When Mohandas Gandhi was young, he made friends with a Muslim boy named Mehtab. Mehtab introduced Gandhi to meat, something he was forbidden to even touch. Over the course of a year, Gandhi secretly had meals with meat. This was when he was 14 or 15…
Gandhi went to England in 1888 to study Law at the age of 19. Before departing, he promised his mother, actually took an oath, that he would not eat meat, drink wine, or be with another woman. Mohandas (or Mohan as he was called as a boy) married at the age of 13 to Kastur.
A vegetarian diet in London was not an easy choice. But, soon after his arrival, Gandhi found a vegetarian restaurant called “The Central” in Kensington off Farrington Street…I tried to find the building or reference to it…Gandhi also seems to have been influenced by a pamphlet called “Plea for Vegetarianism” by Henry Salt…
It was Henry Salt who introduced Gandhi to the writings of Henry David Thoreau…civil disobedience.
This connection with politics and diet is interesting.
See: http://www.ivu.org/history/ivu/gandhi.html
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