Before I get to the crux of this piece, I would like to say that I am a non-vegetarian myself and unless it is a health compulsion, I intend to be one all my life. I, even though not a student of science am well aware of the fact the plants have life. Also with the little knowledge that I have gathered through books and articles, am pretty aware of what the words ‘democracy’ and ‘secular’ mean.
When I had first heard of the meat ban on Paryushan, I was pretty much irked. But then as news begun to pour in that the ban had existed even earlier I just let it pass. I was confident that this was another orchestrated outrage and would fizz out soon.
When we were taught about Jainism in school, I would wonder if the kind of lives they lead is even possible. With passing time as I connected with more people and of course Jains, I realized that it wasn’t just school textbooks. The rituals and their ideology of life are very much real.
It is extremely sad and shameful that the Jain community is today at the center of a mess which they haven’t created. Even if some leader asked for the ban at some point of time, we cannot blame the entire community for it. Intimidating the entire community, saying that they do not have a ‘Pakistan’ to go to, is not just wrong, it is almost being verbally violent.
One might say the government has no business in snooping on our dinner plates. I do agree. If we were to give each community a ban, then we would have to impose bans throughout the year. But it is also true that this ban is not permanent. The ban is on buying and selling and not eating. And we do have prohibition on alcohol on selected days.
I have had the misfortune of looking for a drop of beer on a dry day (a minority festival day). We had tried almost all possible options and then a friend had said, ‘can we instead have beer shampoo? Every shop is selling it’. Jokes apart, the outrage is no longer about why the state isn’t respecting personal choices. Now it is about attacking the Jain community.
Shiv Sena hurls eggs on the roof of a jewellery shop owned by a Jain, and MNS does an act of bravery of making ‘chicken torans’ and making a ‘delicious’ piece of chicken right outside a Jain temple. It also goes unchallenged. The idea of India doesn’t get hurt. I ask why? I would have asked the same question if one were to sell pork outside a mosque. I would ask the same question if one were to sell beef outside a temple.
If one is giving the crap of ‘it is about personal freedom’, then I would say it in clear words- CUT THE CRAP. We as a nation do not need the government to encroach on our personal space. Because we the people have been doing it since ever. And we shouldn’t pretend we haven’t adjusted for someone else’s choices. When there are blaring microphones of a political party, talking about how the center had robbed them (living in Kolkata for more than a decade this is a personal experience) , or the person in the next apartment playing hard rock( which you do not like may be); isn’t your personal choice at risk? When there is nonstop devotional music on Bollywood tunes isn’t your personal choice at risk? The morning azaan that wakes up the night owl of you, or a dry day on Easter (for a vodka lover)! You have been situations that you have put up with. You have also put up with overtly pet loving people who leave dog poop right outside our house. You have put up with preaching from PETA about how bestial you are just because you have had a chicken burger.
You have put up with your office (some leading media organizations have no access to non-vegetarian food) on food diktats. And it is not that only non-vegans have put up with the choices of vegans. I remember closed places like an air craft or an air conditioned coach where vegans have felt a sense of discomfort at the smell of meat.
It is not about supporting or not supporting the government any more. It is about a violent and condescending form of protest. This is similar to the beef ban when people tagged practising Hindus on Facebook with details of a beef eating festival. This is about looking at every Muslim with suspicion just because some bigot blew himself up.
And this time our liberals, Shiv Sena and MNS all seem to be on the same page. MNS says it is their stage. And by that logic they have aggressively beaten up south Indians and North Indians and Gujaratis in the past. What next? What about the liberal idea of coexistence?
On social media, in spite of the fact that Jain youngsters have time and again said that they did not ask for the ban; the verbal violence hasn’t stopped.
Why does our civil society not say anything when the MNS was on a chicken cooking spree? Isn’t this religious violence too? Specifically at a time when the Jain community prays for peace and brotherhood! So much hatred for a prohibition on meat for just a few days? Proudly saying that we would feed some meat to Jains on our festival day is wrong. And it is verbally brutal.
Why should a government order bring out the worst in us? Do people make the state or state makes the people? Of course the right to protest is fundamental right. Then go protest in front to the institutions that have imposed the ban. Not outside Jain houses, shops and religious place. This much they deserve right?
The Indian media didn’t educate the viewers / Indians about the Jain POV. A minority of 85 Lakhs, in no way a part of any votebank calculus, nor seeking the unfortunately (deliberately mischaracterised) labelled ‘Meat Ban’, was turned into a political football.
Their, oh so tolerant, Hindu cousins, for the most part wouldn’t be bothered to learn anything about them. As ever, the crab Indian mind that feasts on the Great Indian Pastime of Stereotyping (GIPSing, might as well, give this national malaise, malady, its very own handy acronmyn), kicked in to blame all Jains as a greedy, grubbing, gluttonous group … ironically, in the very week, designed to atone for those very excesses of human frailties. Well, thank you, very much, India, for your Sarva Dharma Sambhav.
Appeasement! Influence! Selfish! Nonviolent Terrorists! (Ask Mr. Devdutt Pattnaik about that discovery). It never occurred that the politics of patronage is always at play. This country has been independent for 68 years now. 32 years to 2047, and this is the level of our polity’s awareness? This is the pedestrian nature of our political discourse? This is the carte blanche the media cabal has to destroy the peace and harmony in the nation’s long tattered and seldomly mended fabric?
Jains feel very embittered. We were victimised here. Especially by a very militant pro-meat self-appointed vigilante activists who continually and deliberately seek to disturb and shock vegetarian sensibility, which they unfairly characterise as entirely of Jain pedigree. That vegetarianism exists in groups as disparate as Arya Samaj, Radha Soami Sikh Sangat and Sikhi itself, in various Brahmin sub-castes and for secular convictions, is purposefully ignored and conflated into a single joint for their happy smoke and mirror game. The media, largely because it interprets this as a liberal project and progressive agenda (By whose wisdom and for whose consumption is for one to wonder aloud), aids them to the hilt.
Yet, when it came to providing the bandwidth for a single Jain intellectual, spokesperson to speak for the Jain POV and the spiritual principles and motivations thereof, this free press and media, had no generosity or liberality to spare.
It’s Paryushan, and this is more bile than most Jains would muster. I’ll leave you to do your own Pratikraman. You’re going to have to look that up, I’m afraid. Better late than never .
Jai Hind!
Jai Jinendra!
The Indian English Media is again to be blamed for this mess. How conveniently they have glossed over the fact that the meat ban is not a new legislation brought in by the BJP government in Maharashtra but an existing one passed by the then Congress government.