I am a vegan. I've been a vegan for about 3 years now. I was a vegetarian for 5 years before that, and apart from 8 years of half-assedly including sheek kebab and shavarma rolls in my diet because of convenience, I was a vegetarian since birth. I went back to vegetarianism with a considerable sense of relief and I gladly went vegan when I realised that the dairy industry is just as cruel and exploitative as the meat industry. I am as vegan as I can manage to be: no leather, no honey, no other animal products if I can help it and am aware. Of course, it's amazing the things they will sneak animal products into.
I was born into a Tamil Brahmin Hindu family. Many, but not all, upper-caste Hindu communities are vegetarian. Most Hindus claim to venerate the cow as a sort of mother-symbol. I have been accused of being vegan just because that is a caste characteristic, and I have been told I can afford to be a vegan because of my financial status. So I'd like it to make it very clear that my veganism is a personal, ethical decision. It's about compassion, not caste, class, health or religion. For the record I am an atheist and I reject the concept of caste. I never had my thread ceremony, so I have not been initiated into being proper Brahmin. And unsurprisingly it isn't expensive at all to eat a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet in India.
Now here's something else about me: politically I lean left/anarchist and socially I am a liberal. That means I think you should be free to do anything that does not harm another person. As a vegan I would like to extend that to being free to do anything that does not harm another living thing. But I do believe that a country's laws are a human construct and need to reflect interhuman issues first. If that makes me a worse vegan, I understand your perspective and readily admit I am not a perfect anything.
So.
A state government in India has banned beef, as an extension of the fetish around the cow as a mother figure. For some reason, sheep, goats, fowl and presumably any other creature a person may choose to eat simply aren't that sacred or deserving of compassion. A lot of my fellow vegans supported this ban. I didn't, and don't. Because it is meaningless. It is vote bank politics, to do with pandering to a core Hindu community and in the process further alienating minorities such as Muslims and Christians and the many Hindu communities that do allow the consumption of beef.
Besides, it still doesn't address the horrors of the dairy industry, which I mentioned earlier. It still doesn't change the fact that India is a beef exporter of mammoth proportions. So I oppose the beef ban. But you won't see me handing out beef snacks like the vegetarian, headline-hungry literary somebody Girish Karnad.
I am horrified by the Dadri atrocity, where a man accused of eating beef was lynched by a mob. I don't understand how you can oppose killing one living being and enforce your view by killing another. In fact, I think this episode is symptomatic. Because what we have here is a Hindu mob killing a Muslim man. The beef ban has nothing to do with animal welfare, nothing to do with compassion. It is about clinging to sentimental, religious notions and taking a stand against those who are not pure Hindu upper caste cow-worshippers.
I would support sweeping reforms to the dairy and meat industries in India. I would support campaigning to reduce and eventually eliminate meat from our national diet. But by taking choice away from people and helping foster an environment where people can be killed for their dietary choices, the political powers that be have created a situation where my cause, compassion and veganism, is actually being hurt. People who might have been allies, or sympathisers, now proudly fly the flag of meat eating as a thumbed nose at Brahmins, saffronists and bigots. The writer Temsula Ao went so far as to say she doesn't see why meat eaters have to empathise with vegetarians. This is the fallout of the Hindutva crusade against beef. People are unwilling to empathise with each other, nevermind the animals who live in misery and die in horrific pain so that we can have things to eat and wear and use.
To reduce it all down to something more pithy, I will quote a recent status update I made on facebook: I support your right to eat whatever the fuck you want to. I am not obliged to support you eating meat. But I will oppose anyone who tries to impose their dietary fetishes on you.
And once you accept that, I'd love to have a conversation with you about why you should go vegan. Not because I'm a Hindu, or a Brahmin, or middle-class. But because I believe in kindness and compassion and I suspect you do too, if you think about it.
If you liked this article, please consider showing your appreciation. My PayPal ID is jayaprakash@gmail.com but be sure to specify that you are sending me a professional payment because PayPal is not allowed to process personal transfers to people in India.
I was born into a Tamil Brahmin Hindu family. Many, but not all, upper-caste Hindu communities are vegetarian. Most Hindus claim to venerate the cow as a sort of mother-symbol. I have been accused of being vegan just because that is a caste characteristic, and I have been told I can afford to be a vegan because of my financial status. So I'd like it to make it very clear that my veganism is a personal, ethical decision. It's about compassion, not caste, class, health or religion. For the record I am an atheist and I reject the concept of caste. I never had my thread ceremony, so I have not been initiated into being proper Brahmin. And unsurprisingly it isn't expensive at all to eat a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet in India.
Now here's something else about me: politically I lean left/anarchist and socially I am a liberal. That means I think you should be free to do anything that does not harm another person. As a vegan I would like to extend that to being free to do anything that does not harm another living thing. But I do believe that a country's laws are a human construct and need to reflect interhuman issues first. If that makes me a worse vegan, I understand your perspective and readily admit I am not a perfect anything.
So.
A state government in India has banned beef, as an extension of the fetish around the cow as a mother figure. For some reason, sheep, goats, fowl and presumably any other creature a person may choose to eat simply aren't that sacred or deserving of compassion. A lot of my fellow vegans supported this ban. I didn't, and don't. Because it is meaningless. It is vote bank politics, to do with pandering to a core Hindu community and in the process further alienating minorities such as Muslims and Christians and the many Hindu communities that do allow the consumption of beef.
Besides, it still doesn't address the horrors of the dairy industry, which I mentioned earlier. It still doesn't change the fact that India is a beef exporter of mammoth proportions. So I oppose the beef ban. But you won't see me handing out beef snacks like the vegetarian, headline-hungry literary somebody Girish Karnad.
I am horrified by the Dadri atrocity, where a man accused of eating beef was lynched by a mob. I don't understand how you can oppose killing one living being and enforce your view by killing another. In fact, I think this episode is symptomatic. Because what we have here is a Hindu mob killing a Muslim man. The beef ban has nothing to do with animal welfare, nothing to do with compassion. It is about clinging to sentimental, religious notions and taking a stand against those who are not pure Hindu upper caste cow-worshippers.
I would support sweeping reforms to the dairy and meat industries in India. I would support campaigning to reduce and eventually eliminate meat from our national diet. But by taking choice away from people and helping foster an environment where people can be killed for their dietary choices, the political powers that be have created a situation where my cause, compassion and veganism, is actually being hurt. People who might have been allies, or sympathisers, now proudly fly the flag of meat eating as a thumbed nose at Brahmins, saffronists and bigots. The writer Temsula Ao went so far as to say she doesn't see why meat eaters have to empathise with vegetarians. This is the fallout of the Hindutva crusade against beef. People are unwilling to empathise with each other, nevermind the animals who live in misery and die in horrific pain so that we can have things to eat and wear and use.
To reduce it all down to something more pithy, I will quote a recent status update I made on facebook: I support your right to eat whatever the fuck you want to. I am not obliged to support you eating meat. But I will oppose anyone who tries to impose their dietary fetishes on you.
And once you accept that, I'd love to have a conversation with you about why you should go vegan. Not because I'm a Hindu, or a Brahmin, or middle-class. But because I believe in kindness and compassion and I suspect you do too, if you think about it.
If you liked this article, please consider showing your appreciation. My PayPal ID is jayaprakash@gmail.com but be sure to specify that you are sending me a professional payment because PayPal is not allowed to process personal transfers to people in India.
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