Vegans for Palestine Podcast - Episode 05 - Brown Feminist Vegan

Debarati runs a digital project called 'Brown Feminist Vegan' and has a great conversation with Dalal about intersectionality and why we need to challenge 'single issue veganism' and Western Vegan narratives. In this conversation, Debarati emphasises how intersectionality is central to their activism, recognising interconnected oppressions like racism, casteism, ableism, and speciesism, drawing parallels between the marginalisation of humans and non-human animals. Debarati critiques mainstream Western veganism for being Eurocentric, consumer-driven, and disconnected from local contexts.


You can follow Brown Feminist Vegan here.

Flavours for Freedom can be bought here.

Audrey Lorde post here. Interesting facts about Audrey Lorde? Watch here.

Quote by Prateek Gautam: here.

"We need to stop expecting Eurocentric Veganism to correct systemic racism" Aph Ko (Post available here).

The music in this episode is by two Palestinian artists.

Nemahsis (Nemah Hasan) is a Palestinian singer originally from Jericho, currently based in Turtle Island. Nemahsis was dropped by her label due to her support for Palestine. Please support her work. Follow here and check out her latest album Verbathim here.

Zeinab Shaath is a Palestinian-Egyptian singer and song writer. Zeinab recorded 'The urgent call of Palestine' in 1972 when she was 16 years old.

This podcast is captioned for accessibility for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people here 

Autocaptions have been adjusted to ensure accessibility. 

Transcript

NEMAHSIS [SINGING]: We live in cities, you'll never see on screen, not very pretty but we sure know how to run things, living in ruins, of the palace with our dreams, and you know, we're on each other's teams. 

RAYAN: It’s Rayan and this is episode 5 of the Vegans for Palestine podcast. Debarati is a non-binary feminist vegan who is currently living in India. They run a digital project that is called Brown Feminist Vegan which is about total liberation, consistent anti-oppression and decolonial veganism. Let's hear what they have to say! 

DEBARATI: ‘Brown feminist vegan’ is a digital project that I started back in 2020 during covid. It's just a page on Instagram and it talks about total liberation, consistent anti-oppression and looks at veganism through an intersectional and decolonial lens, and you can see it's like an educational page, where I talk about all of these things, and this is a passion project that I run. It's completely unfunded right now and I'm the only one doing it. We have a community of 12,000 people right now, and this is also a space for vegans and ‘vegan-curious’ folks to come to and also learn from each other and we have a lot of conversations going on in some of the posts and I also had the privilege of getting to collaborate with some other vegans and intersectional activists through this project. 

DALAL: So working on this project, with your understanding of intersectionality, of veganism and feminism as a brown non-binary person, how does this intersectionality shape your approach to the activism and the work that you do? 

DEBARATI: So intersectionality is really an embodied reality for many of us. For example, I am queer, I'm non-binary, neuro-divergent, I live with chronic health conditions and I'm a person of colour, so my feminism and queerness also embodies all of these realities and in my veganism too I can recognize like the way I approach my vegan politics and how I have experienced it since the time I went vegan 10 years back, it's also a recognition of the way different oppressions are interconnected and how they enable each other for example in our feminism and in our queerness many of us recognize how certain bodies of diverse genders are really considered ‘less than’ in heteropatriarchal societies, and how also marginalized bodies become sites of violence, for example trans people. So there are similar structures of oppression that are also exploiting non-human animals, where the violation of their bodily autonomy and their agency, and the violation of their choices, and their entire lives is so normalized, and historically also the oppressor or the colonizer have always animalized the oppressed or the people that the colonize, like they have called them ‘animals’. Why? because this human VS animal binary or this hierarchy is something that is really part of the oppressor’s playbook. And it really helps justify violence against certain bodies and against certain lives that are not considered ‘human enough’, and people who are marginalized not just by gender but also by race, cast, disability and so on really experienced this. This understanding is really ingrained in all my politics be it feminism, be it queerness, be it animal rights because I feel it's really important to unpack this human-animal binary that rationalizes oppression of both humans who are marginalized, and non-human animals, because animals are not afforded the same rights or the same moral consideration as humans in this hierarchy. So in veganism, intersectionality I feel in it means like fundamentally recognizing this without which we cannot really dismantle these interconnected systems of oppression

DALAL: And speaking of these systems of oppression, I recall the very first time we talked, you addressed the topic of casteism and how that being one of the oldest forms of social stratification in India, and my understanding is that it's an intricate hierarchy that's basically governing people's lives, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's particularly the Hinduism community in India or does it also apply to the wider community overall in India? but basically it pretty much determines people's lives, whom they marry, the kind of jobs they're entitled to, and that is also part of the politics that you advocate for and you address in your in your work, and you don't really see that in mainstream veganism as it really fails to address issues of race, and gender, and disability, as well as casteism. Could you tell us a little bit more about that and how you really address it as you attempt to educate people? 

DEBARATI: Yeah, so mainstream veganism of the world it's really Eurocentric and something of the western world that often does not resonate with our local communities, although the idea of animal liberation and  living in harmony with non-human animals or living sustainably with non-human animals, and the idea of causing the least harm - this is not a new invention of the western world, it has been very intrinsically present in how so many local and Indigenous communities perceive society and live their lives, although they might not be using the language of animal rights, but there are so many practices and cultures that really recognize this philosophy of coexistence, but Western mainstream veganism is really presented like a consumer activity and it's not rooted in animal liberation or anti-speciesism. So it's also like very capitalistic where the focus is on brands that can drive consumer choices and it's also very depoliticized, like it doesn't talk about interconnected oppressions around race, gender, disability, and so on. Snd especially in our parts of the world, mainstream veganism is seen like a consumer activity, and things that are part of vegan activism in the western world are often implemented here which doesn't work because our cultural context are so different, like the caste context that you mentioned, for example, there is this ‘Liberation Pledge’ where if you take the Liberation Pledge, you don't sit and eat with others who are eating non-vegan, and in India some activists and like some vegans have taken that pledge but here the context is that people of oppressed castes and Indigenous folks and Muslims who are minority community in India, they are really discriminated against by oppressor caste Hindus, and they routinely face violence for consuming meat, and food really is a means here to maintain the caste system and all of these hierarchies, so things like The Liberation Pledge that they mimic the West without being mindful of the local context where these kind of practices only enable discrimination against minoritized folks, and also it also alienates marginalized folks from the vegan movement as well, where this is not a space that takes into account their realities also there are a lot of vegans who belong to marginalized communities who have actually left a lot of vegan activist spaces, because they're expected to be apolitical and they're expected to like just talk about animal rights and not draw any connections with queer rights or cast or feminism or disability in animal rights spaces. But it's so important to understand that animal rights do not exist in vacuum cast, for example where people of oppressed casts are made to do the more the most difficult work in the leather industry, for example in the tanneries that really violate all of their labour rights and they also maintain cast oppression, and similarly in the meat industry as well people who are marginalized due to cast and religion, they are doing what is considered the dirty work, handling animal bodies in what is considered their impure form or the dirty form. But in mainstream activism spaces here, you are not allowed to talk about these things and it reminds me how some mainstream global vegan spaces are not talking about genocide or about Palestine and they focus only on what they call conversions; like converting people to being vegan but I don't think that is enough we don't need conversions, what we need is transformation, and real and sustainable transformation really cannot happen without addressing all of these systemic problems, and how they are so interconnected and how they enable both human and non-human animal oppression. 

DALAL: I recall here one of the quotes I read across your page, I think that was from a book ‘Veganism of Colour: Decentring whiteness in human and non-human liberation’ by P.Guta and excuse me if I'm saying it incorrectly, but it says how ‘casteism- speciesism conceptualizes the addition of non-human oppression as a driving force that allows casteism to continue unchecked under this type of speciesism, nonhumans are given a value according to caste’ and this is pretty much what you are really addressing with these examples and I think I'm thinking really how your experience really growing up in India really influenced your journey towards veganism, how do you address how you reconcile and connect with your vegan philosophy and the vegan activism and your background where you grew up in and the work that you do these days?  

DEBARATI: So I became vegan 10 years ago and back then, there was not a lot of information that was available about veganism or the movement like even the movement did not have this much visibility as it has today and it was also much harder to find other vegans and connect with other vegans because social media was not how it is today so most of the information that I found about veganism was primarily online and so it was like from a very wide vegan perspective because those are the first pieces of knowledge that you come across so yeah but a lot of us had to look harder and we sought out knowledge around intersectional veganism that really resonated with us for example I learned so much from black feminist vegans like AFCO and silco and also Christopher Sebastian who talked about race and speciesism so these Frameworks also helped me unpack what anti-speciesm can look like in my local context of course my local contexts are different but I really feel the works of black vegan activists helped me look at veganism through the lens of Rights and intersectionality and in India in the mainstream actually veganism is often considered like an extension of vegetarianism and many vegan activists here are also driving this really dangerous narrative because in India vegetarianism is very closely related to the cast system where oppressor cast groups are vegetarian because they are considered the more pure ones and they really use food as a means for discrimination against oppressed cast folks who consume meat and like I said Muslims who are a minority in the country have faced so much violence like they have been lynched and they are routinely facing violence for selling or consuming cow meat or even under the assumption that they are selling cow meat so in this kind of a sociopolitical climate vegetarianism really does not arise from an animal rights perspective because cows here for example there is really a thing here that we call cow vigilantism that is lynching people for selling or consuming cow meat but also cows here are so exploited by the dairy industry and Hindu vegetarian, vegetarians really consume a lot of dairy and a lot of Hindu oppressor caste religious practices require the use of dairy so this really does not stem from an animal rights concerned vegetarianism and is really a tool to oppress minorities here so it's also really appalling that some vegan activists project veganism as just one step ahead of vegetarianism especially given the casteism and discrimination that is associated with it so I feel like in India it is really important for vegan activists to adopt an anti-speciesism approach and to break this vegetarian narrative and the food habit narrative that surrounds veganism and it's really hard to do this because a lot of prominent vegan activism spaces here they are dominated by oppressor casts so intersectional activists receive a lot of lack in these spaces and we also receive a lot of lack from non-vegans as well also like in my advocacy I really try to actively recognize that  veganism is about not causing violence and exploitation of non-human animals as much as possible and practicable and possibility and practicability really differ for different people based on the kind of access they have their class this disability and so many other markers and I feel we really need to acknowledge this and hold space for this diversity in the movement otherwise it'll never resonate in the grassroots and will just become another elitist and classist stance but that being said India also has like such a such diverse communities and we really find a lot of practices and cultures and food that is vegan by default across many local and like indigenous communities although vegan is not the language that is used to describe it so I feel it's really important to also reconnect with these local practices in our activism I don't know if Indian languages have a word for vegan or veganism but even if not animal Liberation is not a new concept or like anti- speciesism is not a new concept, it is often rooted in cultural practices as well and I feel veganism can be approached through these lenses locally and the movement needs to hold space for different experiences and different realities. 

DALAL: And it's very inspiring to me how you touched on your learning experience from black vegans and how that really inspired how you look at the interconnectedness within India overall with the cast system and the classism vegetarianism and I'm really interested in learning more about how you find the connection between the black veganism and apply that or use that as a lens to look at the at veganism in in in India especially also with how you find the interconnectedness with disability casteism culture and also there is also this privilege that somebody or a group has more over another group if there are maybe some yeah if you could maybe tell us a little bit more about that? 

DEBARATI: I think what really resonates with me from the black vegan movement is the decolonial approach and the connections that are drawn between the anti-colonial struggle and animal rights that I feel is a framework or a principle that can be applied in so many different contexts, and I feel intersectional veganism-it needs to be anti-colonial as well, and there is really such a close connection between the anti-colonial struggle and animal rights, and the decolonial approach it's really an invitation to reconnect with the knowledge and the experience that the colonizers have erased and it is about reconnecting with ideas of coexistence self-determination animal liberation food Justice that have always existed in very local contexts in their many different forms and in many different articulations the decolonial lens it also asks us to challenge capitalistic and like Eurocentric narratives of veganism that completely dismiss minoritized experiences also recognizing that colonialism doesn't just exploit human human lives but also how animals their bodies their lives and spaces they are commodified and how they are treated controlled or eliminated and the colonizer has always disrupted local ecosystems and where  they have seen animals as just things that are mass produced resources and not full and complete beings with autonomy and with rights so colonialism has always reduced someone's value to what purpose they serve for the colonizer be it humans or be it non-human animals so I think intersectional veganism really needs to take this into account where we cannot be a historical and we need to make this connection because the colonizing of bodies really works in so many different ways and we see it even when we talk about gender or race or cast so I think the decolonial framework really can serve as a foundational principle to approach veganism through this lens in many different local contexts as well. 

DALAL: And I see that as well as a Palestinian in in the way how the Black movement and the Black community is one of the biggest allies and supporters in how they stand up and speak up for Palestine and also the other communities like in Sudan and Congo we see how they shared experiences with us they go beyond the history and it's our struggles are shared and interconnected in different ways and I guess the way we address veganism and in its intersectionality is a way for us to connect with each other and see how it's not just where you come from or the kind of experiences you think that you alone have been through but also when you look at things from a wider perspective and particularly from a vegan lens things fall into place in how we can't be apolitical or ahistorical or distancing or alienating ourselves from our struggles because this doesn't apply here or there and particularly with the animal speciesist kind of perspective and especially what we have been recently but also so like throughout history we see how the colonizers refer to humans as animals because it's just justifiable to call somebody an animal and then it's easy to do whatever you think you want to do to them because they're animals and these are subgroups or they don't have the same value and I saw how recently some vegans, including yourself, are address in how this how using animals names as descriptions for humans like rats, like pigs, like donkeys, or other animals how the use of these names they use them as insults and as a justification why somebody should be killed or ethnically cleansed or displaced and the list go goes on and on. How do we challenge this language of dehumanization and particularly in the context of anti-oppression and our call for  the end of genocide, not just in Palestine but also in in other places where like Sudan and Congo where humans are undergoing the brutality of white supremacy and capitalism that are in different shapes and forms of occupation? 

DEBARATI: Yeah I think it's so important to be  it all comes down to being ethically consistent like we cannot be asking others to go vegan and recognize animal rights while being silent about genocide, and especially as vegans around the world it's like how do we not see how Israel co-opts animal rights and veganism like there totally vegan washing this occupation and using words like the ‘most vegan army in the world’ like what does this even mean when you're committing war crimes and genocide? and I feel like even if vegans only care about animal rights they need to recognize that genocide is also a multi-species massacre where animals are also losing their lives and getting displaced and Israel has really damaged migratory roots and they have done ecological harm from where there is no coming back so how do we not see how all of it is interconnected? and also the narrative where the oppressor and even in the case of even in this genocide we are seeing how they're calling Palestinians ‘animals’ to justify this, of course this is speciesist but it's also such a genocidal tactic of saying that they are dangerous or they are threats that we need to eliminate, and it allows for oppress like it allows for Palestinian experiences to also be  not counted or be seen as something that is very normal or something that is not tragic at all, and it's just like how non-human animal experiences of violence of death are dismissed as something that happens every day and something that we do not need to pay attention to, and it also is such a deliberate tactic to stop paying attention to the ongoing genocide because all their animals and animal lives are disposable and it can be really challenging to convince people to see these connections I get that but as vegans around the world, it's the least that we can do  in solidarity keep drawing attention to Palestine, Sudan, Congo and everywhere that  this is happening in so many different forms and talk about it and building awareness and counternarratives to these genocidal propaganda I think it's the least that we can do in solidarity and in allyship. 

DALAL: And you mentioned earlier how in in India for instance you don't think there is a specific translation for what vegan is or veganism and I know I know now that a lot of intersectional vegans who are calling for the end of genocide in Palestine and they connect the dots between what Israel occupation is doing and this colonial oppression how it's dehumanizing sentient beings and sentient lives in Palestine and in other countries is how there are calls to maybe replace the word vegan because it's mostly Eurocentric and stems from a capitalist colonial way of justifying matters or and focus is mostly on consumerism and we talked about that in other episodes, so in in our approach maybe now that we could replace the word how do we still find or how do you still find the knowledge within your community and you are as well able to educate and share, and build advocacy around the causes and the issues that you advocate for?

DEBARATI: Yeah I think regardless of whether we use the word ‘vegan’ or not or however we choose to define it the idea of animal liberation this is not a new invention, it has always existed in our practices our cultures in our politics in a lot of different ways and also because minoritized people have been animalized like we were just discussing and so these connections have been recognized  across people's experiences in different ways probably vegan was not the language it was articulated by so I think it's important to draw from these experiences and to root it in lived experience and in stories and in sociopolitical contexts. I don't know if Indian languages have a word for vegan, I know there's a word for vegetarian which is the same word that is often used for vegan in local context here but I think taking the animal liberation lens and the anti-speciesist lens helps make these connections better because you are right, veganism- a lot of this vocabulary has come from the West and mainstream veganism, it's seen as a consumer activity and something that is not part of local practices but animal liberation is and anti-speciesism as an ideology, as a practice, as a political standpoint very much is a part of  local contexts, as well so I think taking that lens to veganism might help make a better connection. 

DALAL: And with that understanding how what kind of challenges have you faced and maybe continue to face in your advocacy for both animal liberation and human liberation in particularly in in in the Palestinian context, and also Sudan, and Congo and other oppressed communities across the world? 

DEBARATI: I think there is this tendency among vegans and vegan activists everywhere to do ‘single issue’ activism which in which they really don't hold any space for intersectional narratives, or they ask you to only talk about animal rights and not draw any of these connections, I think that is the one big challenge is to really convince people to see these different connections. I think with social media also things become a little easier in some ways where you can still keep talking about it and you can, of course there is so much of censorship and the platforms themselves are genocidal in a lot of ways, but I feel we just need to keep drawing attention to these things because building these counter narratives is so important and also being a little strategic about it, seeking out others who are doing similar work and seeking out other intersectional vegans who are doing this work through a decolonial lens and talking about genocide and doing things collaboratively also helps shift these narratives. 

DALAL: I recall how this is also the single issue kind of narrative is something also Audrey Lorde addressed years ago with ‘there is no such a thing as a single issue struggle because we don't live single issue lives’ and that understanding everybody should really take their experiences also to look at them from also the lens of the other oppressed people and communities because we can't just justify what one people are going through, because they deserve it or they did something that they have to be treated in a certain way for or there are some sort of justifications that the colonizers and occupiers are spreading across their platforms to justify what they do, and as you said yeah, I think social media has been doing the job in in in in two different ways one is helping amplify the voices of the oppressed, and also of the activists who try to build and mobilize and amplify the voices also of the oppressed but at the same time the shadow banning and the silencing and the those quote unquote ‘Community standards’ they have been playing the role of the colonizer in how they attempt to silence voices that call for freedom and liberation on these platforms, we also hear the critics who justify and argue that the Palestinian liberation is not really related to veganism, and why are you talking about this and why you connect veganism with the Palestinian cause have you encountered such critics? and if so how do you respond to them?

DEBARATI: Yeah of course I mean in the comment sections or in DMs I often come across these kind of thoughts that people have and even like in India when you are talking about caste oppression or  when you are trying to make connections with the Palestinian cause you are accused of derailing the vegan movement but it is really like it is really the opposite because real transformation cannot come without addressing some of these systemic problems and I think there is sometimes it's really important to also be mindful of and really choose the kind of audience that you want to interact with whether  they have already there are so many people who are very privileged but they have made up their mind to do single issue work and sometimes negotiating with them and advocacy doing your advocacy centring them and trying to make the connection with them it doesn't work especially if they hold the they hold certain identities of privilege and they cannot make the connection. I think it's important to also be a little strategic and see  where you are focusing your work and to whom you are speaking and do that a little mindfully this is a question of ethical and ideological consistency where we cannot be asking people to recognize animal rights while completely ignoring all these other oppressions which oppress both humans and non-human animals, and especially in the case of Palestine where there is a very deliberate vegan washing of genocide, and this is a tactic that is used, I think it is imperative for vegans around the world to see that and to see the harm in that and really to build a counternarrative against this genocidal propaganda. 

DALAL: Yeah that's exactly how we are decolonizing the approach to veganism basically and as you said earlier it's not really a new invention, it's the fact that we also have these discussions around it is our invite to other people as well to reconnect with the knowledge that the colonizers have erased, and how currently we see the ethnic cleansing and the genocide is playing a role in that as well, through the vegan washing, but also with the reconnection of the different ideas of Antispeciesm and the caste system and the different multi-layered operation systems that we live through, it's important for vegans to connect and look at matters from a true animal liberation and human and non-human Liberation perspective, otherwise we would be simply repetitive caring only about what really goes on in the plate and what we have on the table and dismissing the decades longs of struggles of people for the human and the non-human struggles, do you have a certain message that you wish listeners take from this podcast today particularly the vegan brown feminists?

DEBARATI: Yeah, I think we need to keep talking about interconnected how oppressions are interconnected and really make that connection and recognize how minoritized folks are animalized and why we really need to dismantle the human animal binary. I learn a lot by seeking out other activists who are working relentlessly on this there is a lot of Instagram pages that I follow and learn from Vegans for Palestine is one of them there is also Palestinian vegan, plant-based Arab, Apex advocacy ,Dr Elizabeti and so many others and because of social media in some ways it has become sort of easier to also seek out ways to support Palestine and through  fundraisers or by amplifying Palestinian voices. There is also a vegan recipe book called ‘Flavors of Freedom’ that I contributed to along with some other Palestinian vegans and vegans around the world, and it contains almost 30 recipes that are very close to our hearts and cultures, and we of course saw that irony of writing a recipe book while so many people in Gaza were starving, but this was like a pragmatic move to raise funds for the ‘Palestinian Children's Relief Fund’ and ‘Sulala Animal Rescue’ so these are some projects  that people have done and it's important to seek these things out if we have the access and support in whatever way we can. 
DALAL: Debarati, thank you so much for your time and keep up the good work! 

DEBARATI: Thank you so much for having me! Thanks for the lovely conversation!

ZEINAB SHAATH [SINGING]: 

[Music] Can't you hear

The urgent call of Palestine

Can't you hear

The urgent call of Palestine

Palestine [Music]

Tormented, tortured, bruised and battered

And all her sons and daughters scattered [Music]

Can't you hear

The sweet sad voice of Palestine

Can't you hear

The sweet sad voice of Palestine

Palestine [Music]

She whispers above the roars of the guns [Music]

Beckoning to all her daughters and sons [Music]

Can’t you hеar

The agony of Palestine

Can’t you hеar

The agony of Palestine

Palestine [Music]

Liberation banner, raise it high

For Palestine

Let us do or die [Music]