Posted on 07/11/2015 5:29:15 PM PDT by Steelfish
July 9, 2015 Starving Indian Kids Denied Free Eggs Over Religion
MADKHEDA, India -- Clutching battered metal plates, the children waited patiently in a remote central Indian village for the two small flat pieces of bread and scoop of boiled potato curry that would be their only full meal that day.
They are among the 120 million malnourished children across India who depend on a government-run program serving lunch five days a week.
Still, the modest menus are clearly not enough to make up for the calories and nutrition that poverty has denied. All 35 or so children gathered on the dirt floor of their preschool in Madkheda, a village in the state of Madhya Pradesh, show the telltale signs of malnutrition - coarse hair lightened to a sandy brown for lack of nutrients, limbs stick thin, and bellies swollen from chronic hunger.
More than half the children in Madhya Pradesh state, with a population of nearly 77 million, are underweight and malnourished.
So last month, it was suggested that eggs - a key source of protein - be added to the lunch program. But that idea was rejected by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the state's top elected official, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and a strict vegetarian. He suggested that milk and bananas be given to children instead.
"As long I am the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, eggs will not be introduced," Chouhan declared in the state capital, Bhopal. "The human body is meant to consume vegetarian food, which has everything the human body requires."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
The decision is easy for him. It’s not his children who are staring.
I don’t think there is any such thing as a vegetarian mammal that won’t eat meat if available.
In our country we let the government feed children at least two times a day. They don’t serve horsemeat or sheep eyeballs or all sort of things we do not deem acceptable.
The sad fact is that they are malnourished. As I said, if someone over there wants it to be different, well let them step up.
cow?
So if the government said they were to close all food shelters during Lent and Ramadan you would be okay with that?
Yeah I’ve seen cows eat meat on the farm. Obviously they aren’t predators and aren’t equipped to kill or break open a body but if its open and available they will gather around and eat entrails.
I’ve seen squirrels kill and eat baby birds, rabbits eat baby mice.
Chimpanzees have been known to kill and eat invading chimps in their territory.
Not in this country, but that is India, and their people are not doing anything about it.
I do, a big one. Those kids are starving and last time I checked India wasn’t a theocracy. The parents should decide whether their kids are allowed to eat eggs, not some whackjob Minister. He sounds like Michelle Obama.
I don’t honestly care. The people in the area are choosing to let their orphans not have enough protein.
Not necessarily so. When children have food allergies, nutritionists might place them on a strict bananas only diet until the allergen is detected. It is said that humans can survive on bananas alone. (I'm not saying thrive, just survive.)
I don’t see too many people here doing much about how Obama’s food policies are effecting the kids in the ghettos.
You seem to know more about Hinduism than most here. I was born in a Hindu family, in the caste called Kshatriya (warriors) and we are not vegetarians. The other major cast called Brahmin’s are supposed to be vegetarians. But my Brahman friends in college loved eating Mutton Samosa’s and other meat dishes at my house. Not every person is a religious fanatic adhering to rules made thousands of years ago. Tee-bone steak is my favorite item to order in restaurants, but then American cows are not holy, are they?
“The human body is meant to consume vegetarian food.”
Exactly NOT correct.
A significant number of Hindu teachers and practitioners eat eggs, and almost all of them say it's OK for OTHER people to eat eggs if they want to.
It's all politics: trying to force the tribals to live a vegan lifestyle even if their kids are starved for protein.
It’s not the tribals’ culture.
I just know that Eastern Religions are not as structured as the Abrahamic ones are and that the faith is more inwardly driven. As for my deeper knowledge it stops at knowing a couple of the Hindu Gods (or are they Avatars) and that reincarnation is the cursed cycle that should eventually lead to Nirvana or Enlightenment to end the cycle of death and rebirth.
Nor do I, sadly. But I don’t see how that is relevant to this discussion.
Nor is the reaction of the Indian people to this policy relevant to me. I think this is wrong, whether anyone does something about it or not.
Is milk vegetarian?
Really?
Then you'd have no objection to a muslim school principal or superintendent mandating a strict muslim diet for your children at the local public school.
Or perhaps, if your principal was a Satanist, how about forcing your children to drink the blood of a goat?
The religious belief is the officials beliefs...meanwhile, the children starve to death.
I suppose the sacred cow will come and transport them to...vegetarian heaven...or whatever.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.