We human beings and other creatures belong to the one brotherhood of life, and we all have claims to the gifts of God—the Indwelling Spirit of nature and history.
Men have their rights: have not animals, too, their rights?
If indeed, we are to achieve a higher civilisation, a new civilisation, there must be a new understanding of the place of animals in social evolution and a new relationship of men and birds and animals based on sympathy and love. I would press, too, for the setting up, in every state, of a Ministry for Animal Welfare.
To my sisters and brothers in India, I have just one word of appeal: “Ye sons and daughters of the Sages of the East! Would you not do your duty to the animals? Would you disturb their silent joy in creation?”
“When may I hope to come to Thee, my God?” asked a servant of the Lord. And the answer came in the words: “This very moment you can meet Me, but only as you come in the company of the lowly and the lost!” True it is, that birds and beasts are our brothers and sisters in the one great family of creation—the family of God.
I have loved to look again and again at a picture in which Krishna is painted as a cowherd, Krishna with the cows in the Forest of Brindaban.
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