101: “There’s a caste angle to how animal cruelty works in India” – Karthik Pulugurtha – Fish Welfare Initiative – Sentientism

We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.

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Karthik is MD of the Fish Welfare Initiative, India. He has a background in animal welfare & ethical livelihoods. He is a PhD scholar at the National Academy of Legal Studies & Research in India & previously managed the university’s Animal Law Centre. While there, researched the unethical practices associated with industrialised egg production in India.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”

Sentientism is “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

01:36 Karthik’s Intro

– Humility, curiosity & wonder

– Leading the Fish Welfare Initiative in India

– PhD studying freedom for queer people “I never had the opportunity growing up to fully express myself, be myself”

– How would we take decisions if we had more freedom & hope

04:01 What’s Real?

– A deeply religious Hindu, upper class extended family in South India

– Becoming sceptical of biases like “darker skin meant some kind of bane from god”

– Religion operated in a deeply heteronormative way. Being queer fed the scepticism

– Women in the family with a deep empathy, including for animals

– Being one of the few male vegetarians (most of the women were)

– Brahmin caste dynamics & the “purity” of being vegetarian

– Caste discrimination

– Studying “science, technology & society” & the tools to unlearn the “cultural baggages” and to re-learn a different way re: animal rights

– A very difficult journey but “I would call myself an atheist now”

– “Hinduism had plenty of opportunities to explore queer life but it no longer does”

– Progressive & fundamentalist religious movements

– “Most of the bigotries we’ve subsumed into Hinduism are fairly modern – at least in the Indian context”

– “The most liberating thing for transgender people in this country has been to derive power from a lot of the [Hindu] rituals”… pilgramages

– A scientific way of finding meaning

– “Life is such an anomaly”

– “I find meaning in human actions”

– Going from being bullied to seeing his own students standing up to bullies

– “Homosexuality was recently decriminalised”

– “One of the arcs tending towards a better future”

– “You’re automatically challenged if you have an atheistic worldview”

– “A lot of my relatives… think that I’m homosexual probably because I abandoned god”

– A partner pushed to the brink of suicide by their orthodox Muslim family because of their homosexuality

– “There’s a caste angle to how animal cruelty works in this country”

– Animal sacrifice & killing vermin tasks fall to the lower castes

– “Enormous cruelty in the name of carrying on this legacy”

…and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info and on YouTube.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our “I’m a Sentientist” wall via this simple form.

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Thanks Graham.