Forsaking the flesh

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Book review, you may or may not agree with the reviewers opinions on vegetarianism/religion............ REVIEWED BY TARQUIN HALL THE BLOODLESS REVOLUTION: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of Indiaby Tristram Stuart Harper Press £25 pp628 I have to declare a bias: I am an unashamed carnivore. I’ve eaten everything from fluffy bunnies to smoked wildebeest. True, I draw the line at horses, whales, pets and steak tartare. But had I been stuck on Noah’s Ark for 40 days and 40 nights, it’s a safe bet that few of the animals would have come out two by two. After living in India, I certainly don’t denigrate vegetarianism. There is no doubt that a meat-free diet is generally healthier, especially in a hot climate. Yet most of the radical vegetarians featured in Tristram Stuart’s exhaustive study would dismiss me and other meat eaters as misguided at best, or, at worst, akin to cannibals. For them, the maxim “you are what you eat” is more than just physical. It is a moral and spiritual imperative. Stuart traces the first stirrings of the British vegetarian movement to Sir Francis Bacon in the early 1600s. Until then, we Brits

were all unquestioning meat eaters. God, according to Genesis, gave Adam and Eve “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth”. Aristotle concurred: animals were put here to eat. But Bacon identified historical evidence to suggest that meat was not an absolute necessity in the diet. He found that Pythagoras had taught his disciples to abstain from eating animals. Spartans, Indians and many Christian ascetics had survived on veg alone. What is more, they seemed to have prospered. Bacon’s devotee, Thomas Bushell, proved that it could be done. Retreating to a cliff top and later a garden grotto, he adopted a troglodyte diet of herbs, oil, mustard and honey, and lived until the ripe old age of 80. His decision was not motivated by a touchy-feely attitude towards animals, but stark, religious fervour. Bushell believed that mankind had been corrupted by flesh; vegetarianism was a means of

achieving “paradisal perfection”. Stuart profiles a host of alchemists, quacks, cultists, scientists, philosophers, adventurers and revolutionaries who carried the torch for vegetarianism over the next 350 years, usually in the face of adversity and repression. Some were pivotal figures and free thinkers such as Newton and Rousseau for whom questions about diet pertained to a better understanding of man’s place in the world and, ultimately, his destiny. Many others were delusional, fanatical or plain mad. Among them ranked Samuel Richardson’s doctor, George Cheyne, who believed that all meat eaters went straight to hell or a distant planet. Clearly, a staggering amount of research and dedication has gone into this book and its author displays an extraordinary breadth of knowledge and didactic ability. But in parts, the endless stream of detail leaves you wondering just how many more individual treatises on vegetarianism you can take. The premise,

too, is somewhat flawed. Stuart illustrates how Indian Brahmin philosophy disseminated into European thought, undermining entrenched orthodoxies and church dogma. In itself, this makes for fascinating and compelling reading. But he fails to note that, from earliest times, the West has hardly existed in cultural isolation. The very basis of our civilisation came from the East. The only reason Bacon was able to study Pythagoras in the first place was be cause his writings were preserved in the Islamic world. Christ himself was a Nazarene. Seen in this light, the quest of Stuart’s radical vegetarians to find a spiritual and moral justification for their cause brings to mind Rumi’s story of the Elephant in the Dark. Over the centuries, even the most rationally minded of these men and women have selectively plundered ancient scriptures and philosophies, formulating theories and doctrines as convoluted as The Da Vinci Code. The most compelling example of this

phenomenon was provided by the Nazis. As Stuart puts it: “Apparently innocuous cultural trends were easily mutated into facism.” Hitler himself wrote that “All sicknesses of civilisation are caused by man cooking food”, while Himmler “fantasised that Aryan Germans could take over the world if only they returned to their original vegetarian diet”. Accordingly, he ordered the Waffen-SS to “convert to a non-smoking, teetotal, vegetarian regime”. Yet in spite of such crackpot theories, the vegetarian movement did succeed in altering the western diet. By the time Gandhi arrived in Victorian London, he found a number of vegetarian restaurants and a burgeoning Vegetarian Society. Indeed, it was here in England that he became a “born again”, shunning meat once and for all. Today in the West, vegetarianism flourishes largely on rational and emotional rather than spiritual grounds. At the same time, it has become accepted that a diet heavy in meat is not good for you,

something the vegetarian movement proved centuries ago. Still, as Stuart points out, we are eating far too much meat and, as man grows increasingly affluent, that is having a devastating effect on the environment. “The world’s remaining forests are currently being destroyed to make way for grazing,” he writes. “This ecological devastation . . . threatens not just eco- systems . . . but the whole of humankind.” Even as a non-vegetarian, I can’t argue with that. Available at the Sunday Times Books First price of £22.50 (including p & p) on 0870 165 8585Peter H

 

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