Should the Sikhs Eat Meat?

I won’t tell you my age but hardly a day of my Earthly existence has passed without hearing a passionate discussion on eating meat. Inadvertently, the day belongs to the group that can score a home run with their logic. I have seen debates on jhutka and halaal. I have seen debates on horse meat and milch animals. The argument never seems to end. Some quote the Dasam Granth while others the lack of any such reference in the Aad Guru Granth Sahib (AGGS). Occasionally, I get drawn into such discussions but only when I know the tempers of people involved.

Recently, I had a chance to watch the rather barbaric movie, “The Cove’. As you all know, it describes vividly (leaving nothing much to your imagination) how dolphins are massacred to serve the palate of a few. And I thought SAW was the only barbaric movie I had ever seen. Let us not go off topic here. I also watched some clippings on YouTube of how different animals raised for meat are treated. Chicken, cow, veal, pig, ducks all sorts of them. All these years we thought that these animals were injected with hormones to mature them faster and increase their muscle mass. Now it seems a new wave of animal raising has arrived. These animals are force fed. So a long feeding tube is shoved through the mouth right into the stomach of the animal and feed is pushed down. This forced feeding, irrespective of whether the animals wishes to eat or not, makes the animal grow faster. The animals are cramped together and occasionally restricted on purpose from moving around. This reduces the amount of calories they burn and hence all the food they consume is converted into fat/muscle. The condition of these animals is unimaginable. Normally, their weight crushes their legs and they become sedentary anyways.

This made me revisit the Sikh philosophy of Jhutka. As suggested by many (I have no clue where the concept of jhutka came from), the basic purpose of jhutka is to save the animal from pain and suffering and hence our avoidance of Halaal. With all the barbarism that goes into raising animals for meat, where does it leave our concept of jhutka? After all what we consume is either processed meat or cleaned meat sold at grocery stores. We gave ‘The Cove’ an Oscar as it suits our sensibilities but we continue to consume the force fed animal meat. We continue to entertain ourselves by forcing dolphins to dance to our tunes as this torture is not against our sensibility. Bhagat Kabeer ji says, “pati tore malini, pati pati jeeyoh, jis pahan ko pati tore so pahan nirjio”. The flower girl worships a stone idol by offering flowers. Little does she realize that every single petal of the flower is alive with life but the idol she tries to please by offering those petals is non-living. He further says, "brahm pati bisn dari fuul shankar dhaeo, teen dev prtakh toreh kareh kis kii saeo". Brahma is in the leaves, Vishnu is in the branches and Shiva is in the flowers. When you break all these three Gods, who are you serving? "Pakhan gadd ke murat kini deh keh chatti pav, je eh murat sachi heh tu garranhareh khau". The sculptor carves the stone to make an idol by keeping his feet on the stone. If this stone was God indeed, HE would devour the sculptor for disrespect.

Every single day we waste our energies on countless rituals of jhutka, halaal, kosher etc never pausing once to reflect if our actions are indeed pleasing the lord almighty we claim to serve. We do not hesitate to reference Guru Gobind Singh ji in our discussions on consumption of meat but forget the steel bracelets he blessed us with, Reminders of our being slaves of the creator. We only serve our palates and in a larger perspective, our vested menial personal interests, of which we have become slaves.