"We initially began by appealing to vegetarians on the premise that if they did not eat animals how could they utilize animal origin products like leather, thus indirectly supporting animal suffering and death?” stated Diana Ratnagar, founder, managing trustee and chairperson of Beauty Without Cruelty (BWC) — India, writing in the organization’s Monsoon 2024 journal Compassionate Friend, which she edits. The organization observed its golden anniversary this September 12. Started on September 12, 1974, BWC India is one of only two independently run BWC organizations in the world. The other is in South Africa. The media shy Ratnagar turned down Parsiana’s request for an interview.
Top: magazine cover; above: Lady Muriel Dowding
Established in England by Lady Muriel Dowding in 1959, the name "Beauty Without Cruelty” was decided on the spur of the moment. "You probably know that for three years just a small group of about eight of us ran the movement using our own pocket money. We had no desire to form another society, but after a bit the group felt they wanted to have some kind of name as they were being called ‘Lady Dowding’s young ladies’ — so I agreed to this and asked them to decide the next time we met what they wanted to be called,” Dowding noted in the international edition of the journal.
"Many of them sent in suggestions, and just as I was leaving for London to visit a number of furriers who also made simulation (non-animal) furs, to try and get their support to put on a big London fashion show showing the alternatives to the cruelly obtained animal furs, a letter came with a suggestion from one of the group and she wrote ‘I cannot think of anything we should call ourselves, but my husband says you are obviously ‘beauty without cruelty.’” After Dowding’s demise in 1993, BWC in UK closed.
"For half a century we have been investigating animal exploitation and circulating factual information gathered in the hope that people who get to know of the cruelty and death of innocent creatures give up supporting it and use non-animal alternatives,” writes Ratnagar in her journal. "Alongside, we have been guiding people to make significant lifestyle changes that help themselves and in turn save animals from exploitation and death.
"We have been relentlessly campaigning and lobbying, petitioning decision-making and law implementation authorities, and influencing people who matter to be in favor of domesticated and wild animals, reptiles, birds and marine life.”
Writing in the same issue, BWC trustee and honorary secretary Khurshid Bhathena notes, "Last but not least, the government of India should recognize and acknowledge that animals (all living creatures other than humans) are sentient beings having rights and legal status. For doing this the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act should be amended and made meaningful. Logically animal welfare should be clubbed with human welfare, not with animal husbandry which promotes the breeding, exploitation and slaughter of animals.”