London, July 5 (IANS) PETA, the world’s largest animal rights organisation, invited noted philosopher and author Acharya Prashant for a special dialogue at PETA’s London office on Thursday.
The fireside conversation with PETA Foundation President Mimi Bekhechi, held before a packed audience, explored the philosophical foundations of animal consciousness, veganism, and non-violence. Acharya Prashant said that compassion is not a virtue to be taught, but the very nature of the human being, and the real question is who taught us violence.
This was Acharya Prashant’s fourth dialogue with PETA’s senior leadership. He has earlier been in conversation with PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk and PETA’s international president Poorva Joshipura, and held another extensive dialogue with Joshipura in London during this UK tour itself. Notably, PETA had honoured Acharya Prashant with its Most Influential Vegan of the Year award in 2022.
Opening the conversation, Bekhechi praised Acharya Prashant’s book ‘Is She Just Food to You’, saying it addresses the central challenge of the animal rights movement: helping people see animals not as objects of consumption but as thinking, feeling beings.
Acharya Prashant said that a small child, on seeing a rabbit or a lamb, wants to play with it, not kill it. He asked, “Does the human being have to be taught compassion, or does he have to be freed of the violence he has been taught? Then one must see who spoiled the child, who planted in the child’s mind that a living being is food.”
He cautioned that a child conditioned into violence towards one creature does not remain violent in one direction alone. He said, “Now you don’t have a child violent towards a rabbit or a goat. Now you have a violent child. We are raising a violent society.”
Explaining the title of his book, he said the violence mankind has inflicted on animals and on women are not two different things, which is why the book had to be titled Is ‘She’ Just Food to You. He said the exploited could be anyone, a forest, a river, a woman, or a cow, but the exploiter remains the same: the conditioned human ego.
Laying out the central thread of the dialogue, he said, “The human being is not the killer. The ego is the killer. The body gains nothing from meat; the ego entertains its inner incompleteness for thirty seconds. Our behaviour towards animals is only a mirror that shows how we are within.”
On the physical difference between humans and animals, he said that humans are 99.9 percent animal, and the remaining 0.1 percent is not humanity’s superiority but its disease: the social and cultural ego. Citing the Indian non-dual tradition, he said the conduct of the liberated one is described as ‘sahaj’, as natural as that of an animal, and this is the mark of inner freedom.
Responding to questions from the audience, Acharya Prashant emphasised individual responsibility. He said every gram of flesh that leaves the slaughterhouse is ultimately consumed by a solitary individual, so demand begins with the individual and change too will begin with the individual. He said legislation and policy support are necessary but not sufficient, because in a democracy the voter who elects the legislator is himself the consumer.
Asked about viral videos of animal cruelty on social media, he said, “Violence is never taught as violence. Violence is taught as tradition, as ambition, as responsibility, even as love. If violence were taught as violence, it would never succeed.”
During the dialogue, Acharya Prashant also shared a moving account of an injured rabbit he had rescued, who lived with him in his study for years and breathed her last in his arms. He said that if a relationship demands the life of an innocent as its price, that relationship was never valuable in the first place.
The dialogue is part of Acharya Prashant’s UK tour, during which he has engaged with academics, policymakers, and thinkers at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and the British Parliament on questions of consciousness, climate, and inner transformation. The tour continues until July 10, with a dialogue with Professor Steven Fleming at University College London, a conversation with Professor Lars Chittka at Queen Mary University of London, and a book signing at Watkins Book Store among the engagements ahead.
Acharya Prashant is an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad and the founder of the PrashantAdvait Foundation. His work, rooted in Indian and global philosophy, reaches more than 100 million subscribers across social media. He was recently named among the world’s most influential living thinkers in the Watkins 2026 list.
–IANS
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