Landslips in Himachal Pradesh due to people eating meat: IIT Mandi director

In a video clip, Laxmidhar Behera can be seen talking to students and asking them not to eat meat

Laxmidhar Behera, director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi, said on Thursday that landslides and cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh are happening because people eat meat.

Behera, in a video clip of him telling the students sitting in an auditorium, said, "To become a good human being, what do you have to do?"

"No to meat eating," the IIT director said. He then asks students to take an oath: "I will not eat meat."

He further added, "Himachal Pradesh will have a significant downfall if innocent animals are butchered. You are butchering innocent animals."

"That [butchering of animals] has a symbiotic relationship with the degradation of the environment as well, which you can't see now but it will have," the IIT director said.

 

He further continued, "….the mass scale landslides and so many other things, cloudbursts, that you see again and again, these are all the effect of these…cruelty."

However, this is not the first time that Behera has been embroiled in controversy due to his statements. In 2022, he said that ghosts exist and recounted performing an exorcism in 1993. In another instance, the IIT director said that people die from overeating and not hunger.

According to the IIT Mandi website, Behera specialises in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). He has been involved in initiatives demonstrating the therapeutic effects of Indian classical music, mantra, and yoga on people dealing with mental stress and psychic disorders.