British Vegetarianism and the Raj

© Dr James R.T.E. Gregory, F.R.Hist.S.

Plymouth University

2005; revised July 2013.

TO BE CITED WITH THE AUTHOR’S PERMISSION

We teach British India that beef and brandy are not necessary elements of
Christian life.1

Vegetarianism, a movement which came to public attention in Britain after the

establishment of the Vegetarian Society in 1847, was frequently attacked by its opponents
in nineteenth-century Britain as ill-suited to a northern climate, or the diet of a dominant,
superior race. A meatless diet signified poverty, and produced a lethargic or indolent
race. Ireland, with its potato-dependence provided an illustration of these arguments.
Such dietetic prejudices, reinforced in works of anthropology, geography and
physiology, were made known to the native populations in British India, with M.K.
Gandhi’s consequent belief as a youth in the superiority of Britons through beef perhaps
the most commonly known instance (Behold the mighty Englishman, | He rules the
Indian Small,|Because being a meat-eater|He is five cubits tall).2 Gandhi’s participation
in London vegetarianism has been studied before, his discovery of a group of British
men and women interested in Indian culture and who were believers in the ‘reformed
diet’ was an important event in the growth of his own appreciation of Indian culture.3 An
earlier response to British attitudes to the vegetarian diet was that of the Hindu reformer
Raja Rammohun Roy (1772‒1833), who had advocated a turn to a mixed diet as a means
to reassert vigour.4
Yet western vegetarianism, as a self-conscious personal and social reform rather than
the force of circumstances, helped encourage, and was itself sometimes part of a more
open-minded relationship with Indian culture, by men and women from Britain, whether
in India or remaining at home. The career of Annie Besant (1847‒1933), sometime
secularist, Fabian, vegetarian, latterly leader of the Theosophists and supporter of Indian
independence, is well known.5 But there were other vegetarians playing a part in
readjusting the relationship between westerners and natives. Colin Spencer, in his
historical survey of vegetarianism, writes of ‘kind of world brotherhood among
vegetarians’ from the 1870s, the Indian societies founded in the late Victorian period are
a neglected, if minor part of this development.6 This essay studies these Indian societies
and their relationship with the British movement, firstly through placing their activity in
the context of British responses to Indian food.

British responses to Indian diet

Partly as a result of dietetic reform movements such as vegetarianism, the ‘proper diet of
man’ was a subject much debated by medical and non-medical people; in such discussion
vegetarianism in India was naturally alluded to. The Lancet reported one such discussion,
by the Medical Society of London in early 1877. Sir Joseph Fayrer, a distinguished
member of the Indian Medical Service, related his experiences of the diet’s effects on

1
native Indians: for strength, endurance and physical development, those from the North
West provinces could compare with any other people.7 By contrast, during the same
debate, another medical expert viewed the leguminous diet as a cause of paralysis
amongst the native Bengali population.8
The debate on the ‘proper diet of man’ concerned India not simply as a source of
illustrations about the perils or virtues of a vegetable diet. British colonialism in the
subcontinent meant that the right diet for transplanted Europeans was a practical
question. The ‘acclimatization question’, the feasibility of Europeans ever being more
than temporary residents in India, involved discussion of diet, clothing and other aspects
of lifestyle.9 As Elizabeth Collingham has recently argued, ‘the body was central to the
colonial experience’.10 A few Anglo-Indian witnesses to the vegetarian truth appear to
have been vegetarians through (or throughout) their Indian careers.11
The ‘otherness’ of Indian foodways had long been known, as the ‘Brahmin’ label for
dietetic radicals in early-nineteenth-century London shows; and had subsequently been
brought home to an educated British public through sources such as Robert Riddell’s
‘domestic economy’ guide catering for Britons settling in India.12 Riddell, in ‘preliminary
remarks’ on ‘Oriental Cookery’ in the early 1850s, contrasted the vegetarianism of
‘Hindoo Sanscrit’ receipts with the ‘free use of meat’ by the ‘Mussulman’. 13 Food was
undoubtedly an important part of the relationship between the natives and the British. It
was one more instance of ‘otherness’, most explosively revealed in the Indian mutiny
itself, with the provocation of alleged pig and cow grease on Enfield rifle cartridges, and
in many instances, in British revenge, of smearing condemned men with pork fat and
enforced eating of taboo meat before execution.14
The ‘frugal Hindoo diet’ had already been dramatically altered by the introduction of
the potato, which the surgeon William Rhind’s History of the Vegetable Kingdom (1841)
claimed was seen as the best gift ever given by Europeans to their Asian subjects. 15 In the
late-nineteenth-century, western infant foods were in demand even amongst the artisans,
shop-keepers and higher labouring classes according to the Bombay doctor Dr Thomas
Blaney, writing in the Times of India, in order to contradict an assertion made by a Hindu
who argued that Mellin’s food would be rejected by famine-stricken Hindus.16 But
Hindus were not simply passive (or grateful) recipients of western botanical largesse; or
consumers of western proprietary foods. The pinjrapoles (animal hospitals) and goshalas
(refuges for cattle) which were established in an ‘upsurge’ in the nineteenth century
represented one reaction to alien habits.17

Vegetarian societies in British India

We have seen that in the early-nineteenth century Rammohun Roy encouraged a mixed
diet to restore Indian power; in the same period the ‘Young Bengalis’ of Calcutta also
associated it with progressiveness.18 In a situation where the ‘eating of beef was very
much a sign of conversion to the Christian faith’ and where ‘westernised Hindus’ might
display their consumption of beef 19; the existence of western vegetarianism provided an
opportunity for the Hindu colonized who refused to abandon their dietetic habits to take
the moral high ground, and to collaborate with moral reformers in Britain in
condemnation of barbaric dietetic habits. This is what happened through the creation of
Indian vegetarian societies from the late 1880s. These demonstrate that ‘the liberal
concept that meat eating was essential for reform in India’ was being challenged before
and independently of Gandhi.20
The first location for this activity was in Bombay, where the Parsi Byramaji Dinshah
Panday attempted to establish a vegetarian society. He circulated a large quantity of
Vegetarian Society literature before creating a Society for the Preservation of Horned Cattle
(Gaurakshah Mandali) in June 1887. This society was presided over by Sir Dinshawji

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Manckji Petit, a Parsi businessman and philanthropist.21 Panday published an Anglo-
Gujerati vegetarian cookery book: Vegetarian Cookery, with Testimony of Eminent Physicians,
Chemists, Naturalists, Physiologists, and sent a copy to the Vegetarian Society.22 The architect
David Gostling, a partner in the firm of Morris and Gostling, and a temperance activist
and theosophist, organised a vegetarian dinner for forty.23
A Punjab Vegetarian Society was established in September 1889, by Lala Durga
Prasad, of Lahore, the publisher of two vegetarian-temperance journals, the Harbinger of
Health (established 1891 and still extant in 1912) and the Urdu Glad Tidings. Prasad’s
vegetarian propaganda needs to be seen, as Kenneth Jones has shown, in the context of
militant Aryanism defined in terms of vegetarianism, and divisions in the 1890s within
the Arya Samaj over non-vegetarian and vegetarian diet.24 The Harbinger was initially
owned by the Punjab Vegetarian Society; when it was made over to the editor the scope
was enlarged to attract more readers but it never made any profit.25 To judge from the
reviews in the British vegetarian press, it was earnest but sometimes inaccurate, as for
instance in its belief there existed a Christian sect called the ‘Fruitarians’ led by a
Scotsman called M’Donald!26 Thacker’s Indian Directory listed the paper from 1895, where
its objects were described as ‘social, political and general news’.27 Prasad published
articles in the British Vegetarian Messenger in 189528, and the Vegetarian received two
pamphlets from Lahore in 1897: the Physical Evils of Flesh eating and Doctrine of Re-
incarnation.29 Prasad was described by the Vegetarian as the ‘leading spirit’ in the Dayanand
Institute which (named after the Gujarati Swami Dayanand Saraswati) attempted to teach
the Vedas along with university studies.30 He was listed as the President of the Arya
Samaj in Lahore in 1895.31 Its journal, so British vegetarians were told, endorsed
vegetarianism.32 The journal of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association reported
Prasad as ‘a very wise and liberal president’ of the Kayastha Temperance Club which was
established in Lahore in June 1890.33 He was evidently a member of the Kayastha caste, a
‘hereditary literary caste’ of professionals and clerks which comprised some two and half
million in the 1890s.
The president of the Punjab vegetarian society in 1892 was a theosophist and
homoeopathic physician, Dr Leopold Salzer (originally from Vienna), who was also
involved in the ‘Calcutta Psychoreligious Society’.34 Other members (as vice-presidents)
included a vice-president of the Arya Samaj of Punjab, Lala Khushi Ram MA35, and a
Sikh aristocrat, Sirdar Umrao Singh Majisthria (Majithia).36 From abroad were the
theosophist and women’s right activist Miss Frances Henrietta Müller, BA (1823–1900),
and the fruitarian Dr Josiah Oldfield (1863–1953) of England, the American health
reformers Kellogg of Battle Creek and Dr Martin Luther Holbrook.37 From c. 1894 one
of the vice-presidents was the supporter of Indian nationalism, Allan Octavian Hume,
and the Vegetarian reprinted an address from the Punjab V.S. members to their
‘Illustrious and benevolent Vice President’, who was at the time ill, which spoke of his
‘Philanthropic mission of equalising the Indian and European rights throughout the
length and breadth of the great Indian Empire is quite superhuman … No human history
has to show a single instance to compare with your angelic example … You dare the
British lion to defend the Indian lamb … you love our people as we do, in short, you eat
the same food as we do. Our Vegetarian cause triumphs in you’.38
Despite Hume’s involvement, there were no new members, income or expenditure
for the whole year in 1894. Meetings held at the Khatri Samacher Press were attended by
outsiders rather than members.39 But in December the society’s fourth anniversary was
celebrated by musical bands, a procession through the main markets of Lahore, papers,
addresses and an exhibition of games and Indian magic.40 And from 1895 the society’s
officers were listed in Thacker’s.41 In 1896 the president was the teetotaler J.J. Tustin
(1816‒1899).42 The treasurer was J.O. Quinton (who had been an invalid, and who also

3
had a home at Redhill, Surrey) and the honorary secretary Kirpa Shankar Bataline.43 A
new secretary was Lala Jagat Rhannah, in the Maharaja’s service at Jammu, whilst the
assistant secretary (Lala Prabhu Ran), worked in the Railway Office at Karachi, and was
described as a ‘capital speaker’ and a living example.44 The chairman of the Executive
Committee at Lahore was to be Prasad.45 By 1899, when some of the personnel had left,
the society had eleven officers and members in total, so it was hardly large. It was
affiliated to the Manchester Vegetarian Society and Vegetarian Federal Union, but Prasad
seems to have had only a hazy idea of the progress of the British movement since he
believed there were thousands of ‘learned and good men’ involved.46 Its vice presidents
included two Americans, Kellogg of Battle Creek and Holbrook, and Josiah Oldfield, the
friend of Gandhi. It continued into the Edwardian period, with British and American
food reformers such as Dr James M. Peebles of Los Angeles (president in 1912), the
journalist Lucy A.R. Mallory of Oregon, and the British vegetarian entrepreneur and
mesmerist Chandos Leigh Hunt Wallace as vicepresidents.47
The ‘Natural Living Vegetarian Society’ was established in Bombay in the early 1890s,
with European and Indian members and no race distinction in membership.48 David
Gostling was the President, his wife Sarah, a socialist and theosophist, was also a
member.49 Byramaji Dinshah Panday was the treasurer and P.D. Jassawalla as the
honorary secretary.50 The society’s formation followed repeated requests by the
Vegetarian Society, according to Dr Johangir K. Daji, a Parsi who was the general
secretary of the Central Indian Section of the Theosophical Society in 1891, and a
supporter of temperance reform, and who spoke at the inaugural meeting.51 Daji believed
the society would be useful in the education of the native vegetarians in the ‘physiology
of digestion’ and the ‘chemistry of food’. Moral considerations, the fact that the diet had
been advocated by sages, philosophers and rishis of the past, were pressed by another
participant.52 The society’s name was chosen to avoid the idea that they were promoting
a solely vegetable diet. The establishment was noted in several Indian papers, including
one which satirized the establishment with the conceit of a ‘Beefsteak and Mutton Chop
Society’.53
Other vegetarian societies were formed, though they appear to have been short-lived:
there was one at Hyderabad, and at Karachi, Lala Prabhu Ran planned a vegetarian
‘Railway Society’ in 1896.54 A ‘Calcutta Vegetarian Society’, was established in 1887 and a
Delhi ‘Temperance and Vegetarian Association’ was listed as an affiliate of the Anglo-
Indian Temperance Association from 1893‒1904.55 In 1893 it members were reported as
mostly native Indians, but one officer was the Reverend Samuel S. Allnut (1850–1917),
the headmaster of St Stephen’s College, Delhi.56 Yet the local ‘Good Templar’
temperance organisation (‘Star of Delhi’) felt unable to join it because it was comprised
of British soldiers who ‘cannot very well be vegetarians.57
Prasad’s connection of vegetarianism with temperance was a natural link in the
vegetarian movement as a whole; in India the temperance cause was seen as a progressive
movement, in association with such reforms as remarriage for widows.58 The Hindu
religious reformer, Keshum Chunder Sen (1838‒1884), the leader of a section of Raja
Rammohun Roy’s Bengali ‘Brahmo Samaj’ or ‘Native Unitarian Christians’ was an
advocate of temperance for Indians and was the guest of British temperance
organisations during his visit in 1870.59 He was also a corresponding secretary for the
Vegetarian Society in 1871. The eminent Bombay Parsi and Liberal party candidate for
Holborn, Dadabhai Naoroji, had established the ‘Anglo-Indian Temperance Association’
with the two MPs, Samuel Smith and W.S. Caine, in 1888, but it was never a strong
movement in the subcontinent.60 The Association’s quarterly journal, Abkari, an English-
language publication, avoided any detailed encounter with vegetarianism, despite being
briefly edited by a vegetarian (H.J. Osborn), attracting the support of prominent British

4
vegetarians such as the Unitarian Professor F.W. Newman, and profiling the London
vegetarian leader Arnold Frank Hills.61 Apart from the fact that meat-eating was not
perceived to be the problem for British reformers of the Raj, perhaps this avoidance of
dietetic matters was because most of its sponsors might have been embarrassed that
most British teetotallers did not become vegetarian.62
The theosophists’ fascination with India possibly helped reinforce sympathies, since
theosophy provided recruits to the food reform cause. The theosophical movement
(established by Helena Blavatsky in 1875) was perhaps an influence in the formation of
the Indian societies, as it was in the West.63 Salzer and Gostling were theosophists, and
the Indian civil servant and political reformer Allan Octavian Hume (1829–1912) had
been drawn to the movement.64 But European theosophists in India were not
automatically vegetarian, though the reformed diet was seen as a natural step in
theosophy.65 The English-language Indian theosophical journals rarely discussed
vegetarianism.66
The societies established were small, but the vegetarian journals in Britain inevitably
advertised them. Vegetarians were often humanitarians rather than merely dyspeptics
who had found a dietetic remedy, support for Indian efforts expressed a belief in the
brotherhood of man and also helped reinforce confidence in the inevitability of a cause
which was not overwhelmed by new recruits, although it was certainly growing in this
period.

Indian comments on British vegetarianism

Not only were societies established in India, but there were Indian vegetarian visitors to
Britain. The Bengali Hindu Keshub Sunder Sen (1838–1884) was fêted by the Vegetarian
Society, and his dietary habits advertised by a Unitarian minister, Robert Spears, in
handbills in 1870.67 An important Indian theosophical connection with Britain was
Mohin M. Chatterji, an influence on W.B. Yeats and his circle in Dublin, whose essay on
vegetarianism and Christianity in India was published in the vegetarian annual in 1886.68
It was not simply a case of missions to India, or the reporting of news from the
subcontinent therefore, but a dietetic conversation, where Indians could be outspoken
too. The ‘pilgrim reformer’ Behramji M. Malabari discussed English food in his study of
English life (1893), concluding that the food was ‘an exhibition of barbarism, not unlikely
to develop the brute instincts in man’. He was critical of the London vegetarian
restaurants and hotels, suggested that Indian cooks would help attract new customers,
and that ‘Anglo-Indian ladies ought to set the example to their sisters’.69 Another Indian
visitor told a vegetarian lady ‘I do admire an English woman who has the courage to be
Humanitarian, with all the weight of public opinion and social custom against her.’70
The Indian press also commented on the British movement. The Indian Social Reformer
(Madras), an organ for ‘social reformers’ promoting marriage reform and female
emancipation, western education and open-mindedness to the benefits of western
civilisation, discussed British vegetarianism. In its fourth year (1894) it listed amongst its
opponents Europeans, missionaries, the bulk of the Indian community, the orthodox
Hindu, and the ‘theoretical radical ... because we do not advocate a meat diet’.71 In its
attempts to end the rigid caste system it supported efforts such as ‘interdining’: where
Brahmins prepared food for other castes, and attacked Brahmins for hypocrisy through
reference to those engaging ‘in liquor and tinned-meat trade’.72 A ‘Bengali gentlemen’
informed readers that a decline in Brahminical rigour in Bengal meant that the
consumption of meat and fish resulted in no horror, compared with contemporary
Madras.73 Interestingly, in discussing the virtues of assimilation the paper used the
metaphor of digestion. Anglo-Saxon culture must be assimilated, but ‘food and the

5
feeder are only relative terms as applied to nations. The Anglo Saxon race itself has to
digest other nationalities with ancient civilisations and with gentler ideals.’ 74
The Vegetarian was sent weekly to the Indian Social Reformer’s editor, and the London
vegetarians sent copies of the reprint of John Frank Newton’s The Return to Nature; or, a
Defence of the Vegetable Regimen (1811) and Professor John E.B. Mayor of Cambridge’s Plain
Living and High Thinking.75 The Vegetarian’s interviews with celebrities such as Annie
Besant were reprinted.76 Admittedly, the social reformers had more important campaigns
against child marriages, sexual abuse in marriage and female oppression, the caste system
and bigoted anti-westernism. But food was identified as a central concern of Brahminism
and ‘interdining’ reflected the significance of the politics of feeding. Temperance was
seen as an important campaign, vegetarianism as a treasured Hindu practice.77 The
journal denied the claim made by the Theosophic Thinker that social reformers were
opposed to an ‘exclusive vegetarian diet’.78 It was ‘decidedly opposed to the ‘Forward
policy’ that has been in progress among us in regions dietetic’ and extending the
imperial/ dietetic metaphor, queried whether eggs would be ‘brought within the sphere
of our Influence?’79 Most directly, it asserted: ‘we had far rather remain what we are then
be bolstered up by beef and beer to fill a greater space, it may be, in the eye of the world,
but not a higher one. We shall gain nothing by being false to our own best instincts.’80
The English language press in India has not been extensively examined, and the
native-language press is entirely inaccessible to this author, but such obviously distinctive
western habits as meat-eating and drinking of alcohol were probably discussed; and the
British vegetarian movement probably commented on, in the late-nineteenth century.81
The Vegetarian Messenger in 1890, for instance, covered the vegetarian and humanitarian
efforts of several Indians. P.D. Jussawalla discussed vegetarianism in the Times of India (9
June 1890), vegetarianism was advocated by Maneki R. Jila, and by the theosophist
Johangir K. Daji (June 17) in the Bombay Gazette. Knight read Daji’s letter to the Annual
Meeting of the Vegetarian Society at Manchester in October 1890.82 The Allahabad
Morning Post of 5 March 1890 discussed vegetarianism and made reference to the British
movement.83 In the early-twentieth century a ‘high class journal for Home’ produced in
English for a Vedic readership, joined Prasad’s Harbinger in being expressly devoted to
vegetarianism and other causes (monotheism, cremation, ‘scientific living’ and purity of
body, mind and soul’).84 It had ‘eclipsed every other Monthly Magazine by being Bigger,
Brighter, Better, Cheaper, Chaster, Charier, New Ideas, New Sizing, New Method’.
An Indian representative was present at one convention of the late-Victorian
Christian vegetarian-cum-purity ‘Order of the Golden Age’; P.N. Chakraburtty, the
editor of ‘An Anglo-Indian Religious, Ethical, Temperance and Humanitarian Monthly
and the Native Pioneer of an Eastern Christianity’.85 Chakraburtty was a Bengali
Christian missionary, having had ten years experience by 1896, including five years in
connection with the Salvation Army.86 He presented his philanthropy as work in the
interests of ‘Indian and Ceylon’. The short-lived Atmik, edited and managed by him, was
‘an Eastern Interpretation of the teachings and Ethics of Christ’, promoting spiritual
religion, peace, temperance and brotherhood. The Christian World praised the new journal
as of ‘interest to all who wish to see India Christianised’. The Atmik covered
vegetarianism along with articles and letters on vivisection, the opium problem (he had
been involved in anti-opium campaigns in India), temperance and the peace movement.
From issue number three until its demise, most of the advertisements were vegetarian:
the Vegetarian, Vegetarian Review, and the vegetarian Oriolet Hospital in Essex. Probably
because the shaky financial basis of the venture was limited to vegetarians, Chakraburtty
emphasized his pro-vegetarian sympathies, not simply identifying food reform as a
necessary sympathy for missionaries, but also as an important cure for England’s woes:
‘England’s animalism, including warlike disposition, drunkenness, have a great deal to do

6
with flesh-eating’. In an editorial he wrote that ‘All that present England cares for are
Bottle, Flesh-Food and Gunpowder’. Vegetarianism was one of the ‘different means’ to
the same end; ‘Brother Reformers’ included ‘Rational Food’ reformers.
Indian students studying at Oxbridge or in London, could provide recruits for British
vegetarian campaigns.87 Most famously, there was Gandhi, who was one of several
hundred Indian students studying in London. He organised a short-lived London branch
society, with the support of the orientalist Sir Edwin Arnold. He sent a letter to Indians
in Britain calling for their support for the London Vegetarian Society and the Vegetarian.88
In Natal he was to urge resident Indian support for the British vegetarian movement,
claiming that the movement was aiding India politically, as the ‘English Vegetarians will
more readily sympathize with the Indian aspirations’; that such support would create a
bond of sympathy in a carnivorous country and so increase the circles of friends; and
protect the Indian abroad from temptation (relieving parental worries) through the access
to vegetarian medical treatment and commodities. He suggested that a hearty response
would encourage the vegetarian to establish an Indian column which would benefit
Indians.89 He used the Vegetarian to highlight the colour prejudice against Indians in the
South African colony, and sent copies of the Vegetarian to most libraries each week. The
vegetarians had the opportunity, he wrote, of doing patriotic work by showing that
Indians, so crucial for labour in the non-temperate imperial territories, could be
‘indissolubly united by the chain of love’ with the British.90

British vegetarians on India

Vegetarianism did not necessarily require an oriental justification, since precursors could
be found in the Old Testament Daniel, in Pythagoras and other figures familiar to
western culture. But ethnological research during the Enlightenment revealed the worlds
of contrast in human foodways, and showed large numbers of humankind existing on
near meatless diets. Before the word ‘vegetarian’ was coined during the 1840s, the
meatless diet had been described satirically as ‘Brahmin’, in relation to the radical circles
in London.91 One of the earliest instances of an eastern influence in a British vegetarian’s
reformed diet, was that of the radical John Oswald (who died in 1793), who had
converted to Hinduism after having travelled in India, according to another,
contemporary, vegetarian, Joseph Ritson.92 Thomas I.M. Forster (1789‒1860), a friend of
Shelley who settled in Belgium, in a testimony to the Vegetarian Society in 1855 recorded
his own debt at the age of twelve to a reading of Hindu literature. 93 The Owenite journal,
The New Moral World, in correspondence on the similarities between Christianity and
Krishna, drew attention to vegetarianism. Charles Lane of the vegetarian ‘Concordium’ at
Ham Common in Surrey which flourished in the early 1840s, wrote articles for the
Bengal Chamber of Commerce at Calcutta. The early vegetarian journal Truth Tester
published correspondence from a teetotaler in Calcutta who was vegetarian.94 The
journal’s successor, the Vegetarian Advocate, published an article on Indian vegetarianism
and a subscription from a ‘Rechabite’ (teetotaler) in Calcutta.
In the Vegetarian Society’s early days there were few direct links with Indian
vegetarians. In 1854 literature was sent by Sorabjee Jejeebhoy, a son of the Parsi
philanthropist and reformer Sir Jansetjee Jejeebhoy of Bombay (1783‒1859). Sorabjee
had published Rahé Parsa, or, a guide to the religious: being a translation from various wlrks in
Zend, Pehlvi, Arabic, Persian, English, Latin and Sanskrit (Jame-jamshed Press, 1853), a
vegetarian treasury which included quotations from such sources as the Bible, the
classicist George Grote, and John Smith of Malton’s well-known vegetarian work, Fruits
and Farinacea.95 In 1858 the Vegetarian Society’s president, James Simpson, received a
letter from one Futaychund Khemchund from the city of Ahmedabad in Gujerat, who

7
had heard about the Vegetarian Society from reading this work and wished to receive a
copy of the Vegetarian Messenger, its annual report and a catalogue of its publications.96
The most dramatic incident to disturb the Raj, the ‘mutiny’ of 1857‒9, naturally
concerned British vegetarians because of the episode’s connection with food, and
because of their humanitarian sympathies. The Vegetarian Society was delighted when a
few British journals acknowledged that affront to religious sensibilities was a significant
factor.97 But British vegetarianism was referred to slightingly on several occasions in the
national press. The Leader thought the mutiny deprived vegetarians of the argument that
a reformed diet elevated the individual. The Commonwealth saw it as ‘Terrible News for
Total Abstainers’.98 ‘We have Vegetarians at home,’ said the Glasgow Daily Bulletin, ‘who
say that the Sepoys are right in rejecting the flesh of cow or pig’. The Bulletin considered
it a ‘very ancient and low superstition’.99 The Vegetarian Messenger was delighted with the
endorsement of native diet by the commander in chief of the Indian Army, Sir Colin
Campbell.100
An interest in India was clear in the late-Victorian vegetarian journals, with a number
of articles published on Indian affairs. It is true that the American-born hygienic
entrepreneur Dr Thomas Low Nichols did not reveal any great interest in India in his
journal Herald of Health, though he once noted having gone to see the ‘very mild Hindoos
at the Albert Palace’. Indian vegetarianism was reported in the Vegetarian Messenger but the
Manchester-based Vegetarian Society had less Indian tit-bits than the journals of the late-
Victorian London movement.101 The earlier London-produced Food Reform Magazine
claimed to have an international readership which included India; later, in 1894 the
London Vegetarian Society considered whether to establish a depot for literature in
Calcutta.102 In 1893 there was an article in its organ, the smartly produced Vegetarian,
from ‘our special correspondent in Kathiawar district’ with the startling title ‘English
misrule in India’: this turned out to be a requirement for legal practitioners to renew their
qualification by annual payment.103 There was a series of articles on Hindu diet by John
Ablett, ‘assisted by Pandit J.C. Roychoudhuri’ in 1895.104 There were articles such as
‘Snake Terror in India’, by the zoophilist Sidney G. Trist (who was editor of the Animal
World), in 1896.105 Raymond Blaythwayt’s interview with the well-known Parsi MP,
Dadabhai Naoroji, himself no vegetarian, was published in 1898.106 The theosophist
Hector Waylen also sent a series of articles from India in 1896 in which he was critical of
the Anglo-Indian diet of insipid butter, poor beef and mutton, ‘dyspeptic’ puddings and
alcohol (Waylen would abandon his own strict vegetarianism of the fruitarian and sandal-
wearing variety, after eight years).107
Other articles in the Vegetarian touched on the Indian relationship with animals and
the subcontinent’s understanding of the position of man in nature, and stressed that the
emancipation of women was the keynote of India’s liberty.108 In 1897 there was a regular
column on ‘Progressive Thought Periodicals’ which covered the Indian Social Reformer and
the Lahore Harbinger. An article by Rakhal Chunder Sen MCPSB from the Indian Mirror
was reprinted, in which he discussed the connection between diet and bubonic plague.
The hotbeds, he argued, were in meat-eating areas: ‘the Mahomedanized, Anglicized or
the so-called advanced members of our society’.109 Copies of the Vegetarian had been sent
to Bengal from the early 1890s, and were being sent by request, to an ‘esteemed Indian
correspondent’ at the Bahadur Khanji Library, c. 1899, the Library remitted the costs in
recognition of the paper’s promotion of a ‘sacred cause’.110 ‘It is a very great satisfaction
to find [the] educated West take such intelligent interest in one of the cherished
institutions of the East’, wrote another Indian correspondent, a Bengali deputy
magistrate.111
The vegetarian/ puritan Herald of the Golden Age discussed Indian vegetarianism, and
many Indians were members of the Order or subscribers during its existence. Its interest

8
in India partly stemmed from the esoteric interests of its founder, Sidney Hartnoll Beard,
who studied Eastern religion. Another active member was Josiah Oldfield (1863‒1953),
Gandhi’s friend, and a man who had travelled to India in 1901 to investigate the effect of
English rule on the subcontinent. The Indian Messenger, the Herald reported in 1898,
thought it (The Order of the Golden Age) was a ‘Good movement’ at a time when
‘European vices are fast getting admission into native Indian society’. A native teacher at
a Methodist College in India wrote to the Herald deploring the corruption of Indian
habits through European vices.112 The journal published a letter from the veteran,
English-born American vegetarian, H.S. Clubb (1827‒1921), noting the progress of
Buddhism in Christian nations in the form of theosophy, and the contrasting failure of
Christian missions in the East, drawing the conclusion that it was the European
aggressiveness (and failure to emulate Christ) that was the reason for the disparity.
Bayonets, bullets, ironclads and Krupp guns were alien to the Buddhist ethos. Shortly
after this letter was published, the journal ran a serial on Buddhism by the theosophist
Thomas Muse.113 Nusserwanji Framji Bilimoria sent the editor a copy of a Parsi monthly
journal called Gujerat Cherag (The Lamp) in 1900, which advocated vegetarianism and
temperance amongst other causes, especially for the community’s children and women;
and had extracts from the Herald of the Golden Age.114
If the journals of the movement discussed vegetarianism in India, and reported
literary associations, fictional discussion of vegetarianism also involved the sub-
continent. J.A. Parker, the former editor of the Calcutta Indian Daily News and associate
of Vegetarian Society, for instance, featured a vegetarian discussion between an
Englishman, Lord Broadacres, and a ‘Bengal Evangelist’, Shumboo Nath Pundit, M.A, in
his novel Ernest England (1895). The Bengali, under the influence of hypnotism, abandons
his ‘prettily turned compliments’ to the peer’s countrymen and tells the truth about
empire and British society, condemning missionary effort as hypocrisy on the part of
moribund western Christianity: ‘Goody-goody, molly coddle, gelatinous, top-hat
platitudes’ is contrasted with a more ‘real’ and vital Christianity in some of the
obligations of a Hindu.

Still, in palliation of our dietetic blunder, I have to plead that the bulk of my
countrymen, reverent in the presence of all life, prefer to see the buck, with
his soft eye and lithe limbs, roaming the wild, to having his bleeding
haunches dished up at Table. 115

Such sympathies for the Indian viewpoint were expressed in concrete form. The London
vegetarians held a meeting on colour prejudice in India, chaired by Josiah Oldfield, at the
Memorial Hall (the Vegetarian headquarters, and also a central location for reform
meetings more generally) in Farringdon Street in London in 1893. It was, so the
Vegetarian noted, a subject which had not received ‘half enough attention’ that it should
have done from the government. The Indian speakers (T.J. Desai, J.J. Desai and C.H.
Vora, the later became Principal of the Kala Bhavan Technical Institute in Baroda) were
commended for their fairness and dignity, for the absence of any ‘sensational harangue’
or ‘note of rebellion’.116 T.J. Desai, M.R.A.S., (address Common Room, Middle Temple)
who had been living in England for some time, wrote in ‘defence of India’ and about the
‘British Empire’ in the Vegetarian.117 Papers before the Vegetarian Federal Union included
discussions of Indian vegetarianism.118
In 1894 there was vegetarian dinner at the Ideal Club attended by a Mr Varma of
Bombay in ‘Indian costume’.119 The 1880s‒1890s saw the growth of metropolitan and
provincial vegetarian restaurants, but as yet there were no India restaurants to promote
vegetarian cuisine through Indian dishes.120 Returning Anglo-Indians, whose diet

9
included a significant quantity of lentils (‘Rice and lentils for breakfast, rice and lentils for
lunch and so on’), and whose experience might make them vegetarian adherents back in
Britain, deplored the quality of the vegetarian food.121
In addition, vegetarians who went out to India took it upon themselves to spread the
food reform gospel to passengers en route, and to Anglo Indians in the subcontinent and
elsewhere in South East Asia. Thus Alfred Cornelius Newcombe I.C.S., was preparing
for private circulation in India, a neat vegetarian pamphlet in 1890.122 The vegetarian and
teetotal activist T.H. Evans addressed native Christians on vegetarianism in Madras in
1892. Bertram K. Adams, a government engineer in Ceylon, distributed vegetarian
literature and proselytized on his journey out in 1898.123
Vegetarians did not treat Indians as mere heathens. An opposition to bigotry in
missionary work was expressed on several occasions in vegetarian journals: although a
Scottish member of the Vegetarian Society was announced as intending to be a
missionary in India in 1878, Christian missionaries were urged to show more respect for
the dietetic habits of vegetarian Indians (and Chinese).124 A correspondent pointed out to
the Vegetarian that a Miss Frances Martin who was going out as a missionary in Kolhapur
was sensitive to native dietetic beliefs.125 Prasad’s Harbinger noted a lady missionary at
Calcutta who had impressed native Indians because of her vegetarianism, which had
become very widely known, and noted the vegetarianism of a Bombay mission, as
reported in its monthly organ, the India Watchman.126

Conclusion
At the end of the Victorian era, as a sign of a growing international vegetarian movement
(and its pretensions), and perhaps of the developing relationship between British and
Indian ‘progressives’, Indian vegetarians were enrolled in the ‘Vegetarian Federal Union’,
which had quickly become an international organisation. The Kayastha caste (to which
Durga Prasad of Lahore belonged, as we have seen) had embraced organised temperance
in the 1890s, and the ‘Kayastha Vegetarian Society’, with ‘5, 000, 000’ members, became
affiliated in 1898.127 Some of the ‘Small Indians’ of the doggerel (whatever the actual
number), were thus able to find a basis of brotherhood and common purpose with the
‘mighty Englishman’ which has been overlooked in the past. Elements of the metropole
had turned to the sub-continent to find kinship in dietetic ideals. Of course, these
vegetarian associations were limited in scale, and a more widespread association between
diet and national identity was being made by Hindu nationalists who found the sacred
cow (and Gomata, ‘Mother Cow’), as in previous national struggles, a potent emblem of
the struggle to protect and liberate India.128

©James Gregory, 2007; revised 2013.

Plymouth University
e.mail: james.r.gregory@plymouth.ac.uk

10
 Endnotes

1 The Times, 13 January 1885, Vegetarian Society meeting at Exeter Hall.

2 M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography. The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston: Beacon Press,
1957). Sarah Grand the ‘New Woman’ novelist, in an interview with Raymond Blaythwayt for
the Vegetarian, 20 August 1898, noted that ‘educated Eastern people’ she knew, had thought
of a meat diet as a way of making their people ‘fiercer’.
3 A recent examination of Gandhi’s vegetarianism appears in Parama Roy’s article, ‘Meat-
eating, Masculinity; and Renunciation in India: a Gandhian Grammar of Diet’, in Gender and
History, vol.14:1, April 2002. See also S. Hay, ‘The Making of a late Victorian Hindu: M.K.
Gandhi in London, 1888‒1891, Victorian Studies, (Autumn 1989), 33:1 (1989), pp.74-98 which
discusses in detail his association with London vegetarian and theosophical circles. See
Gandhi, Autobiography, chs. 13, 15 and 18; and G. Ashe, Gandhi. A Study in Revolution (London:
Heinemann, 1968), pp.33-45. See L.S.S. O’Malley, ed., Modern India and the West. A Study of the
Interaction of the Civilisations (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), p.766 for a quotation
from S. Banerjea’s A Nation in Making (1925) where the comment ‘Everything English was
good- even the drinking of brandy was a virtue’ is made.
4 Additional Queries respecting the condition of India (28 September 1831) republished in The English
Works of… edited by Jogendra Chinder Ghose, vol.2 (Calcutta: Bhowanipore-Aruna Press,
1887): ‘… if the people of India were to be induced to abandon their religious prejudices, and
thereby become accustomed to the frequent and common use of a moderate proportion of
animal food…the physical qualities of the people might be very much improved’. On
Rammohun Roy, see K.W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (New
Cambridge History of India, Part III, vol.1, Cambridge University Press).
5 For her vegetarianism, see A. Besant, Vegetarianism in the Light of Theosophy, 1894. A cartoon
depicting her several stages on the road to theosophy shows her being showered in
vegetables, before being transformed into an Indian, complete with sari and nose earring, see
Janet Oppenheim, ‘The Odyssey of Annie Besant’, History Today, 39 (September 1989), p.18.
6 C. Spencer, The Heretic’s Feast, p.274.
7 The Lancet, 17 March 1877, p.391.
8 The Lancet, 8 March 1879, p.348. This was in the course of a discussion of ‘economic
dietaries’, in which reference was made to the dangerous breads of ‘the early days of our
agriculture’.
9 B.S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1996), ch.5. The anthropologist W.Z. Ripley, in his Lowell Institute Lectures,
Columbia University, 1896 criticised ‘Teutons’ for insisting on their usual meat allowance in
the tropics, contrasting this with Spanish, Italians and especially Chinese who ate the lighter
foods and were thus acclimatized, see The Races of Europe. A Sociological Study (London: Kegan,
Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1899), p.563. See C.D. Mitchell, On Intemperance and European Habits in
India (n.d. [1845], Calcutta), p.18: ‘I feel perfectly convinced that it is in a great measure
owing to the gourmandizing, feasting and imbibing of those who settle in this country,
coupled with a general life of indolence, that we so rarely see the bleached head of an
honoured age’.
10 E.M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies. The Physical Experience of the Raj, c.1800‒1947 (Cambridge:
Polity, 2001), p.2. Collingham touches on vegetarianism, pp.26-8, pp.55-56.
11 Surgeon General Francis, in India during the famine 1874, had 3 vegetarian children, see his
support in the Food Reform Magazine, 1881. An Anglo-Indian Major Menars (1818‒?), a
teetotal from 1850, homeopath since 1875, was vegetarian from 1875. George P. Sanderson,
superintendent of Kheddahs at Mysore, and author of Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of
India, was vegetarian, see the obituary in Times of India, 27 May 1892. On the other hand,
Colonel J.M. Earle, late of the Indian Army, was vegetarian only after reading about it in
phonographic publications, London c.1875. An Anglo-Indian ‘Gentleman now in Ireland’,
1894 wanted vegetarian pamphlets after being advised to leave off meat; he had despised
vegetarian dishes in India, but now wishes he had access, Vegetarian Messenger, 1894, pp.4-5.

11
12 But this did not automatically result in discussion of vegetarianism, see, for instance, ‘Ketab’,
Indian Dishes for English Tables (London: Chapman and Hall, 1902) which, if it avoided any
commentary on the foods, certainly avoided using the ‘vegetarian’ label for its recipes.
13 R.F. Ridell, Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book (3rd edn, revised, Bombay Gazette Press,
1852), p.351.
14 See L. James, Raj. The Making and Unmaking of British India (Little, Brown and Company,
1997), p.235: ‘They saw the distribution of food as a token that in the near future the
Company would end all distinctions of caste and religion and that everyone would share a
common diet … This prediction was a variation on an old but persistent theme: the
Company’s secret plans to impose Christianity on India.’ On the revenge, see pp.251-2.
15 W. Rhind, History of the Vegetable Kingdom. Embracing the Physiology, Classification, and Culture of
Plants, with their various uses to Man and the Lower Animals and their Application in the Arts,
Manufactures, and Domestic Economy (London: Blackie, 1841), p.276.
16 Letter reproduced in Indian Social Reformer, 28 November 1897, pp.103-104 (‘But is it not
strange that Europeans in foreign countries should be providing foreign foods to build up
the strength and stamina of the people of India, and that Europeans should be the
instruments of saving the lives of the infant population, especially the Hindu population?’),
see also 14 November 1897, p.81.
17 See D.O. Lodrick, Sacred Cows, Sacred Places. Origins and Survivals of Animal Homes in India
(Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1981), p.69. Lodrick
indicates other factors behind their creation, but stresses the cultural confrontation, p.69, in
which cattle assumed a symbolic importance (against Muslim Mughals and Christian
westerners).
18 R. Chaudhuri, ‘Young India: A Bengal Eclogue: Or Meat-Eating, Race, and Reform in a
Colonial ’, Interventions, 2:3 (2000), pp.424-441.
19 D.O. Lodrick, Sacred Cows, Sacred Places, p.69. Lodrick does not have any footnotes for this
section of his study.
20 Chaudhuri, ‘Young India: A Bengal Eclogue’, p.430, argues that it was Gandhi who created a
nationalist consensus that inverted this ‘liberal concept’, but ignores the evidence for
vegetarianism being defended by liberal and reformist Indians, detailed below.
21 See Petit’s biography, Illustrated London News, 1 April 1887.
22 See Vegetarian Messenger, July 1890, pp.202-206, August 1890, pp.228-238. Knight also had
forwarded to him, through Frederick Pincott (Indian Social Reformer, 2 August 1895, p.24: ‘an
old friend of Indian political reform’), material from Lala Mohan Lal of Farrukhabad, on the
preservation of cattle, see Vegetarian Messenger, December 1890, p.371. On Panday, see
Supplement to The Theosophist, July 1891, for accounts of the activities of the Bombay Branch,
14 April 1891, p.lxxxix.
23 Vegetarian Messenger, August 1890, p.246.
24 The Harbinger, and his The Principles of Religion, Morality, Happiness and Health were received by
the Vegetarian, 1903, p.55. On the vegetarian activity of Prasad, see ‘Transitions: Toward the
20th century’, ch.6 in K.W. Jones, Arya Dharm. Hindu Consciousness in 19th-century Punjab
(London: University of California Press, 1976).
25 Vegetarian Messenger, January 1895, p.51.Vegetarian Messenger, April 1898, p.161.
26 Vegetarian, 17 April 1897, p.171, from information allegedly sent by an Australian ‘Professor
of memory’.
27 ‘Newspaper and Periodical Directory’, in Thacker’s Indian Directory, 1895-1900. In 1900 its
objects were described as ‘Vegetarianism, temperance, monotheism, social reform, etc.’
28 On rice-eaters and the conquest of India: Prasad argued from the rice-eating Telungos of
Deccan who assisted the English and asserted that English military success was not through
beef but education.
29 The India Office Library Catalogue, vol.1, suppl.2 (1895-1919, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode)
lists twelve works by Prasad: Guide to Legal Translations, 1869 and 1874; A Triumph of Truth.
Autobiography of Maharishi Swami Dayamand Saraswati, 1889; Reason and Instinct, 1889; Manu and
Vegetarianism, 1891; The Doctrine of Re-incarnation, 1891; Maharishi Swami Dayamand Saraswati,

12
 1892; The Principles of Religion, Morality, Happiness and Health etc, 1903. The British Library
catalogue lists him (as ‘Durga Prasada’) as Manager of Virjanand Press, Lahore, 1891.
30 Vegetarian Messenger, October 1895. This is to be identified with the Anglovedic college, where
a European curriculum was combined with teaching the Vedas, as the basis of a reformed
Hinduism following the teachings of Dayanand Saraswati (1824-83), founder of the Arya
Samaj, see A.I. Mayhew, ‘The Christian Ethic and India’, in L.S.S. O’Malley, ed., Modern India
and the West p.315. In 1896 Thacker’s Indian Directory listed him as manager of the Shanker
School (as ‘Durga Pershad’), p.817; in 1897 he was Head master of the Dyanand High School
(as ‘Durga Prasad’), p.846. In 1899 (p.822) and 1900 he was listed as head master of the
Dayanand High School or Vedic Pathashala, p.892; and also in 1900, Principal of the Vedic
Maharidyalaya or Dayanand College (as ‘Durga Prasad’), p.892.
31 See Thacker’s Indian Directory, 1895, p.794. Here his name is spelt as ‘Durga Pershad’, but the
identity is clear from the fact that the Punjab V.S., is also spelt as ‘Durga Pershad’, p.793. In
1896-7 his name as Punjab V.S. Vice president was spelt as ‘Lala Durga Pershad’ (p.847).
32 See Vegetarian Messenger, 189? for the reference to the English language Arya Patrika (1885-
1887), organ of Arya Pratinnidhi Sabhi, Punjab, advocating vegetarianism.
33 Abkari, October 1892, p.175.
34 Address 10 Hare Street, Calcutta. See his Vegetarianism, Pure and Simple. An Address by L. Salzer
MD, president of the Punjab Vegetarian Society, read at the anniversary meeting, Lahore,
November 1892 (Calcutta: I.C. Bose). This tract was bound with tracts on theosophy for
W.H. Knight, in one volume which is now in the British Library. On the C.P.S., see Medium
and Daybreak, 1891, p.245. On homoeopathy in India, with a passing reference to Salzer
(p.41), see D. Arnold and S. Sarkar, ‘In search of rational remedies: homoeopathy in
Nineteenth century Bengal’, in W. Ernst ed., Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 1800-
2000.
35 Thacker’s Indian Directory, p.882. The ‘Pratinidhi Sabba of Arya Samaj of Punjab’.
36 Majithia (1870-1954) became a German sympathiser during the Great War and was briefly
deprived of his estates. He was the father of the artist Amrita Shergil. See the entry in H.
Singh, Encyclopaedia of Sikhism.
37 Both Müller and Oldfield have ODNB entries.
38 Vegetarian, 21 April 1894, p.198. Hume, a vice president of the V.S. 1886, was son of Joseph
Hume the reformer. He had served in the Indian Civil Service as secretary to the
Government of India. Retired 1882, he was active in creation of Indian National Congress.
See the life by Wedderburn.
39 Organised by Lala Krip Shankar Batalide (the general secretary) and Lala Bishem Das Varma
(assistant secretary).
40 Vegetarian Messenger, January 1895, p.51.
41 ‘Mofussil’ section, Thacker’s Indian Directory, 1895, p.794; 1896, p.818; 1897, p.847; 1900,
p.893; 1907, p.335; 1912, p.309.
42 Teetotal and ‘practically a vegetarian’, he was a generous supporter of the Temperance
Hospital, to which he gave £9,000. He supported the prohibitionist United Kingdom
Alliance, and National Temperance League, and Anti-Tobacco Society.
43 Vegetarian Yearbook, 1896. Quinton was also honorary secretary of Redhill and Surrey V.S.,
1896. He was still associated with the vegetarian movement in 1935.
44 He is probably identical with the L. Parbhu [sic?] Ram, a temperance missionary in Lahore, in
Abkari, January 1895, p.1.
45 Vegetarian, 1896, p.383.
46 Vegetarian, 1 April 1899.
47 On Mallory, see S.C. Bennion, Equal to the Occasion: Women Editors of the Nineteenth-Century West
(Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada Press, 1990), pp.142-145.
48 The name may have paid homage to the hygienic reform society established by T.R. Allinson,
or an allusion to the German Lebensreform movement. Allinson wrote in English Mechanic, 25
April 1884: ‘A little careful thought will show him how England obtained and retains India,
and how little to do with one being vegetarian and the other flesh feeders’. A Pestonji S.

13
 Hormusji subscribed to T.H. Allinson’s ‘Natural Living Society’, see Hygienic Advertiser, June-
July 1891, p.2.
49 Gostling (who died in 1908), was a life member of the Society of Arts, London. He wrote The
Concurrent Circulation of Gold and Silver Currencies (London and Bombay, 1898), having read a
paper at the Lecture Hall of the Society of Arts. He joined the V.S. in 1886. He was c.1898, a
vice-president of the V.S. Obituaries appear in Bombay Gazette (11, 17 September 1908); Times
of India (11, 17 September 1908); and Advocate of India (10 September 1908). On his Bombay
address, see Thacker’s Indian Directory, 1891, vol.2, p.1342. Clippings and brief biographical
notes are in the Allum Papers, Library of the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of
Cambridge (Handlist of Papers, via <http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk>, accessed May 2002).
See his article in the theosophists’ journal, Lucifer, February 1897, p.471; and obituary in
Theosophy in India (November 1908). On Sarah Gostling, see the correspondence in William
Morris’ The Commonweal, 1886, correspondence with Morris and Aveling (1886, 1888)
preserved in the archive of the Socialist League, and handbill for a lecture on India (1 June
1888), in W.W. Bartlett Papers, University of Sussex.
50 Panday was a salesman, 193 Kennedy Bridge, Bombay, when he joined the V.S., in 1886, see
Dietetic Reformer, April 1886.
51 On his support of temperance, see Abkari (London), July 1891, p.158. Daji was a
theosophist, see W.E. Coleman’s ‘Critical Historical Review of the Theosophical Society,’
originally published 1893, which listed Daji amongst those who came to be doubtful of the
authenticity of H.P. Blavatsky.
52 Vegetarian, 28 November 1891, p.607.
53 Vegetarian Messenger, May 1892, article on vegetarian progress in India, p142, by Joseph
Knight. Panday’s An Indian vegetarian cookery was sold by the Vegetarian Society, c.1898.
54 Vegetarian, 1896, p.383.
55 L. Salzer, The Psychic Aspect of Vegetarianism, inaugural meeting of the Calcutta Vegetarian
Society, March 1887 (Calcutta); the officers of the Delhi society were: President Pandit Banke
Rai, NG, vice-presidents Busheshwar Nath, secretary, Sanwal Das Khanna, Nasha Nashik
Sabha, and the Reverend S.S. Alnutt.
56 Abkari, January 1893, p.42. It was the only vegetarian society listed here. See Thacker’s Indian
Directory, 190, for the Reverend S.S. Allnutt, principal of St Stepehn’s High School and
college, Delhi. I have not consulted the memoir, C.B. Martin, Allnutt of Delhi: A Memoir
(SPCK, 1922).
57 Abkari, April 1893, p.74.
58 Thus Surendranath Banerjea, founder of the Indian Association, a collection of ‘middle-class’
Indians who claimed to represent the Indian people, identified temperance as an agent in
social improvement, see L.A. Gordon, Bengal: The Nationalist Movement (New York and
London: Columbia University Press, 1974), p.29.
59 See K.W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements. See Dietetic Reformer, October 1870, pp.99-102
on Sen.
60 O. Ralph, Naoroji. The First Asian MP (St John’s, Antigua: Hansib Caribbean, 1997), p.121.
61 Abkari. The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association, London, 1890-1904. For a
profile of Hills (by W.S. Caine), see Atmik, January 1899.
62 Though the temperance missionary the Reverend T. Evans explained Indian problems with
drink partly through the vegetarian diet making alcohol act directly on the stomach, see the
lecture at Behar reported in Abkari, April 189, p.72.
63 See J.M Twigg, ‘The Vegetarian Movement in England. 1847-1981’, pp.190-209 on
theosophical connections and the themes identified or read into India religious texts, such as
the perceived emphasis on interiority and intuition, the universal brotherhood of ‘true’
Hinduism and the parallels between Francis of Assisi and Buddha. Twigg sees the similarities
as the result of ‘congruence’ rather than direct cultural contact (pp.200-201).
64 Gostling, whose Christian faith was regained through theosophy, was first president of the
Blavastky Lodge, the first Indian lodge, see Theosophy in India, November 1908, p.lxxxiv.
Salzer opposed the caste system, and thus was a critic of Besant’s acceptance of aspects of

14
 Indian culture. Hume advocated vegetarian societies in the Pioneer, see H.P. Blavatsky,
Collected Writings, 1882 – 1883 (Philosophical Research Society, 1950), vol.4, p.299.
65 See K.W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements p.170, where Indian resentment at revelations
restricted to ‘beef-eating, wine drinking Englishmen’ is noted. The vegetarian journalist
Hector Waylen, during his Indian visit, was strongly attracted to theosophy, but was far from
complementary about Indian society and her capability for self-government, see Vegetarian,
189.
66 See ‘J’, ‘Vegetarianism and Occultism’, in Theosophy in India, March 1905, pp.60-2, for C.W.
Leadbetter’s January-February issues of Theosophist on vegetarianism, and cuttings sent by S.
Navasingha, October 1905, p.263-4, from the Madras Mail and the British Daily Express. See
Theosophic Thinker, late 1895 for an article on vegetarianism, reported in Indian Social Reformer 9
November 1895, p.65.
67 A. Burton, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain
(Berkeley: University of California Press), p.39.
68 Almonds and Raisins, 1886.
69 B.M. Malabari, The Indian Eye on English Life, or rambles of a pilgrim reformer (1893). On Malabari,
see A. Burton in Gender and History 8 (1996).
70 Vegetarian Messenger, August 1899, p.284.
71 Indian Social Reformer, 25 August 1894.
72 Indian Social Reformer, October 1894, p.44.
73 Indian Social Reformer, 1 September 1894, p.5. The inconsistency about dietetic orthodoxy and
caste was also highlighted in The Bengalee, reprinted in The Indian Social Reformer, 5 December
1897, p.106.
74 Indian Social Reformer, 13 October 1894, p.51.
75 Indian Social Reformer, 11 September 1898, p.11.
76 See Indian Social Reformer, 7 March 1896, pp.21-5, from Vegetarian, on Rontgen’s X-rays;
serialisation of Ablett’s interview with Annie Besant in the Vegetarian, 2 April- 8 May 1898;
Blathwayt’s interview with W.T. Stead, 10 July 1898, pp.361-2 and 24 July 1898, p.377. See
also 20 April 1895, p.264, for reprinting from correspondent of Phoenix, sending a copy of
T.R. Allinson’s letter to the British press on vegetarianism. The journal published a paragraph
from the Herald of the Golden Age, 21 March 1897, p.224 and 8 August 1897, p.390. See
Vegetarian, 18 June 1898 on Indian Social Reformer, and Indian Social Reformer, 2 May 1897, p.774,
on the Vegetarian receiving a batch of Indian papers.
77 The journal also published communications about vivisection and Pasteurism, see for
instance, 5 October 1895, p.26; 8 February 1896, p.17, 15 February 1896, p.181, 8 November
1896, p.80, June 1897, p.18, 10 April 1898, p.251. An article by F.P. Cobbe from the Animals
Friend was reproduced 28 December 1895.
78 Indian Social Reformer, 9 November 1895, p.65. The vegetarianism of Isaac Pitman and F.W.
Newman was noted, 1 November 1897, p.83.
79 Indian Social Reformer, 5 December 1897, p.106.
80 Indian Social Reformer, 11 September 1898, p.11, in response to the novelist Sarah Grand’s
discussion of vegetarianism and India.
81 When they knew about it, of course, since even rural Britons might be ignorant about the
vegetarians; believing them to be, like Prasad, a religious sect.
82 Vegetarian Messenger, January 1891, p.21. Seth Mohan Lal’s ‘India’s Prayer’ was also read.
83 Vegetarian Messenger, May 1890.
84 See advertisement in Vegetarian Magazine, 1907, p.26; S.S. Tug, MD, editor, The Virjanand
Magazine, published in Partabgarh, Oudh, see slip in ‘newspapers and periodicals in India and
Ceylon’, Thacker’s Indian Directory, 1908, p.189 and p.190.
85 The Atmik, ‘An Anglo-Indian Religious, Ethical, Temperance and Humanitarian Monthly and
the Native Pioneer of an Eastern Christianity’, a 2d monthly magazine was advertised in the
Vegetarian, 1895-1896. Rule 12 of the Indian Atmik Mission was Food Reform and total
abstinence from alcohol, opium and ganja. Chakraburtty was a member of the ‘Indian
Brotherhood of Total Abstainers’, an offshoot of the Anglo Indian Temperance Association.
86 See Abkari, January 1892, p.34.

15
87 On Cambridge vegetarianism and Indian students, see Vegetarian Messenger, 1889 for Mr A.M.
Box’s recommendation to encourage ‘foreign’ (Indian) vegetarians in Cambridge V.S. A ‘K.P.
Basu’ was a member of Cambridge V.S., 1898.
88 Food Reform Magazine, April-July 1882.
89 Vegetarian, 21 April 1894, p.204.
90 Vegetarian, 21 December 1895, p.629.
91 See T. Morton, Shelley and the Revolution in Taste. The Body and the Natural World (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).
92 D. Erdman, Commerce des Lumieres: John Oswald and the British in Paris, 1790-1793 (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1986).
93 Vegetarian Messenger, October 1855, pp.91-92. See Vegetarian, 21 July 1894, p.348, letter to
editor from Mulji Derji Vedant, arguing that Shelley was a true Vedantist.
94 Truth Tester, 1848, p.43
95 Vegetarian Messenger, October 1854, p.82. On Jejeebhoy, who received a knighthood in 1842,
the freedom of the City of London in 1855 and a baronetcy in 1857, see entry in S.P. Sen,
Dictionary of National Biography (Institute of Historical Studies, Calcutta, 1973), vol.2. Jejeebhoy
established a hospital for aged animals in Bombay, as noted by Robert C. Adams in
Vegetarian.
96 Vegetarian Messenger, August 1858, p.193. Reports seem to have been sent on activity by
vegetarians here from 1897, since an ‘honorary secretary’, B.B. Dosby sent the ‘fourth annual
report’ to the Vegetarian in December 1901, Vegetarian, 1902, from Dosby of Newgate
Richery Road, December 1901.
97 Vegetarian Messenger, August 1857, p.114, referring to coverage in the Leeds Mercury and
Illustrated London News.
98 Vegetarian Messenger, November 1857, p.142.
99 Vegetarian Messenger, August 1857, p.102.
100 This is noted in C. Spencer’s The Heretic’s Feast, p.268.
101 Vegetarian Messenger, February 1895, p.53.
102 GMCRO, Vegetarian Society archive, G24/1/2/1: minutes of the Meetings Committee of
the LVS, 18 October 1894.
103 Vegetarian, 29 July 1893, p.354.
104 Vegetarian, 1895, starting 5 October.
105 Vegetarian Review, March 1896.
106 Vegetarian, 29 January 1898.
107 May 2, 1896, ‘A Wanderer’s Notes’, p.209.
108 Vegetarian, 4 March 1899, p.107, ‘Humanitarianism in India’; 19 May 1894, for review of
Frances Henrietta Müller’s Indian Women. A Comparison, p.244. Müller, a vice-president of the
Punjab Vegetarian Society, was the editor as ‘Helen B. Temple’ of the feminist Women’s
Herald, 1888‒1893.
109 Vegetarian, 30 January 1897.
110 Vegetarian, 19 August, 1893, B. Krishna Sahay (Vakil) of Ranchi, p.394 and Vegetarian, 7
January 1899, p.2.
111 Vegetarian, 27 May 1893, p.249.
112 The Herald of the Golden Age, 15 February 1898, p.18.
113 The Herald of the Golden Age, 1898. Muse was the author of A Practical Guide to Theosophy, 1895.
114 This was published by the Cherâg Printing Press in Bombay. A member of the Blavastky
Lodge of Bombay, Bilimoria also edited a magazine entitled Theosophical Gleaner, see obituary
in The Theosophist 1923, p.227, when he died aged 70 (1922).
115 J.A. Parker, Ernest England: or a soul laid bare: a drama for the closet (London: Leadenhall Press,
1895), p.307.
116 Chaganlal Haridas Vora (of Rajkot, Kathiawar), wrote about the hypocrisy and materialism of
Britain in ‘World of Butchery’, Vegetarian, 21 December 1895, p.642. A temperance activist,
he died in 1900, see Abkari, April 1900, p.62.
117 Vegetarian, 8 August 1896.
118 See the theosophist Lieutenant. A.T. Wintle’s paper on Hinduism and the Brahmins.

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119 Vegetarian, 22 December 1894, p.625.
120 J. Gregerson, Vegetarianism. A History (Fremont, California: Jain, 1994), ch.13, argues that
India restaurants encouraged the growth of British vegetarianism. There is no evidence that
experiencing Indian foodways persuaded returning soldiers to become vegetarian. Pheroze
Langrana attempted to establish the first Indian restaurant in Britain, see Vegetarian, March
1898.
121 Food, September 1887, p.231, citing an article on Anglo-Indians acquaintances who were
vegetarian, from the Caterer; Sir Edward Bick, KCSI, previously secretary to the Government
of India for Revenue and Agriculture, interview (from Vegetarian), in Indian Social Reformer, 1
October 1898, pp.47-8.
122 Vegetarian Messenger August 1890.
123 Vegetarian Messenger, January 1899, p.4.
124 See Vegetarian Messenger, October 1887, p.354, citing a quotation from Dr W. Wilson’s Medical
Work in China, in Illustrated Missionary News, 1 October 1887, where an old lady, vegetarian for
many years, abandoned her ‘delusive views’ on conversion, such as idolatry, Vegetarianism
and ‘all other man-invented schemes for forgiveness’. See also ‘MA’, in Dietetic Reformer, April
1880, on resistance to common prejudices of Anglo-Indians by Bishop of Colombo who was
nearly completely vegetarian.
125 Vegetarian, 7 January 1899, p.4.
126 Vegetarian, 1 August 1896; Vegetarian, 29 August, 1896, p.410. India Watchman, September,
1895. The paper was edited by the mission superintendent, Bessie Sherman.
127 The Lancet, 1898, p.1148. For the caste’s temperance activity, see Abkari, October 1891,
p.172, and the Kayastha Gazette.
128 D.O. Lodrick, Sacred Cows, Sacred Places, p.69.

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