Whether Sikhs should eat meat.
The Rehat Maryada bans kutha — meat from an animal killed slowly by ritual method — and says nothing whatever about the rest. Damdami Taksal and the Akhand Kirtani Jatha hold to strict vegetarianism and every langar kitchen is meatless, while Nihangs practise jhatka and eat it, and rural Punjab never stopped.
The Rehat Maryada names four bajjar kurahits, cardinal breaches that void the amrit vow, and one of them is eating kutha — meat from an animal killed by the slow ritual bleeding of halal slaughter. That is the entire written rule on meat, and it is a rule about method and about refusing a neighbouring religion's ritual, not about vegetarianism. What has grown around it is enormous. Langar is meatless everywhere on earth, which is usually explained as hospitality rather than doctrine. Damdami Taksal, the Akhand Kirtani Jatha and most sant lineages require full vegetarianism of their initiates; Nihang orders practise jhatka, the single-stroke kill, and eat meat as a matter of discipline rather than despite it; and much of rural Punjab has always eaten it without consulting anyone. Arguments between these camps are fierce, frequently online, and unlikely to resolve, because the text genuinely does not settle it.
The same ground, other faiths
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