Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/164

 (28-4-1894)

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The Vegetarian

,

If you are a vegetarian, I think it is your duty to join the London Vegetarian Society, and to subscribe to The Vegetarian if you have not done so already.

It is your duty because --

(1) You will thereby encourage and aid the creed you profess.

(2) That will be an expression of the bond of sympathy that should exist between a vegetarian and a vegetarian in a land where there are so few of them.

(3) The vegetarian movement will indirectly aid India politically also, inasmuch as the English vegetarians will more readily sympathize with the Indian aspirations (that is my personal experience).

(4) Looking at the question even from a purely selfish point of view, you will thereby be able to have a large circle of vegetarian friends who ought to be more acceptable than others.

(5) Your knowledge of the vegetarian literature will enable you to remain firm in your principles in a land where you are exposed to so many temptations, which have in very many cases proved irresistible, and you will, in case of illness, be able to get the aid of vegetarian doctors and drugs, whom and which you will know very easily, having joined the Society and subscribed to its paper.

(6) That will help your fellow-brothers in India a great deal, and be also a means of dispelling the doubt that still lingers in the minds of our parents as to the possibility of existence under a vegetarian