IIT Mandi Director Laxmidhar Behera has triggered a controversy after he made a bizarre statement that landslides and cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh are happening because people are eating meat. In a video-clip which is doing the rounds on social media, Behera can be seen addressing students, to whom he says, “"To become good human beings, what do you have to do? No to meat eating”. Behera also went on to ask the students to take a pledge to stop eating meat since cruelty to animals would result in the “downfall” of Himachal Pradesh.
“Himachal Pradesh will have a significant downfall if we do not stop butchering animals. You are butchering animals there... the innocent animals. It has a symbiotic relationship with the degradation of the environment as well... which you cannot see right now but is there,” the IIT Director says. He goes on to say that the mass scale landslides and cloudbursts that Himachal has been witnessing is an effect of “this cruelty” of animals.
Although the exact date of when this speech was made is unknown, the video has received massive criticism after it started to go viral on social media.
Reacting to Behera's statement, Sandeep Manudhane, an entrepreneur and IIT Delhi Alumni took to X (formerly Twitter) and said, “The collapse is complete. These superstitious fools will destroy whatever little was built in 70 years.”
Several geologists and science professors across universities have also come out stating that the IIT Director’s statement made no sense and said that the disasters in Himachal Pradesh were a result of various geological reasons and other anthropogenic factors.
Several users also drew similarities between Behera’s statements with that of the comments made by right wing supporters that the 2018 Kerala floods were a result of people eating beef.