In the modern India, people prefer to become woke and destroy the social injustice for the betterment of the society. But being woke with awareness is different from begin woke with ignorance. Furthermore, to establish an argument, it is important to observe from which side the argument should be presented so that, it can stand still from the counter arguments. Now come to our main topic, it is promoted by many woke people that in Rig Veda, there is a hymn 6/17/1 which supports beef eating and this topic sustained for quite a long time untill some conscious people came forth and analyzed all the references provided to support beef eating. One of the reference is provided from the book “Complete Work of Swami Vivekananda” Vol 3 and I personally verified it, but the reference provided with page number does not contain anything related to beef eating rather the entire chapter is devoted to Buddhism. Even if someone type “Rig Veda and Cow eating” in the Google they first result that appears is Rig Veda hymn 6/17/1.
However this wokism doesn’t last longer because we still have aware people who know how to counter an argument with fact and logic. Now the question remains does that mean our ancient text forbidden the consumption of meat? Remember by ancient text I didn’t mean unique text that tell us what to eat? How to sleep? How to bath? etc. by ancient text I mean the philosophies of Bharat, the ideas which are developed and practiced in the land of knowledge and wisdom. Regarding meat eating, there are multiple arguments some supports meat eating and some doesn’t, so concluding something based on some line written in some books doesn’t mean it represents the essence of Indian culture as a whole. So how to proceed further with the argument that, beef/meat is allowed or not? The answer given by our Rishis and scholars comes up with a single word that is, compassion and for the people with low intellect can never understand this one word that explains everything.
Let us understand how compassion is the answer to eating animals or even plants with life. The word compassion means, the concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. It means if you are compassionate for someone then you cannot harm that living being (here I have used the word Living Being because I want to include every living being at least those we can see). Now if you think I will not eat this particular animal because my ideology doesn’t permits it, then you are not compassionate about that particular living organism rather you are afraid of your beliefs which is more dangerous as you can harm anyone whom your religion permits.
Now it is important to see within ourselves and observe the level of compassion for the living being around us, then you will observe that, you cannot harm a living being which comes within the circumference of you compassion. In Jainism, the monks ware musk so that, even the microorganisms should not be harmed while talking. Someone can raise question that even with all the protection you will still kill millions of microorganisms and that is absolutely true, but we are not advocating whether their methods are efficient to protect microorganisms rather we are explaining their intentions which is developed due to the compassion towards every living organisms.
One more example is of Goswamis who follow Vaishnavism, in their religion killing of animal is forbidden and in vegetarian diet they usually consume pulses, rice and vegetables without multiple seeds, because they believe life lies inside seeds and consuming vegetables with multi-seeds can kill several lives. It means the circumference of compassion is large enough to encircle the entire life including animal and plants.
Thus we can see that killing and eating of something is directly related to your compassion towards that being. There is nothing right or wrong in killing something for survival but if you kill for fun or to satisfy your religious sentiments then we will be certain about the fact that, your compassion towards life is minimum. In Hinduism there is a concept of enlarging the circumference of compassion so that, we can become more loving and sensitive towards the pain of other living begins.
