Vegan India Movement, a pan India collective of grassroots animal liberation activists, organized ARMI (Animal Rights March India) in four different zones of the country on 10th November, to commemorate World Vegan Month.

One of the major objectives of the march was to put forth a set of demands to the government, including granting personhood status to animals, including animal rights and the Indian philosophy of ahimsa in school curricula, revamping the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 to make it stricter, and promoting the growth of plant-based products by providing tax cuts/subsidies to producers who enter the plant-based market.

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Full demands from Animal Rights March India (ARMI) 2019:

1. To accord personhood status to all animals i.e. to grant animals the right to freedom to live as well as safety.

This implicitly and explicitly implies the need:

a) to put an end to the sexual exploitation of all farmed or other animals (including fish) through artificial insemination for forceful breeding in female animals and forceful ejaculation in male animals.

b) to put an end to the export of live land and marine animals and their flesh.

c) to not promote and not open new slaughterhouses, poultry farms, dairy farms, fish farms, and other factory farms, which exploit and commodify animals.

d) to stop gifting live animal for businesses, and to not promote the growth of the ecologically unsustainable animal agricultural industry.

e) to ban testing of household products, medical products and procedures, and their ingredients on animals and to adopt alternative methods to testing on animals that already exist. 

f) to ban the use of all animals in circuses and zoos which would imply to refuse permission to build any new zoos. This also includes prohibiting the breeding of animals that will be put on display for any public entertainment within cages or enclosures within zoos. 

Instead, efforts to protect animals in their natural habitat be doubled, including protecting buffer zones and maintaining forests to a level of resilience where they are impervious to the ill effects of climate change.

 

2. To acknowledge and disseminate knowledge about the cognition of farmed animals and include the place of animals in the ecosystem in school curricula, and include the latest science on animal cognition and the place of animals in the earth's ecology in school curriculums. To include animal rights topics such as the fundamental Indian philosophy of ahimsa, veganism, ethics and morality, speciesism, existing animal rights law, critical animal study, Holocene extinction, 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, hidden truth of animal farming etc. at all levels of education. To modify the current curriculum which portrays animals as commodities as language surrounding animals plays an important role in children’s perception of different animals (linguistic relativity).

3. To revamp the 1960 PCA Act to include all animals and make it strong and effective. To raise awareness in the general public, and educate the law and police departments about existing laws against animal cruelty to ensure implementation and instant and effective action

4. Effort be made to facilitate the growth of nutritious plant-based foods via tax cuts, subsidies and suitable loans for small, micro and medium enterprises venturing into the plant-based food product businesses, and farmer supporting schemes for growing raw materials for the production of alternatives to animal products.

Refer: www.veganindiamovement.com