My proposed Ph.D. research will address how the cow protection movements in colonial India affected the Mahars, the largest untouchable caste of western India in the period from the 1880s to the 1920s. My study will investigate where does the untouchable figure in histories of cow protection, what attending to this history adds to our understanding of the Mahar emancipation movement as well as relations between Mahars and the upper castes and the British in colonial India.