From: wheeler@SUPER.ORG (Ferrell S. Wheeler)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Gandhi's Vegetarianism
Date: 1 Oct 92 14:48:56 GMT


October 2nd is Gandhi's birthday....



	 		     Vegetarianism:
			The Road to Satyagraha

                          by Arun M. Sannuti 


       "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be
        measured by the way in which its animals are treated."
                                     -- Mahatma Gandhi.


The world remembers Mohandas K. Gandhi as a great man, who taught the
power of peace.  Without this message, Gandhi would have just been
another revolutionary, just another nationalist, in a country that was
struggling to throw off the rule of a foreign nation.  Where did
Gandhi discover this message?  How was he able to learn his method
when all the other nationalists were learning to fight?  He learned it
one step at a time, and as one of his first steps, he became a true
vegetarian, someone who chose vegetarianism because of beliefs and
morals, not due simply to a cultural heritage.

Vegetarianism is rooted in Indian culture and religion as a part of
the doctrine of ahimsa, which the Vedas espouse and which Gandhi later
appropriated for his own Satyagrahi movement.  Ahimsa, in the Vedic
tradition, means "having no ill feeling for any living being, in all
manners possible and for all times ... it should be the desired goal
of all seekers."(1) The Laws of Manu, one of the sacred texts of the
Hinduism, states that "Without the killing of living beings, meat
cannot be made available, and since killing is contrary to the
principles of ahimsa, one must give up eating meat."(2) Jainism, which
is prominent in Gandhi's home state of Gujarat, espouses strict
vegetarianism and restraint from the use of any products made from the
slaughter of animals.  Vegetarianism pervades the life of all Indians,
for even those who do not entirely believe in the religious reasons
for avoiding meat, live in a culture where, due to the economics of
meat-eating, vegetarianism is a part of life.  In India, meat is
expensive, a luxury which is not part of the normal lifestyle, and
thus difficult to find.  Gandhi, when explaining the vegetarian
practices of India to his vegetarian friends in England, put it this
way:

"In practice, almost all the Indians are vegetarians.  Some are so
voluntarily, and others compulsorily.  The latter, though always
willing to take, are yet too poor to buy meat.  This statement will be
borne out by the fact that there are thousands in India who have to
live on one pice a day.  These live on bread and salt."(3)

This was the culture into which Gandhi was born.  Some Indians wanted
to discard the old traditions and thus espoused meat-eating, since
they believed that the ancient customs made Indians weak and allowed
the British to conquer and rule them.  Since Britons ate meat, some
Indian nationalists pounced on vegetarianism as a deleterious habit.
Gandhi's childhood friend, the "tragedy" in his life, Sheik Mehtab
believed in the powers of meat-eating.  He told the young Gandhi:

"We are a weak people because we do not eat meat.  The English are
able to rule over us, because they are meat-eaters.  You know how
hardy I am, and how great a runner too.  It is because I am a
meat-eater.  Meat- eaters do not have boils or tumours, and even if
they sometimes happen to have any, these heal quickly.  Our teachers
and other distinguished people who eat meat are no fools.  They know
its virtues.  You should do likewise.  There is nothing like trying.
Try, and see what strength it gives."(4)

Mehtab also argued that meat-eating would cure Gandhi's other
problems, including his irrational fear of the dark.  Gandhi observed
that both Mehtab and Gandhi's brother, also a meat-eater, possessed
greater physically strength and athletic ability than himself.  Gandhi
saw indications that meat-eating produced stronger and more courageous
men, not only in the British culture, but in India as well. The
Kshatriyas, the warrior caste of India, had always eaten meat, and it
was generally thought that their diet was one of the sources of their
strength.(5) With these arguments, Mehtab eventually convinced Gandhi,
well hidden from his parents, to eat meat.  At first, Gandhi abhorred
it.  "The goat's meat was as tough as leather.  I simply could not eat
it.  I was sick and had to leave off eating."(6) However, now that
Mehtab knew that Gandhi was convinced of the benefits of eating meat,
he would surrender.  At extraordinary expense, he managed to get a
room in a restaurant and have meat expertly prepared by a trained
chef.  After eating meat in this manner, hidden from his parents,
Gandhi "became a relisher of meat- dishes, if not the meat itself."(7)
Yet this came at a price for the painfully honest young Gandhi.  He
knew that every time he ate meat, he broke an implicit promise to his
parents, especially his mother, who would have regarded her youngest
son's meat-eating with horror.  Gandhi vowed to give up meat, though
he thought at the time, as he said in his autobiography, that "it is
essential to eat meat, and also essential to take up food 'reform' in
the country."  He tempered his decision by promising himself that
"when they are no more and I have found my freedom, I will eat meat
openly, but until that moment arrives, I will abstain from it."(8)
Thus, Gandhi based his decision not on the morals or ideals of
vegetarianism, but on his desire to honor his parents.  Gandhi, by his
own admission, was not a true vegetarian.  Only his respect for his
parents forced him to remain a vegetarian.  Gandhi believed in eating
meat, because he believed that only by fighting, through physical
strength, would his country be free.

So, where did Gandhi learn his vegetarianism?  From his descriptions
of his mother, one can conclude that religion and its culinary aspects
occupied a very important portion of her life.  Gandhi remembered in
his autobiography, "The outstanding impression of my mother has let on
my memory is that of saintliness...She would take the hardest vows and
keep them without flinching."(9) He goes on to mention her devotion to
God through fasting.  Fasting was at the core of her religious life.
Yearly, she would fast during Chaturmas, and she often subjected
herself to fasting more rigorous than was required by religion or
tradition.  No doubt, this tradition of renunciation of culinary
pleasure included her vegetarianism, though her upbringing was
probably such that she never consciously thought of vegetarianism as a
sacrifice.  Just as his father's proclivity for carnal pleasure and
Gandhi's fundamental disrespect for that aspect of his father's
psyche, led to brahmacharya, the renunciation of sexual activity,
Gandhi's love for his mother and his respect for her fasting
capabilities led to his realization that moral strength can be
achieved through vegetarianism and fasting.

In other ways, Gandhi's true vegetarianism was implicitly tied with
his feelings for his mother.  As he prepared to study for his law
degree in England, others warned him repeatedly that he would end up
eating meat, since it was required of those living in England.  His
mother did not want her son to become a meat-eater, and forced a vow
from him; under the administration of a Jain monk, Gandhi vowed to his
mother that he would not touch wine, women or meat, and thus secured
her permission to go to England.  Without this oath, Gandhi might not
have ever become a true vegetarian.  En route and within England, he
had to refuse to eat meat repeatedly.  He was told, "It is all very
well so far but you will have to revise your decision in the Bay of
Biscay.  And it is so cold in England that one cannot possibly live
there without meat."(10) When he finally reached England, he
discovered the difficulty of continuing the practice of vegetarianism.
His landladies, who agreed to provide board as well as housing, did
not know what to cook except for boiled vegetables and bread; he
described himself as starving at times.  Although he had eaten meat
previously and considered it a good substance, he stuck to his vow.
As he once tearfully told a friend who was badgering him to eat meat,
"I also know that you are telling me again and again about [eating
meat] because your feel for me.  But I am helpless.  A vow is a vow.
It cannot be broken."(11)

As Erikson explains, the vow represented not simply a promise to
Gandhi's mother, but a connection to her, and to his motherland and
mother-religion.  As long as Gandhi held to his vow, he could escape
his homesickness, since he was linked to home through his vow to his
mother.  Thus, he continually challenged his female associates to help
him keep his vow, forcing them to become vicariously his mother, while
subtly demanding his male associates to play the part of Mehtab and
attempt to convince him to eat meat.(12) In all of his descriptions of
England, men were the ones who attacked his vegetarian practices, and
women, even meat- eating ones, who tried to support him, at least in
some small way.  When he returned from England to discover that his
mother had died during his absence, his vegetarianism became a
permanent connection to her and her memory.  No longer could he think
of eating meat, even though his parents were "no more" and he had
found his "freedom."

But Gandhi could not think of eating meat for a more basic reason than
an ethereal connection with his mother.  In England he received a
revelation, which helped form his vision of the Satyagrahi movement.
As Gandhi indicated in the chapter of his autobiography entitled "My
choice," his lifelong vegetarianism did not result from his mother's
feelings on the matter; rather, he made a moral decision to keep the
practice of vegetarianism.  This decision was a necessary change in
his life, for if he were simply to be a vegetarian due to his mother's
influence, he would not have been a person capable of his own choices.
As Erikson posits, "the future Satyagrahi had to learn to choose
actively and affirmatively what not to do- an ethical capacity not to
be confused with the moralistic inability to break a
prohibition."(13)

And choose he did.  Even though Gandhi resisted the temptation to
break his vow, he still faced the practical problem of finding food
for himself.  After hearing of vegetarian restaurants in the city from
his landlady, he searched for one, and when his quest was over, he
said, "The sight of it filled me with the same joy that a child feels
on getting a thing after its own heart."(14) This feeling prophesied
the change of heart he was about to experience.  In the restaurant, he
bought a copy of Salt's _Plea_for_Vegetarianism_(*), which he read cover to
cover.  The book discussed the moral reasons for being a vegetarian -
the inherent violence present in the eating of meat, and the non-
violence that could be achieved from abstaining from it.  No longer
was Gandhi a vegetarian wishing he were a meat-eater.  "The choice was
now made in favour of vegetarianism, the spread of which henceforward
became my mission."(15) Gandhi had decided that ahimsa was his goal.
It became the core of his Satyagrahi movement, and the core of his
life.

Gandhi had desired meat because he thought that it would provide the
strength that Indians would need that type of strength to overcome the
rule of the British.  Yet with his choice for vegetarianism, he
realized there are other sources of strength - satyagraha, which had
the power to end the British raj, while physical strength alone would
have been defeated.  After his first step towards this moral strength,
he started to study Christianity, Hinduism and the other religions of
the world. As he soon found through his studies, "renunciation [is]
the highest form of religion."(16) Renunciation of pleasure became his
highest goal, and he delighted in the pursuit of this goal as an
origin of satyagraha.  Vegetarianism was his first source of this new
force, since it was a type of self-control, and fasting, as an
extension of vegetarianism, later became the ultimate symbol of his
self-control.

Once Gandhi abandoned of his idea that abstinence from meat made India
weak, he realized some of the truths about his country, which he had
been blinded from before.  In an article for The Vegetarian, the
newsletter of the Vegetarian Society in England, he wrote of other
reasons why the British could conquer India and hold it so easily,
arguing against his own previous theories:

"One of the most important reasons, if not the most important one, is
the wretched custom of infant marriages and its attendant evils.
Generally, children when they reach the great age of nine are burdened
with the fetters of married life ...  Will not these marriages tell
upon the strongest constitutions?  Now fancy how weak the progeny of
such marriages must be."(17)

This freedom allowed him to see the other social ills that were
stripping the nation of India of its strengths, problems that he had
not noticed before, including the caste system.  It also allowed him
to reverse around the traditional western definition of strength,
turning it into the definition that made his movement so powerful.
Meat- eating was a type of aggression, which Gandhi once thought was
the only key to mastery.  After becoming a true vegetarian, and thus
discovering the ideas of ahimsa, he realized that aggression is a path
to mastery for those without self- control.  Ahimsa, non-violence, is
the path to mastery for those with self-control.  The idea of
renunciation, also part of the revelation that brought him to
vegetarianism, eventually brought him to another major philosophy in
his life, that of brahmacharya.  Gandhi's choice to become vegetarian
started him on the road towards ahimsa, renunciation, and finally,
satyagraha itself.  Without it, he would have never realized the power
of morality and never would have become the Mahatma.

(1)Patanjali Yoga Sutras, 2.30, as quoted in Steven Rosen, Food for
the Spirit; Vegetarianism and the World Religions, (New York, Bala
Books,1987) p.  72.

(2)Quoted in Rosen, p. 72

(3)Quoted in Erik H. Erikson, Gandhi's Truth, (New York, W.W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1969) p.  151.

(4)Quoted in Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography, Trans. Mahadev Desai,
(New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1983) p. 17.

(5)Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph, Gandhi, The
Traditional Roots of Charisma, (Chicago, The University of Chicago
Press, 1983) p.  23.

(6)Gandhi, p. 19.

(7)Ibid.

(8)Ibid. p 20.

(9)Ibid. p. 2.

(10)Ibid. p. 38.

(11)Ibid. p. 42.

(12)Erikson, p. 142-145.

(13)Ibid., p. 144.

(14)Gandhi, p. 43.

(15)Ibid.

(16)Ibid. p. 60.

(17)Quoted in Erikson, p. 150.

(*) Henry Salt was an English philosopher who published the now
    classic book _Animals' Rights: In Relation to Social Progress_
    in 1892.