Today I want to speak
my mind, after a long time of silence, after a long time of listening to
reasons that were so baseless that I wanted to remind the speaker, “Hey, at
least till you possess a human body and a human conscience and a developed
mind, USE THEM!!”. Today I want to ask you, O Great species, the one with a
brain that is unparalleled on earth, the best of 8.7 million species, I want to
ask you to justify not to me but to yourself the act of crime that you so
consciously do that now you do not even think it qualifies as a crime anymore!
I speak to you
directly; the connoisseurs of non-vegetarian food, the propagators and the
torch bearers of this class who very wittingly give reasons and justifications
that even the vegetarian “Birbal” of today might be sidelined in front of your
confident explanations. I speak to the humans who taste it out of curiosity, I
speak to those who belong to “tasted-did not like-developing taste now”
category, I speak to those animal-loving, soft-hearted people who still could
not live without non-vegetarian food, I speak to the educated who even studied
Environmental education for years together and I speak to the race of
Homo-sapiens at large.
I saw many instances
with my own eyes from all above categories and I want to ask you simple
questions.
First, I want to ask
the ones who taste non-veg out of curiosity. Will you go and kill someone
tomorrow out of curiosity? If a gun is handed to you, will you shoot it at the
next person you see just to check the results? Will you tomorrow just pick up a
rat kill and taste it because you have never tasted it before, because you were
curious?
I ask the people who,
guess what, did not like the taste but are now trying to develop it! Gracious
Lord! Are you living in Siberia where the only vegetation if at all there is,
is moss? Is this feat associated with a life-time achievement award? What kind
of gory- prestige is associated with this conquest?
And then there are
those animal loving soft hearted people whose vegetarian friends when try to
show them horrifying videos about how the animals are mercilessly tortured to
death using our high-fi technology so brutally put to use, the animal farms
where animals are made to drip their bloods till they die just to make meat
“tastier” on your platter while the other victims, drenched, standing in the
pool of blood are waiting for their turns, where they are poked with injections
just to make them puffier and what not tactics to get them to charge you and
make you appreciate the Humans for their honest efforts! I do not need to tell
you the horrifying stories, for in the age of internet and social media, if you do not still know, I pity you and can just pray that you survive!
The reason of people from this category is flawless!! Quoting them:
"we know if we watch the video from PETA(People for the ethical
treatment of animals), we would leave eating non-veg AND that is why we do
not watch!" Hilarious isn’t it? It is like they are mocking the Gods of
heaven for giving them the capability to think, to judge, to love! They are
just stopping themselves with full energy so that somehow somewhere someone
should not make them do the right thing!
And finally there are
those intellectual non-vegetarians who proudly not only reason but also look down
upon the vegetarians. These Pride of our species, these greatest minds of
our era, are the biggest
propagators of equality on earth. For according to them eating a plant and
eating animals are equally punishable. Oh wait! Actually eating plant is a bigger
crime as the vegetarians are the once responsible for all the pollution
due to deforestation. Well,
I imagine if they were to pet chickens what they will do? Grow
them out of sunlight, as they are not consumers of plants. And ya! They
would then eat them without any spices too, as they know spices too grow on
plants. Just fire and raw chicken is all they need to survive. According to
them they are doing animal control! Just imagine what impact so many
many chickens will have on the delicate balance of our ecosystem if they were
not there to consume them and maintain the balance of our ecosystem. God! Such ignorance is not
something I expect of this race. Such lame excuse for such blasphemous act
where there is so much suffering! Animals are captivated from birth, force fed,
pushed in cages till space is practically void, broken limbs and physical
deformities, metal suffering, beheading, bleeding out, boiled alive, skinned
alive, electrocuted, stunned with hammers, roasted alive AND THEN YOU GIVE THIS
EXPLANATION! THIS WILL NOT DO!
And all this for what!! “For taste, For taste!” I ask you, if tomorrow a criminal murders a kin of yours (God forbid) for his recreation, will it be justified just because it gave him the satisfaction? Will there be no punishment for that? Can your conscience pardon him for the reason that it was done for his liking and self-satisfaction?
There is this famous
argument: “You kill plants, we kill animals”. Let me remind you, the more
developed a species the more pain it suffers, the more complex its
nervous-hormonal system, the more evolved it is and the more sophisticated and
intelligent a being. That is why in all the religion consuming human flesh is
the biggest taboo because Homo-sapiens are the most evolved species. I am not
saying plants do not feel, that they are not alive and that we should live on
stones alone. I am saying there is a scale of evolution that goes from stones
to plants to animals and to humans. Evolution calls for survival and we can not
only survive but thrive on vegetarian food in most parts of the world where
majority of population lives. So why inflict so much pain unnecessarily?
Saint Kabir was a
vegetarian and was a firm advocate of "ahimsa". His
doctrine extends even to the non-destruction of flowers. “The life of the
living you strike dead and you say your slaughter makes it dedicated. It is
blood haunting you and those who taught you.” “They fast all day, and at night
they slaughter the cow; here murder, there devotion; how can this please God? O’
Kazi, by whose order doth thou use thy knife.” “When you declare the sacrifice
of an animal as your religion, what else is sin. If you regard yourself a
saint, whom will you call a butcher ?” “The goat eats grass and is skinned,
what will happen to those who eat (goat’s) meat? “Do not kill poor jiva, murder will
not be forgiven even if you hear a million Puranas. Among the fifty
commandments laid down for the followers of Kabir, vegetarianism is one of
them. For Kabir, moral life involves adherence to ahimsa.
If you believe in science only, believe Sir Isaac Newton for what he said: “Every action has
an equal and opposite reaction.”
Majority of people
cannot kill and eat meat themselves, they cannot see violence let alone do it.
There are God fearing, “Karma believing” people! You think just because your
hands were not responsible for killing the animals directly, you will not
suffer the reaction? According to you are the master-mind of murders who are
not snipers, free to go? What a joke this all is if you JUST THINK!
As it is, are the
impact of our actions less damaging to other species that we need to travel an
extra mile to prove our "superiority" over them? I would like to draw
in the example of a small bird, sparrow (more commonly known as Gauraiya) with
which I and my ancestors grew, the picture of which defined the term bird for
many children across India because whenever it used to hop into our verandah
the elders said: "Look, birdie!". And that bird is now endangered due
to, I think mostly unintentional consequences from our mobile revolution.
Quoting from a study: "The mobile towers emit a frequency of 900-1800MHz,
continuous penetration of EMR(electromagnetic radiation) through the body of
the bird would affect their nervous system and their navigational skills. They
become incapable of navigating and foraging. These birds which nest near towers
are found to leave the nest within one week." We nearly exterminated a
whole species without prior knowledge just for our ease, our so called necessity.
I do not think we need to force down our power on other organisms any more for
believe me by now, "They know too".
Our anatomy also does
not support non-vegetarian food. We have long intestines unlike all the
carnivores that have really short intestines. There are no known plant diseases
that infect humans and there are many deadly diseases that humans suffer today, that came from animals. There are scores of articles that claim that humans are not
carnivores.
So I thrust you to
think… Are humans today so weak that they cannot even control themselves from
inflicting pain on other organisms that too when there is no dire need or
necessity? The only species on the planet with a fully developed conscience,
having the capability to distinguish between right and wrong, possessing the
power of conscience that propelled our species to evolve, is that power so
blind that in the face of greed it is not able to make the right decisions? Are
we so degraded in our lust today that we cannot even forgo of our “taste satisfaction”
that comes at a cost of so many innocent lives?
We decry the act of
genocide, we decry the act of holocaust, we decry the acts of ethnic cleansing
and yet we keep our eyes closed when there are scores and scores of species
being tortured, murdered and made to serve not for our sustenance but for our
pleasure and we so consciously evolved species take pride in that action? This
kind of heinous act does not remotely attribute to Homo-sapiens! These actions
are more degradable than that of animals who do not even possess the power of
conscience. Having the capability and not using it or using it for negative
purpose definitely is lowlier than not possessing the capability at all!
________________________________________________________________________________
Some interesting
links and references:
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/77210/house-sparrow-listed-endangered-species.html
Interesting article, Suchi. I am a non-vegetarian though. I have a couple of questions. Is the context of this article only India or the world in general? Because, here in the US, in most of the popular restaurants, it is tough to find vegetarian food which satisfies one's hunger and is also as inexpensive as non-vegetarian food. Of course when cooking at home it is entirely a different matter.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, how is eating meat blasphemous? Do you believe that if a person eats meat, he/she is committing a sin and this would come back and haunt him/her at a later stage in life?
This article is not only limited to India, Suyash. This is applicable to most of the countries of the world where vegetation is easily supported and yet people have moved on to a non-vegetarian diet. US is the forth largest producer of wheat in the world and yet it is among the top consumers of meat in the world. This calls for a thought as to why is meat intake so high when clearly crops can be grown at a massive scale in US.
DeleteI agree it is difficult to find joints and food-outlets today that provide vegetarian food, but that is because of people's choice and not because of the food-outlet's owners choice. They are just concerned about their profit. The day people will start shunning non-veg and start asking for vegetarian food, these outlets will start showing off advertisements of being "Pure-veg". Let me share my experience. In India, nearly 5-6 years back vegetarians were in so much majority that it was difficult see on any restaurants menu a non-veg item (They were there but number of items were really low). And today the situation in many parts of the country is almost flipped! This is due to the shift in masses diet not because these joints were opened.
Also, it is not that non-vegetarian diet cannot be had. In very cold parts it is kind of essential to have high fatty diet in the form of meat and it cannot be avoided. But it should not be tolerated till it is essential and should be avoided as far as possible.
Here is a link http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-blogs/masters/wellness/food-for-healthy-life-three-categories-of-food?track=cntshem&sort=like that divides food into different categories. It was propounded by the spiritual leader P.R.Sarkar. He had mentioned that in colder regions, the mutative food comes in the category of sentient and static in mutative.
For your second question. The belief is that "every action has a consequence" that one has to bear. Be it good deeds or bad. It is a very fundamental of nature and not something that any religion needs to preach. Somewhere in the back of our minds everyone is aware that their actions will have consequences and they have to bear them. Killing is a wrong deed and that too killing for wrong unnecessary reason, is heights of wrongfulness. Obviously, one has to bear its consequences at some point.
I see. Your stand on my first question is interesting. Personally, I have been a vegetarian for a few years and would not mind having vegetarian food provided I do not face an extreme lack of choices and varieties (which is the case as of now in the US for vegetarians) when I am hungry.
DeleteComing to the second question, I am not sure if you're on the right track with the "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" school of thought. As correct and ethical it may sound, what I have concluded from my experiences is more similar to "every action punishable by laws devised by human beings does have an appropriate repercussion in most cases." I am sure that you are aware there are still so many crimes and offenses of various degrees that might escape the law and remain unpunished. My point is that life is unfair and not everyone who deserves to be punished is actually punished - be it by laws or by fate itself. You will come across so many people who did something wrong and never had to regret it in any way through their life. You will also come across people who hardly kept a foot wrong in their life and still had to deal with the worst possible sorrows because their fate would have it that way.
I believe that everyone is answerable for each and every action that one performs.
Delete"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."
I believe in "re-entrances" to this world till one consumes all ones "reactions both good and bad". I know I cannot prove it. (I believe science is still not that developed to prove this) but I do not think with everything so perfectly balanced in this world, one could get away without bearing the fruits of their actions. Simply stating, according to me if one is not able to reap the reactions of all his actions in one life, they are reborn in different forms till they are able to consume all the reactions.
I know it sounds fictional but I believe in that even though no scientific proof exists today.
I was harsh towards Humans specifically as one never knows when again one will get the human form, with human intellect and conscience. So if we have got this opportunity we should try to make the best use of it and not waste it in hands of lust and greed.
Point taken. I sincerely hope what you believe actually turns out to be true. Nothing would be better than having a fair world. By the way, you thought of quoting Shakespeare to reply to my comment. I am honored! :)
Delete