FOOD FOR THOUGHT
For 25-year-old Raghav Venkatesh, the sight of a fisherman pulling out an eel and cutting its body with a scalpel after it was used as fish bait, deeply moved him, “That moment just got me thinking of how we treat animals in general and we share this planet with eight billion other species and yet we live as the only superior species,” he rues. Raghav is the former Mumbai head of The Vegan India movement, a community of young enthusiasts and change makers that come together from various cities across the country to contribute to this effort. For him, veganism is a chance to reimagine what the world could look like, “I want to align my actions with my belief. In terms of social change and being inclusive of all species of the planet and not just human beings. They all have the capacity for suffering just as we do. On one hand, we are compassionate to dogs and cats but not so much to a chicken. It’s cultural conditioning. And for me, veganism is just breaking down this conditioning and unlearning and trying to be compassionate to all species irrespective of how they look and their characteristics,” he says.
VEGANISH VS SPECIESISM
Another word for discrimination among animals is called Speciesism and is used a lot in the vegan circles informs Raghav, “It basically means discrimination on the basis of species, with the belief that the human species is the most superior. All hierarchies are bad and it’s the same here.” The community organises various events to promote their beliefs and conducts vegan potlucks and does outdoor demonstrations to show undercover videos of various
atrocities on animals. They also set up VR sets in college festivals to actually help people see from the animal's perspective. “We want people to start asking questions, they have become too comfortable with the way things are,” he says.
Sneha Poojary shares the same ideology and wanted to break free from this bias towards animals. She started Aistra, a vegan pet food website that sup- plies top-quality imported pet food across India. “Before being vegan, I was an animal rescuer. I used to feed chicken to my dog and back then, it made sense to me because I cared more about the dog. But then I started noticing this discrimination and bias. In a natural state, it’s fine if an animal eats an animal, but I don’t get to decide who gets to live and who gets to die. In a state where I am making choices, I need to make ethical choices for both the animals,” says Sneha. But her idea might not go down well with some, who believe that veganism is a choice that must not be thrust upon an animal, “Generally animals cannot be vegan and it’s right because veganism is a philosophy and it can’t be taught to animals. But the food is nutritionally complete and it’s in fact easily digestible and pro-biotic.
The vegan pet food that we import has been tried and tested by animal nutritionists. So it’s a planned diet,” says Sneha. While earlier taurine, which is an essential amino acid in cats had to be extracted from bovines, today taurine is made in laboratories and is vegan, “So people say cats will not get taurine from plants, but as of today they do and most of the taurine is vegan. For dogs, there are hypoallergenic dog foods. No dairy no beef and no wheat. These three are the most allergens that dogs get so its good for skins. We even have non-vegetarian customers who buy these products from us because it's a hypoallergenic product, she says. While veganism is credited with health, weight loss, glowing skin and shiny hair. Going vegan is really about paying respect to all the creatures that come from nature says Subah Jain, a vegan and Health Educator, “It’s about realising that animals feel afraid, cold, unhappy and hungry, just like we do. It’s about defying years of cultural programming and doing what each one of us, in our heart, knows is right. It’s about putting our ‘eco’ above our ‘ego’. It’s about seeing our stomach as a garden, not a graveyard. Sure, you have to give up some things, but what you gain is far greater than what you give up. If you do it right, veganism is not a limitation in any way; it’s an expansion of your love, and your belief in justice for all.”