A lot of Woke Hindus have internalised what someone rightly termed as Vegan vigilantism. This made me look into the activist drivers of the phenomenon. Given that vegetarianism has a large acceptance in India, the language which is being used and the arguments that are made (gnosis) to encourage the praxis is generally left uninspected.

Or it maybe very well be the case that people are woke enough to buy into rage for veganism without any encouragement. Most of the western vegan tilt is largely drawn from two areas of what is called Cultural Studies–Vegan Studies and Critical Animal Studies. The eco-feminist movements etc gained a solid philosophical foundation with the arrival of Peter Singer, the Princeton Philosopher who popularised the idea of speciesm in his book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals.

But Vegan Studies becomes a thing on the campuses with the seminal work of one Carol J Adams called The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. I am attaching some screenshots from the book so that we see how convoluted the modern rage against the meat is. Racism/Sexism/Patriarchy is generously invoked to advocate for the egalitarian vegetables.

Then came the field of Critical Animal Studies (CAS), the latest frontier of the Critical Theory which is focused on the “exploitative relationship” between man and animal ( Critical Theories always need an exploiter and an exploited. Refer “problematise”). While Singer’s criticism of Animal exploitation is largely Utilitarian (so classic western in the philosophical sense), CAS tends to erode the distinction between human and animals. And just like its predecessor, aka Vegan Studies, tends to mix racism in it. This article from Psychology Today is a good example of how CAS advicated think: https://www.psychologytoday.com/…/we-should-watch-our…

The article states:

Recent studies in the intersectionality of oppressed people and animals have shown how similarly marginalized humans are treated to non-human animals. Animaladies, edited by Lori Gruen and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, discusses the similarities between the way women are oppressed by society and how animals are dismissed, bullied and oppressed by society. Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question by Bénédicte Boisseron takes a critical race theory perspective on both the oppression of Black and Brown people and the oppression of non-human animals and how this treatment of both affects the relationship between the two groups.

To combat the tyranny of speciesism, we must, we are told, flatten the distinctions—eradicate them, really—between human and “non-human animals.” We must realize the equality of value between the two species. We must consider the mutual benefit of both at all times. Compitus suggests, therefore, that we cleanse our language of our own narcissism and “Victorian Era terms like ‘master’ and ‘owner’ and ‘leader’ and instead speak to the mutual respect in this relationship.”

The language of the author is very structuralist and seems inspired from Jacques Derrida. CAS is not all convoluted language and pseudo-realities. Just like the Marxian methods are retained in all Critical Theories, so is the case is with CAS too. The guiding principles of CAS (attached as the last photograph) talks of liberation. Liberation in all Woke movements is newspeak for violence and warfare.

Ten Principles of CAS (Source: Wikipedia)

So, dear woke Hindus, I, as a strict vegetarian, beseech you to investigate the driving force of your pontification. More often than not, cool T Shirt slogans have a lot of deracinating political ideas hidden underneath.

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