Justice Vikramaditya (on WhatsApp)
The food habit can't be a deciding factor in support of ahimsa .Iin many Buddhist country meat / fish is eaten.food ,dress,,design of houses are the product of geographical and climatic conditions.none violence intact is an approach of mind which does not permit u to hurt others feelings and body .excepting for sustaining ur life and for no other purpose.if u think from this angle then condemning other religions to establish the superiority of own religion wil amount to become violent and that is what jehadis are trying.
My Response (on WhatsApp)
Declaring superiority of a religion or a civilization is a value judgment. We have not said that non violence makes a civilization superior, even though it is possible that some one takes this stand. But we have not taken this stand. In addition, not a particular religion, but a civilization is being discussed: the Indian civilization. We have talked of Buddhism and Jainism too apart from Hinduism.
What has been done is to bring out some distinguishing features which are empirically verifiable. Just an empirical description.
Non-violence is both physical and mental. We talked of the physical aspects in this particular post. It is factually correct that no civilization except the Indian civilization expanded the concept of non-violence to include non-violence against animals. Is that untrue? Is there a harm in knowing this? But this is, again, not intended to mean that everybody in India could be persuaded to be vegetarian. Yet, a huge mass of humanity could be converted to vegetarianism here.
No religion has been condemned. To bring out differences amounts to condemnation?
As regards Buddhists being non-veg, yes, they are, in most countries. But Buddha was a vegetarian and preached non-violence towards animals. If in foreign countries the Buddhists are not following the Buddha, nothing much can be done by the Buddha about this, now that he is no more.
Our intention is not to declare superiority of the Indian Civilization, but to highlight its distinguishing marks. And if, from one or all points of view, a certain faith or civilization is proved superior, it would not mean annihilating people of other faiths, as the ISIS is trying to do. Far from it!
Hope the communication is set right now. As regards the Indian civilization, especially Hinduism, it has in practice been among the worst, if not the only one, as regards subjugation and inhuman treatment of a huge mass of humanity called shudras. We will come to this aspects too. One by one.
