Dear Friends

Welcome to another issue of Ahimsa. The world is facing severe food shortage and the prospects of malnutrition and starvation in many parts of the world is very real. Already 25,000 people are dying every day from hunger related diseases. Human beings can avoid the impending catastrophe by giving up meat eating and abandoning biofuel production.

In 2007 the global wheat harvest was the highest ever, around 2.1 billion tonnes. However in the last two years the US has diverted 60 million tonnes of food to fuel. This year the global production of biofuels will consume almost 100 million tonnes of grain. It takes 232 kg of corn to fill a 50 litre car tank with ethanol, enough to feed a child for a year. Add to these 760 million tonnes of grain that will be diverted to feed animals being raised for meat this year and you begin to see why there is not enough food to feed the world. The demand for meat is growing in China and India and for India this is a tragedy of immense proportion.
Out of all the religions of the world, only the religions of India, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism have extended a hand of compassion to animals. Vegetarianism therefore is the very soul of the spiritual heritage of India. It is the sublime philosophy of Ahimsa that has nurtured and protected this ancient civilisation. The time has come for the saints and sages of India to stop the masses of India from taking to meat eating. The very survival of this ancient civilisation is at stake. Indians are rightly proud of their status as a rising power but without Ahimsa and Dharma India will lose a tradition which has survived tens of thousands of years. If all the saints and sages of India and all the religious denominations unite to promote vegetarianism, India will once again be the spiritual Guru of the world. Is anyone listening?

On a personal level I would like to remind everyone to promote vegetarianism at every opportunity. Convince your friends to give up meat, don’t go to meat restaurants even if they serve vegetarian food, avoid buying leather goods, and remember to protect the smallest insect.
Let us be the change we want in the world.

Nitin Mehta