Hindi Vegan Blog: A Chat with Author, Chetan Padliya
A dedicated Hindi vegan blog was much awaited and required in India. The native language of nearly 44% of the Indian population is Hindi; however, structured, detailed material on veganism in the Hindi language, available through a consistent stream, has almost been non-existent. Not anymore, as you will find out in this blog post. In this post, we chat with active vegan, Chetan Padliya, author of the recently-launched, Hindi vegan blog, दूध छोड़, दया जोड़ (translated: ditch dairy and embrace compassion). In this blog, Chetan dispels the many myths about dairy, lighting up the way to dairy-free vegan living – all in the Hindi language. This is a great step towards helping the movement go en masse. Do you agree?
In this interview, we chat with Chetan about his transition to becoming vegan and gain some important information about his Hindi vegan blog.
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Vegan India! – You became vegan from being vegetarian. For how many years were you a vegetarian before turning vegan? What prompted or inspired you to go dairy-free?
Chetan Padliya – I was vegetarian by birth and turned vegan at the age of 43. I was inspired in many ways. When the first time I came to know about veganism, I could not believe that there could be a life without including dairy in diet. I used to consume various dairy products several times a day including milk, milk powder, curd, buttermilk, ice cream, etc.
My obsession with dairy was the same as I see today in many people.
After an introduction to veganism, I came across several posts about veganism and the hidden cruelty in dairy production on Facebook. Meanwhile, one of my friends was also in the process of becoming vegan and we discussed a lot about it. Slowly-slowly I was convinced about veganism but did not have the courage to adopt veganism as it seemed nearly impossible to drop dairy. After a few months, I relocated to India from Oman and participated in a rally organized by a friend on animal rights issues. After that rally, that was the first week of May 2015, I decided to quit dairy.
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Vegan India! – So, how would you describe your decision to go dairy-free — was it an overnight change or you took incremental steps?
Chetan Padliya – As I have mentioned, yes, it was an overnight decision to turn vegan. But that day came after six months of inspiration.
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Vegan India! – What are the other animal-based products you discontinued after turning vegan?
Chetan Padliya – Not only I stopped consuming almost all types of animal products including honey, leather, wool, and silk products but also I stopped visiting the zoo and aquariums. I also decided not to ride any animal. When I asked my friend whether I could keep the shares of a non-vegan company, he said it is against veganism to invest in any non-vegan company and hence, I sold my shares of that company.
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Vegan India! – How has your body responded without dairy? Please describe.
Chetan Padliya – Initially, I carved for tea with milk, probably it was due to milk addiction but whenever I thought about the suffering of animals due to milk, my carving was overcome by compassion. After some time I started to hate animal milk.
Now I never feel that my body requires any mammal’s secretion to live a healthy life.
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Vegan India! – You are an ‘active vegan’ as you are involved in spreading knowledge and awareness to help people adopt a compassionate lifestyle. Towards this end, you have launched a blog in Hindi about dairy truths. Please tell us more about your blog. How has the response been to your blog? Do you have other writers contributing to it?
Chetan Padliya – After turning vegan, with time, I became so confident about my decision of going vegan that I can start a discussion with anybody about “why we should not consume animal milk.” I have so many arguments to convince anybody. Then I thought I should write and publish my thoughts online. Then I started to answer on Quora about dairy. After a few days in the first week of Aug 2019, I created a blog named दूध छोड़, दया जोड़ (Ditch Dairy, Embrace Compassion) and wrote articles through which I am trying to give answers to various questions generally asked by non-vegans.
I decided to write in Hindi as my mother tongue is Hindi so I can express myself the best. Another main reason to write in Hindi is that there is a big vacuum as very few articles are published in Hindi on veganism so I could address and answer the people who are well-versed in Hindi.
Till date, I have written 19 articles and try to answer each and every question about milk through my blog posts. Right now I am the only one writing the articles but would love to publish blog posts written by guest authors.
The main focus of my articles is to explain all the harmful aspects of dairy products, including environment and health, but the most important is the ethical aspect, as any dairy consumer lives in the dilemma that they are “pure vegetarians” and are not harming any living being for their food. I just want to break this myth of so-called pure vegetarians.
This blog is new so I am promoting it on social networking platforms like Quora, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc and people are asking more about this subject. We also have a Facebook page named, दूध छोड़, दया जोड़ https://www.facebook.com/boycottmilk, which is currently liked by about 800 people.
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