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00:00why were so many vegetarians found in India since so long tell me why still
00:07till date the per capita meat consumption in India is among the lowest
00:12in the world why is it so hmm tell me why you have you have Pakistan and
00:19Bangladesh both carved out of India there the per capita meat consumption is
00:24four times that of India so what is it that has kept Indians relatively kind
00:32towards animals please tell me it is spirituality and it is spirituality alone
00:38that will that will help the cause of non-violence and animals so that has to
00:47be understood animal agriculture obviously is something extremely
00:56extremely problematic and your work captures it brilliantly you know in fact
01:06I have thought of calling it the third world war hmm because what do you what
01:13you call as a world war a spectacle of all-out destruction right total
01:19catastrophe that's what we call as the third world war the third world war is
01:23that after which no fourth one is possible so that's the condition we are in today
01:29are we not so yes and very few people are aware of the kind of damage that their
01:38food habits are causing to the earth that because you want meat therefore so much
01:45forest has to be cleared and that leads to extinction of so many species on a daily
01:51basis and when you when you clear away the forest and you grow these crops 70% of
01:57that is being used to feed the animals and that is also the cause of water
02:01shortage and the problem of global hunger there is enough food grain but most of
02:08that is being used to feed the animal because you want to consume the animals
02:12flesh and if you want to consume 1 kg of animal flesh that requires probably 20 kg
02:17of grain and and what 50 kg of water something like that round about depending
02:24on the kind of flesh so and then we talk of the the scarcity of fresh water we we say
02:33there's not enough food for everybody to eat the fact is much more than what is
02:39needed by the entire human population is being produced produced but fed to the
02:45cattle so that you can you can and when you are feeding that to the cattle and
02:49it's a massive cattle and it produces so much methane and that's where all the
02:54climate change is coming from and methane is 20 times more vicious in its
03:00greenhouse potential compared to the gas that is commonly blamed in the popular
03:05culture carbon dioxide nobody is talking of methane the fact is methane is the
03:11real culprit and if methane is a real culprit where is methane coming from yes a
03:17part of methane emission a big part is from from coal but there's hardly anything you
03:24can do about that rather it's much easier to work on animal agriculture we do not
03:34realize how much methane one buffalo being killed for its beef is producing and we
03:45keep talking of so many things the one central thing that we do not talk of is
03:50food food we take it as some kind of liberal prerogative I'll decide what is on my
04:00plate the vegan movement has to progress from a position of liberalism to a position of
04:16liberation right if veganism is about liberal values you know animals animals too must have
04:30their rights then somebody will turn around and say then I'll exercise my right to
04:37choose what I want to eat so you can't have your cup and eat it too right we have to
04:43realize that it is these very same liberal values that are at the core of the
04:51catastrophe we are witnessing you cannot turn the problem itself into a solution the
05:00problem is the problem and the solution has to be at a level higher than the
05:05problem only then it will succeed liberation is the answer liberation from what liberation from my own
05:15self liberation from my lust to consume and when I am liberated from that then we'll have the answer
05:24not only to the problem of violence towards animals but also to a lot of other problems why because
05:32fundamentally all the problems are originating from a common core and that common core is internal
05:39human ignorance if you can take care of internal human ignorance you'll take care of all the problems
05:44whereas if we have a piecemeal approach we want to address the problem of cruelty towards animals in an
05:52isolated way we will not succeed I feel a bit apprehensive and disappointed when I see the vegan community treating vegan
06:02veganism as an objective problem in itself no no when I say veganism I mean the the challenge to turn people vegan no cruelty towards animals is not an objective or isolated or a standalone problem in itself it is originating from the violent animal within each of us and the violent animal sitting within us can be taken care of
06:32through core spiritual teaching without that veganism won't succeed