Dear Non Vegetarian protagonists

I am happy that yesterdays post in my blog has sparked a debate. My erstwhile ICICI Bank colleague Vinod Reddy has posted a comment justifying eating non vegetarian food. I was in a hurry yesterday evening, so I decided I would answer it today.

Meanwhile, my erstwhile co-tenant and good friend Ritesh has posted a counter argument to Vinod's post. I just have couple of things to clarify. For better understanding please read those two comments before you read this.

The purpose of my post was not to debate whether one should have vegetarian food or not. I am very sure that every human being can eat anything that satisfies their gastronomic urges to astronomical proportions. I was only referring to what disciples of ISKON or people who follow Vaishnava dharma eat.

Secondly, I don't know from where you have read or picked up Sathwik, Manasik etc references to our fingers, but please remember that there are so many interpreters who are very liberal in their interpretations of scriptures which ISKON doesn't necessarily agree with. You should actually read their, Bhagavatgeetha and Srimad Bhagavatham to understand this. They firmly believe that most of the commentaries on scriptures available in book forms are "liberal" and "stretched" interpretations and that is why they named their Bhagavatgeetha as "Bhagavatgeetha as it is".

Your point that it might be discovered at a later point of time that plants do have emotions, reactions, pain and suffering is far fetched and has already been answered by Ritesh. I would just like to add one point, although all of ISKON's principles are scientific and based on sound logic, it is primarily a religious organization and accepts whatever the Godhead has stated in scriptures as thumb rule. The logic why it is acceptable to eat fruits, vegetables is that, God Himself has stated in Bhagavtgeetha that they can be offered to him before they are consumed by humans, hence the question of giving them pain while chopping doesn't arise.

Finally, not eating non-vegetarian food doesn't create ecological imbalance, but instead eating non-vegetarian food creates it. The cattle, sheep or poultry that is being bred for the purpose of slaughtering for human consumption at a later point of time consume vegetation, which is getting exhausted very quickly. Just a small example, the sheep that you breed, consumes 24 full trees before it is killed for its meat. Doesn't that cause imbalance?

Here are two excellent articles by Kurma Dasa about this topic

http://www.kurma.net/essays/e14.html

http://www.kurma.net/faq/ask60.html

In one of the passages I referred to the logic in ISKON principles. I would like to quote one logical argument that ISKON put forth to challenge the concept of evolution of man. In the book "Back to Godhead" His holiness Srila Prabhupada denies to agree that man evolved out of a monkey. His point is simple, if man were to evolve from a monkey, the monkey should have become extinct, but it hasn't.