But, when you look at someone who comes from a meat-eating family or the traditional kind of Indian Vaishnav family where milk and ‘kheer’ and ‘dahi’ are a staple, then it comes as a shock to that person, that milk involves cruelty. It’s a totally alien and a disturbing concept. So, it has to be brought out with due expertise and that does not mean that you have to be especially trained in communicating these matters, just that one has to be sensitive that the other person might not really know.
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Questioner: Many of us were already acquainted with the amazing phenomenal work that you do with your videos and other things, but in preparation for this talk many of us got familiar. So, based on that we’ve got some queries. So, the first question is, that in many of your interviews you mentioned that one cannot be spiritual if one eats animals at the same time. So, when cruelties behind milk and meat consumption are highlighted, people who are not vegan, they tend to get very defensive. So, this question has two parts — the first part is what does such defensiveness indicate from the prism of spirituality and secondly, that given that the meat and milk consumption and demand has increased dramatically in India, so does this point towards a large-scale spiritual crisis and if so, what kind of an approach can be taken while talking to people about animal cruelty and also veganism. This was Sunaina’s question.
Acharya Prashant: See it’s a bit of a tricky affair to introduce the fact of animal cruelty to someone without alleging or insinuating, that the person is some kind of a criminal. So, one has to be sensitive to the response of the listener and to be fair, education or awareness towards such things is pretty low. So, if the person has not yet known of these things, he or she can be extended some benefit of doubt. It is possible that the person never had the opportunity to be educated in that regard.
