Being a true Vegan at the pride parade

I am a vegan. A big, fat, proud homosexual vegan. Veganism is like feminism, it extends itself beyond just animal welfare or women’s rights. Veganism speaks about the protection of all living beings. Veganism is also about standing up against discrimination. Hence, it makes sense that vegans walk the pride. Veganism, like feminism, has again earned a bad name. Like feminists are dismissed as a bunch of loud misandrists, Veganism is also seen by many in social media as those who hate meat eaters. That’s untrue.

True vegans are not all hating, discriminating, yelling, screaming people. I mean, they are all of that, like we are all of that, but that doesn’t define veganism. Veganism, in my opinion,  stands for something more beautiful – it stands for respect – for all living beings, including humans. So, at the pride parade,  I could barely contain my emotions when I saw a bunch of vegans walking alongside, many thanks to them for highlighting the cause of animal abuse and vegetarianism without being antagonistic or disrespectful towards people who could be meat eaters in the pride parade. Didn’t Baba Ramdev say that “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it” ? Oh, sorry, I get that, it was Aristotle. I wouldn’t expect Baba Ramdev to say so.

That’s what the pride is all about – the coming together of many truths of our existence. So when we come to the pride, we don’t just come to celebrate our right to fight draconian laws that pertain to gender and sexuality, we also raise a toast sometimes to equality and sometimes raise our voice against atrocities. We live multiple truths and we live them all together. So while the pride is about LGBTIQ rights, it is also about several of these intermingling truths of our life. And more the marginalised boxes you fall into, the more is your vulnerability to abuse. In that level, I think, no one is more abused than animals. They are treated as unequals, we exploit them for clothing and food, we displace them from their families,  and we even debate if they should have the right to live at all. If they were humans, we would just seem like Hitler. However, that said, I also believe that in parts where non vegetarianism is justified as a part of culture, there needs to be more collaborative strategies for advocacy rather than bans that only incite communal violence between cow protectors and beef eaters. Because, truth be told, if people really loved cows, they would be vegan.

So as a queer person who is also vegan, I really appreciate the fact that the vegan group spoke up by collaborating with the pride themes of gender and sexuality. So did other groups that spoke about the other truths of their life, like being queer and dalit, Queer and muslim, a queer woman.

We live all our truths, and all at once.

Hey khara aahe

SPEAK UP

Write to sexualitydna@gmail.com to tell us how you feel about this column.