JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: When a fast food chain announced that it will be opening its first-ever vegetarian-only restaurant in India, it was taken as a marketing tactic to attract non-meat eaters to its outlets. But perhaps, the chain sensed something else. An Indian textbook on hygiene and health, New Healthway, recently published for 11 and 12-year-old students, has come up with some controversial write-ups.
“The Creator of this Universe did not include meat in the original diet for Adam and Eve. He gave them fruits, nuts and vegetables,” reads a chapter titled “Do we need flesh food?” The chapter goes on to list some other benefits of a vegetarian diet and informs children that “meat-eaters easily cheat, tell lies, forget promises, are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes …”.
We do not know how fast the Indian government will move to ban such highly offensive and nonsensical material, which is apparently intended to unnecessarily create controversy between communities. If someone can live a healthy life as a vegetarian, let him/her do so, but this does not mean that non-vegetarians have to be demonised and such delusional beliefs need to be propagated.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, November 22nd, 2012.
