Can Buy In India

The internet can be a dark and mysterious place – like an old trunk put away in some dingy corner of the storeroom, only to be opened years and sometimes decades later — you’d chance upon things you would never expect. As poetic as this comparison sounds, today I came across one such unexpected treasure — unexpected and disgustingly amusing. India’s obsession with all-things-cow is deeper than I expected.

Senseless violence, religious uproar and parking themselves in the middle of the road, making commuters manoeuvre around them, cows may be a tad entitled but they’re contributing more than we know. It’s not just their milk and we already know about India’s odd obsession with cow urine. It turns out that even their faeces are being hailed as supreme. Cow dung cakes aside, products, including beauty products made from cow dung are abundant and easily available on the internet for us to buy.

Who would have thought that cow dung would be considered a beautician’s or aesthetically pleasing option for your home – well, turns out you can buy lamps and wall hangings made from cow dung to spruce up your interiors as well as shampoos, face packs, soaps and dish cleaning liquids too. Counter-productivity is a legitimate concern when you first hear of these hygiene products made from faecal matter, but well, the only way to know if they are effective is to use them.

“Cow urine and dung can give eternal beauty,” claims the Gauseva Board. “Some records suggest that Cleopatra used to bathe in cow milk to get eternal beauty. We want women to understand the benefits of cow milk, urine and dung to get such beauty instead of damaging their skin by using artificial beauty products made of harmful chemicals,” said Vallabh Kathiria, chairman of the Gujarat Gauseva and Gauchar Vikas Board, in an interview with The Indian Express. Gaumutra or cow urine is believed to have medicinal properties that can heal about 108 different diseases.

Deen Dayal Dham, an organisation based out of Mathura, that is backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is said to launch a range of products made from cow waste. This initiative was started with the intention of generating jobs for the locals of Mathura and subsequently helping them become financially independent. The range of products include shampoos, face packs, toothpaste and tonics. Cow waste is a popular choice for raw material even for Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurved, which offers products such as Godhan Ark, Sanjivani Vati, Panchgavya Soap, Kayakalp Oil and Shudhi Phenyl – all of which contain Panchagavya, which means a mixture of five ‘cow products’, including urine and dung.

The most startling one for me was the incense sticks made of cow dung. If someone has managed to turn cow poop (a word synonymous to one of the most unpleasant odours we encounter) into a product that not only smells tolerable but is used to mask other bad odours, well, then, it would be a big lesson on not judging a book by its cover, or in this case, its point of origin... or would it be exit?

If you liked this, we suggest you read:

What Happens To Other Animals When Cows Are All We Care About?

“You Don’t Decide What We Eat” - Kerala Hosts ‘Beef Fests’ Protesting New Ban

5000 Years Later, India Is Still Obsessed With Cow Urine