Our first event was at the Jain Center of Northern California on Aug. 7-8 2010, where vegan speakers such as Gary Francione, Will Tuttle and Bob Linden discussed the practice of ahimsa in a vegan diet. The link to Prof. Francione’s lecture from JAINA in Los Angeles in 2009 is here. Bay Area Vegetarians helped us to plan and present literature and products for display during lunch and afternoon tea. Since Jains are traditionally lacto-vegetarian, we focused on the non-dairy alternatives. We addressed lots of nutritional questions, and will try to continue to do so here at this website. We also had a special handout placed in the event attendees’ bags (Vegan Jain brochure) that focused on veganism for Jains, and had the JAINA Education Committee’s Book of Compassion in both English and Gujarati, (click here for the pdf). We gave out samples of yummy products donated by Turtle Mountain, store bought Whole foods soy yogurt, home-made kulfi (Indian iced dessert), and home-made almond milk. We ended up with a multi-faceted expression of the vegan lifestyle, from formal talks to food tasting, to informal conversation with Jain vegans, to discussion of materials produced by Jain leaders at the national level and other vegan groups. We’ll expand on different elements of the event here and in succeeding posts.
Vegan Jains 