FOOTNOTE TO “INDIAN AGRICULTURAL REFORM”

[The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 4, January, 1883, p. 91]

[J. J. Meyrick writes on the subject of the reformation of agricultural methods in India, with a view to the production of more adequate food supply for the underfed population. AS one remedy, he suggests that the Hindus be induced to sell to Mussulmans and others who eat the flesh of the ox, cattle quite useless from old age or lameness, which live on year after year, eating food that is badly needed by others. H. P. B. comments as follows:]

This, we are afraid, will never meet with the approbation of the masses of Hindu population. Were the good example furnished by our excellent brother K. M. Shroff of Bombay, but followed by some of the principal cities, and hospitals for sick and old animals established on the same principle, there would be no need for such a cruel measure. For, apart from the religious restrictions against “cow-killing,” it is not vegetarian India which could ever adopt the otherwise sound advice, and consent to become party to the vile practice of butchery. Of all the diets vegetarianism is certainly the most healthy, both for physiological and spiritual purposes; and people in India should rather turn to the earnest appeal made recently in the Pioneer by Mr. A. O. Hume, F.T.S. and form “vegetarian” societies, than help to murder innocent animals.