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Our History | Prison Vegetarian Project began informally. A few friends had been exchanging letters with people in prison who were studying and practicing meditation. These friends in prison would sometimes write to us about how they were trying to get vegetarian food, and would also write to us about the problems they were having.
We started to write letters of support to prison administration and gradually started to hear from new people in prison who wanted help.
And a project was born.
We get many letters from people whose requests for vegetarian food are refused by prison administration because, they are told, they do not belong to a religion that "requires" vegetarianism. Our efforts have been to support all requests for vegetarian diets, and to also encourage people in prison to see vegetarian practice as part of their spiritual path.
We also support people in prison who want to live as vegetarians for ethical or environmental reasons. We believe that a person should not be prohibited from living as a vegetarian only because s/he is not a member of a recognized religion.
See below for an early letter from Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi that explains the purely ecological basis for vegetarian living. |
|  | |  | | Gandhi's Letter to the Editor of THE NATAL MERCURY, 1896 | "To the Editor:
"Durban, February 3rd, 1896
"Sir, - As one interested in food reform, permit me to congratulate you on your leader in Saturday's issue on "The New Science of Healing," which lays so much stress on the adoption of the natural food, i.e., Vegetarianism.
But for the unfortunate characteristic of this 'self-indulgent' age in which 'nothing is more common than to hear men warmly supporting a theory in the abstract without any intention of submitting to it in practice,' we should all be Vegetarians....
...Vegetarian economists, without fear of contradiction, assert that Vegetarian foods are the cheapest diet, and their general adoption will go a long way towards mitigating, if not altogether suppressing, the rapidly growing pauperism side by side with the rapid march of the materialistic civilisation and the accumulation of immense riches in the hands of a few.
"I am etc.,
"M. K. Gandhi." |
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| | | | |  | | We began working with people in prison in 2003 and are entirely volunteer run. |
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| Last updated Thursday, January 21, 2010. | Feel free to copy anything on this website. |
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