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There are thousands of stores (online and traditional) catering to animal free products. There are annual awards and honors to recognize people, books, media, and movies that observe and promote animal welfare and veganism. Let me share a few actual happenings that I observed or heard myself: • In the 1980s and 1990s I lived in Cincinnati, Ohio. We had
established the Jain Center of Cincinnati-Dayton there where we used to observe all our major Jain functions and festivals. Once, I invited Jayne Meinhart, a native of Cincinnati, a committed vegan and a TV and Radio talk show personality, to the Mahavir Jayanti Celebrations at the Jain Center. Jayne, like all of us, removed her shoes outside the assembly hall. During her speech, she commented that she knows that Jains are the biggest followers of ahimsa yet when she came in, she noticed that not a single pair of shoes or sandals was non-leather whereas she (Jayne) herself had stopped use of leather many years ago. You can imagine how embarrassing
or inspirational that was for us Jains. • In 1995, at the JAINA convention held at the Chicago Jain
temple, Mrs. Menaka Gandhi (a Cabinet Minister in India) was the chief guest. In her keynote speech, Mrs. Gandhi chided the Jain audience about the use of many kinds of animal based products (leather, silk, pearls) in their daily use while she herself —a non-Jain —does not use any. Mrs. Gandhi is a champion of animal rights and has given her very best to the cause of animal protection and their welfare in India. In the Indian parliament, as an M. P, as a Central cabinet Minister, and as a commoner, she has championed this cause even at the risk of her own life. I have come to know that the transportation of live animals in India across state lines is illegal, yet with the connivance of corrupt government officers, thousands (if not millions) of animals
are daily transported in goods trains to far off places to An Ahimsa Crisis: You Decide
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