Vegan Book for Beginners: ‘Vegan Or We’re Gone’ by Muthukumar Ramalingam
The book, Vegan or We’re Gone, authored by Shri. Muthukumar Ramalingam is a moving account, especially for beginners who are on the path to adopting a compassionate vegan lifestyle, about the precarious situation humans have created for themselves by their own actions. It is a time bomb ticking slowly but surely pushing us to our doom. Some warning signs are global warming, rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, water stress, devastating cyclones, floods, and landslides.
This vegan book for beginners gives a timely warning to humankind to stop abusing the fine balance in our ecosystem in which millions of land and marine animals are our co-passengers. Animals, birds, and fishes came on earth many millions of years before us. How audacious it is on the part of humans to think they are the masters and can exploit non-human animals for their selfish interest.
Why the book Vegan Or We’re Gone is an impactful read for beginners of all ages
The book drives home the infallible truth that animals are intelligent creatures with a central nervous system like humans. They are capable of feeling pain, fear, stress, love for their babies, but humans torture them to death in slaughterhouses. Not only are they killed for food, but their body parts are also sold to different industries for fashion and beauty products. Dairies extract milk from the cows, depriving their babies of their legitimate claim on their mother’s milk. This is unethical. If stealing is a crime then this is no less crime. Dairies also support the meat industry by supplying the elderly, unproductive cows and male calves to the slaughterhouses.
Shri. Ramalingam’s personal experience of watching the horrific killing of cows in a slaughterhouse in his childhood, and the moving poem by little Manasa on page 61 works to awaken the conscience of human beings and ask themselves – What! If it happens to me!
Change is the law of Nature – Change to vegan or we are gone
Life on earth is not static. Every living thing is passing through a process of evolution. Neanderthals chased animals for food and ate their flesh raw. But the homosapiens learnt to farm, grow their own food, and cook them for eating. With time, civilizations were born. The process of change proves the fact that mindsets, however stubborn, can change with logical thinking.
What we eat is decided by tradition, habit, and the information we are fed with. Meat comes in the supermarket with attractive packaging labelled as cruelty free, organic, kosher etc. These are merely jargons so as to remove the guilt from the buyer’s mind. In fact, no meat is cruelty free. It is saturated with the pain and cries of the tortured animal, which makes it uneatable and causes ailments such as cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancer etc.
We need to change our food habits. Plant-based food comes from mother earth. There is an unlimited variety – vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Plant-based foods are safe, nutritious, cholesterol-free, and intellectually stimulating as researched by numerous scientists.
The future is vegan and kind!
Veganism as a movement is gaining strength day-by-day, both in the West and in India. Athletes, celebrities, mountaineers, and others are strongly advocating in favour of veganism. We are sure this book will play an important role in popularizing veganism and in creating a just world for the animals. This book also needs to be prescribed as a must-read in school curriculums to help children become crusaders for protecting animals and the environment through veganism. The future of this world rests on the children of today.
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