As you know, being born in a Jain family, I ate a vegetarian diet all the time.

However, in 1998, one of our friends’ sons, Unny Nambudiripad, co-founded Compassionate Action for Animals (CAA), a nonprofit organization in the Twin Cities to show empathy towards animals to adopt a vegetarian/Vegan diet for compassion, nonviolence, the environment, and self-control. CAA started annual Veg-Fest symposiums at the University of Minnesota, where seminars and vegan/vegetarian products were available in the marketplace. I started supporting their campaign and almost became Vegan (except milk in tea and some ghee in sweets).

After watching many videos on cruelty done to animals by the farm industry, I decided to stand up for our Jain principle of nonviolence (Ahimsa) and I became fully Vegan in 2019. Since then, I have been campaigning for adopting vegan-plant-based food to our friends, family, and Jain organizations.

Let me tell you that it is not an easy task to change their mindset where they have used dairy products in India from their childhood, even though they reject the cruelty and violence happening to the animals. Everyone should strive to minimize violence as much as possible. As a Jain, I believe all lives are sacred, all lives are interdependent, and we should support each other (humans, animals, and nature).