He was willing to give a long rope to meat-eaters otherwise, especially to those who were fighting with him in the quest for independence.
He refused to tolerate such transgressions, although it might have saved her life. When a weak and emaciated Kasturba Gandhi was administered, unbeknown to her, a beef broth by a doctor in South Africa while she was recuperating from a surgery, Gandhi was livid. In spite of his unshaken adherence to vegetarianism, Gandhi was far from being hostile towards meat-eaters, except perhaps for the members of his family. Thus, a committed vegetarian for most of his life, Gandhi remained a lapsed vegan, even though, as early as the 1930s, he had already tried out substitutes like almond jelly, peanut milk and soybean, with varying degrees of success. But persistent illness forced him to concede to drinking goat’s milk. As his belief in non-violence as the guiding principle of a morally upright existence grew stronger, Gandhi decided to renounce cow’s milk. He encouraged the consumption of raw vegetables and fruits, partly to enable women to get a reprieve from the kitchen. Like most early adopters, he was led to modify his search by the exigencies of his time and the demands of his health.Īt Tolstoy Farm in South Africa, for instance, Gandhi urged the residents to grow the food on their plate. Long before zero-waste lifestyles and vegan diets gained social currency, he was experimenting with these modes of living. Structured around the pillars of his diet-“vegetarianism, limiting salt and sweets, rejecting processed food, eating raw food, (and) fasting"-the book also reflects on the prescience with which Gandhi anticipated contemporary movements for the ethical production, consumption and dissemination of food. The result of scholarly research, Slate’s book demystifies Gandhi’s dietary politics for the common reader.
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