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Animal Justice and Moral Mendacity

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Abstract

I wish to take up some of the sentiments we have towards animals and put them to test in respect of the claims to moral high grounds in Indian thought-traditions vis-à-vis Abrahamic theologies. And I do this by turning the focus in this instance—on a par with issues of caste, gender, minority status, albeit still within the human community ambience—to the question of animals. Which leads me to ask how sophisticated and in-depth is the appreciation of the issues and questions that are currently being debated in contemporary circles? What degree of awareness could we say has been present in the traditions—not just in some perfunctory, platitudinal, belief-based descriptions or prescriptions, but in actual explanatory and morally sensitized senses?

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this essay appeared in Berkeley Journal of Theology and Religion, Journal of Graduate Theological Union. Vol I , issue 1 (inaugural). 2015: 56-79. The author wishes to express thanks to two anonymous reviewers solicited by Sophia for their helpful comments

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Bilimoria, P. Animal Justice and Moral Mendacity. SOPHIA 57, 53–67 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0652-y

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