Recent shooting of an alleged man-eater tigress named Avni in Maharashtra after the wide spread public campaign to save Avni, has left many animal rights activists in utter disappointment.

Even today, the protest and rallies for justice to Avni continues in several cities. In my city too a rally was organised yesterday to get justice for Avni and to save her two cubs.

I had tried to cover the issue last month in my following posts:

• Murder of the National Animal of India by Government Itself!
• Why Do Meat-Eaters Wanna Save Avni - the Man-Eater's life?

It's been 10 days when Avni was shot dead but many activists are still unable to recover from the pain and shock this incident has brought. Some are also introspecting and contemplating on what went wrong with their movement.

Today one of my friends concluded that mere veganism is not enough to save animals like Avni. Veganism is only spreading the idea against the abuse of animals we use. But for animals like Avni for which humans have no use, they will always be considered an inferior being and humans won't repent killing them like they did to Avni.

She says that freedom for animals or animal liberation has to be a social justice movement. Apart from promoting veganism, we need to completely eradicate speciesism from the human minds. Only this can save all animals from exploitation, abuse, disrespect and murder.

We need to redefine Veganism to include animal liberation:

I told her that we need to re-define the official definition of veganism to include anti-speciesism if it doesn't already do that. For me, Veganism and Animal Rights is synonymous. But most derive its meaning to stop abuse of only those animals that are used for humans. But this doesn't protect all animals from humans.

The term Vegan was coined by Donald Watson in 1944 and its definition was updated in 1979 in the Memorandum and Article of Association of The Vegan Society as:

"A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."

However the terms "all forms of exploitation" and "or any other purpose" can be understood to mean to include wildlife, insect or all forms of sentient lives in the ambit of veganism. But it's not how it is understood.

Moreover, my friend told me that Dr. Melanie Joy who coined the term Carnism as an opposite to Veganism, also restricts the meaning of her term Carnism similarly.

I told her that when the term Veganism will be re-defined to exclude all speciesism, definition of carnism will automatically fall in place.

For now I asked her to use the Michael A Slusher's term Malzoism instead. She wasn't aware of this word and found its meaning as a perfect antonym to veganism.

But still, we're not looking for opposites. We actually need to modify the definition of Veganism to encapsulate the idea of Animal Liberation in totality.

What do you think?
Share your views with me.

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