We are begging to save a dead planet, so I think I am but (a little) sorry when I cross this picket line. The picket line that ties like a noose around the neck– I have no interest in greening a future with the mangled corpses of my brothers.
“I do not consume meat because it is bad for the environment – every individual action counts – my conscience does not allow it – it tastes bad – the smell is off-putting – I do not think about it anymore because I quit four five six ten years ago – it is but a preference” already meant nothing to me. But two years into a genocide, it maybe means everything.
What does it mean to cite animal cruelty as your resignation from meat when you have never had to watch animal slaughter? But for two years now, we have seen every bone in the bo…
We are begging to save a dead planet, so I think I am but (a little) sorry when I cross this picket line. The picket line that ties like a noose around the neck– I have no interest in greening a future with the mangled corpses of my brothers.
“I do not consume meat because it is bad for the environment – every individual action counts – my conscience does not allow it – it tastes bad – the smell is off-putting – I do not think about it anymore because I quit four five six ten years ago – it is but a preference” already meant nothing to me. But two years into a genocide, it maybe means everything.
What does it mean to cite animal cruelty as your resignation from meat when you have never had to watch animal slaughter? But for two years now, we have seen every bone in the body of a child splatter in every direction on live television. Do you resign from genocide?
How do you resign from genocide? stolen from all over the Levant and bastardized into a cruelty-free version, Israeli veganism is so popular — zionism must be vegan – genocide must be vegan – is the chicken more dear than refaat does the cow have more sensibilities than reem did the fucking lamb beg you to not shoot it more times than hind?
The absence of benevolence in vegetarianism is being understood all around the world now. produced in systems that remain interconnected in their oppressive forces, an ethically sourced salad is not that much different from a greasy burger. How can you attach a value to and then rank – the pathetic labour conditions under which a lettuce is harvested and animal slaughter? It is difficult – but these ethical dilemmas in the hearts of the hearts of the empire are great intellectual fodder to chew on. In the dirty, dingy South, we do not have the time to regurgitate. We eat meat because they kill us for it.
No one killed Pehlu Khan
No one killed Pehlu Khan. A mob of 200 tore his flesh apart. in broad daylight. on camera. No one killed Pehlu Khan.
What does death feel like when it is at the hands of 200 people? What does justice feel like when it is never handed?
On 1 April 2017, a dairy farmer, Pehlu Khan, was lynched by a mob of 200 ‘people’ – cow vigilantes affiliated with right-wing Hindutva groups in the indian state of Rajasthan – for the alleged crime of cow slaughter.
Cows are considered sacred in Hinduism, and the ruling party in India – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – endorses banning beef. Hinduism also espouses the casteist concept of karma, meaning one is born into a certain caste or as a certain being as a result of their ‘good’ deeds in the past life – the better the deed, the higher the caste. I wish Pehlu is never rebirthed in India – I wish Pehlu takes birth as a cow.
In 2017, Pehlu Khan, a dairy farmer from Nuh district of Haryana, was lynched by cow vigilantes affiliated with right-wing Hindutva groups in Alwar, Rajasthan, India.
I do not want to write the next part because reproducing justification feels criminal. However, Pehlu Khan was not purchasing cattle for beef – he was purchasing dairy cattle to increase milk production for Ramadan. Irshad, Pehlu Khan’s son and witness to his father’s murder, said: “We had all the relevant papers to show that we were carrying the cows for dairy farming. We showed them the receipt of sale and purchase. But they were in no mood to listen to us. They tore our documents and attacked my father in front of my eyes.”
The mob recorded the murder on video, and therefore, it was possible to file a complaint against six identified and 200 unidentified persons. No arrests were made. Everyone was acquitted. The video failed to serve as admissible evidence in court and has since been turned into a celebratory souvenir as was intended. Nobody killed Pehlu Khan.
Nobody killed Pehlu Khan. India is one of the biggest exporters of beef in the world.
brahmans beef
The shame of consuming beef is often shrouded by calling it different things, locking the doors, shutting the windows, packing it in one often many opaque black bags. When they lynch muslim men and break their bodies into pieces, they leave the flesh scattered on the streets for people to watch. the muslim body is not afforded opacity.
Under modern interpretations of Hinduism, which serves its greatest purpose in building an ethnostate, beef is considered ‘impure’ and so are the people who consume it. The vegan craze in the West has come at a great time for the oppressor (upper) caste brahmans, who are quick to recycle their regressive practices as green and conscious.
Beef is largely consumed by the wretched within indian borders – the oppressed castes and muslims. And so (whether by design or not) I cannot imagine the elation of the Brahman upon aligning their caste system with their counterparts, their spiritual extension – the white gentrifiers.
In a caste segregated society, where labour is indentured in a capacity that would put the final stages of capitalism to shame, what is worse than the violence of brahmanical vegetarianism is the intentional naivety of “cruelty-free” diets. I am not sorry to cross this picket line.
Of the biggest exporters of beef in India, a majority are Hindus. He is pure, he is clean, he deserves to pollute because it is his right – the earth is for the brahman to swallow whole.