Give them the space

Though I belong to an area where eating vegetarian food is considered blasphemy, my recent stays outside my home as confronted me with the age-old conversation of being vegetarian or non-vegetarian. The proponents of vegetarian food have the usual argument that taking someone’s life is a crime. If I remember correctly, I was taught in my old-good school days that plants too have lives. Since plants fulfill all the qualifying criteria of being living beings(they grow, reproduce, respond to stimuli and eventually die), so veggies are left biting the dust. I am in no mood to wage a war with veggies, but just presenting my rational view. Does that mean that plants don’t have LIFE ?

Similarly the oppositions of human-cloning, stem cell research often argue that man will be taking the GOD’s throne if such researches are allowed. I fail to understand that if all these things have been done legally on various plants, then why not humans ? Also considering the fact that these researches have been carried to commercial scale for plants. Does that once again mean that plants don’t have life ?

Further taking the argument, we sow seeds, lets the crops grow and then eventually cut them. Does this count as a violent act ? Similar to killing a chicken for delicious meal ? I can present tons of such argument that prove that either plants don’t have life OR who humans have considered them too lowly. Since first conclusion is a scientific fact, we surely have treated plants just as commercial commodities and nothing more than that. I feel that time has come to give them appropiate place they deserve.