Many feel that true nonviolence cannot stop at the human community only, and indeed philosophers in the Ancient world, both Greek and Roman, pointed out that cruelty to animals was only a prelude or enabling factor to cruelty to one’s fellow humans.

Gandhi, who was a vegetarian all his life (with a few adolescent lapses) even felt that “all science based on the shedding of innocent blood was without consequence” ( a theme taken up by many today who would replace, for example, dissection of animals with computer simulation).

For Gandhi, the ‘control of the palate [was] a valuable aid to the control of the mind,’ and indeed advocates of vegetarianism cite issues of cost, ecology (it takes twenty times more protein to get it from an animal than it does to get it directly from a plant) and many others alongside the basic issue of avoidance of cruelty.

Unfortunately, the pursuit of animal rights today is not always carried out by nonviolent means (just as, in India, Gandhi had to decry the killing of Muslims because of their killing of cows).