Veganism should be Anti-Caste

This article was published in The Funambulist № 31 Politics of Food, Sept-Oct 2020.

“Buffalo has a significant place in Adijan (Dalit) and Indian Mythology, as animals have a prominent place in all stories of indigenous peoples. Buffalo is considered as the ancestor of the Adijan (Dalit) people. For Adijan (Dalit) people buffalo symbolizes their hard working nature.” Caption and painting by Preetam Casimir (2014).

“In myriad ways, over centuries and millennia, the oppression of humans and of other animals have been connected and intertwined…the social changes that will lead to the liberation of both humans and other animals will and must be inseparable. The question is, how is true liberation to be achieved, particularly in a society in which stratification and oppression are inherent elements of the social structure?”

David Nibert, Animal Rights/Human Rights

There is an uneasy relationship between veganism that is intended as part of the animal liberation movement, and vegetarianism that is part of the oppressive system of Brahmanism. I have been a vegetarian all my life, but it was only relatively recently that I came to learn about animal rights theory. My previous vegetarianism had little to do with animal rights, and more to do with ideas of purity and pollution that are prevalent in Hindu culture. Brahmanism, which is the predecessor to current-day Hinduism, is the ideological structure that stratified South Asian society and oppressed human and animal groups, assigning to each of them prescribed roles and functions, for millennia.

But we ask: is it even possible to dismantle all human oppressions, and…