Samantha Hurn, University of Exeter | ORCID 0000-0003-4876-458X

Alexander Badman-King, University of Exeter | ORCID 0000-0003-1049-3446

Assigned DOI doi.org/10.3998/jpe.10748

Jonathan Birch’s important and thought-provoking paper raises the thorny question of how to navigate ‘the insect challenge’ when it comes to sentience, rights, and human responsibilities to other animals. Birch astutely sets out the ethical and practical difficulties which accompany the recognition of insect sentience in a world where almost every aspect of contemporary human existence involves harming insects, often on a mass scale. Birch presents Gandhi’s ahimsaism – a reformulation of the Sanskrit ahimsa (non-violence) - as a potential means of navigating the dissonance arising from engaging in practices which harm insects, despite acknowledging them as ‘plausibly sentient’. In cases such as the control of insect disease vectors, Birch argues ahimsaism allows that “duties of non-maleficence can be overridden by duties of care, provided the duty of care is adopted, interpreted and exercised in accordance with the guiding ideal of ahimsa” (2026). We do not have space here to engage with all of the points made by Birch, and while we are broadly in agreement with him on many of them, we will focus on where we diverge in relation to both sentience and ahimsa. We should note that our understanding of ahimsa as an ethical framework has been shaped largely through long term fieldwork and ongoing collaboration with members of the Skanda Vale multifaith community in Wales, UK (Hurn 2017, 2018; Hurn and Badman-King 2019). We draw on that fieldwork to provide a comparative critique of, and then suggest a potential alternative to, ahimsaism.

The ethos of non-violence which underpins daily praxis at Skanda Vale was developed by the ashram’s founding Guru, the late Sri Subramanium who, like Gandhi, was a member of the South Asian Hindu diaspora in the UK. Skanda Vale’s approach to ahimsa, like Gandhi’s ahimsaism, aligns most comfortably with contractarian ethics (e.g. Gauthier 1986), but whereas Gandhi advocated for duties of care on the basis of contractual relationships with specific significant others (e.g. the abattoir worker to his family and staff), for Skanda Vale, the contractual relationship is ultimately between individuals and God. Ahimsa here is also set within the wider foundational beliefs relating to ritual purity, and the ethical and spiritual frameworks of Sanatana dharma (sanctity of all life), and Samsara – the cycle of rebirth, where the aim is to work towards the perfect state of spiritual enlightenment. It is likely the concept of Samsara which Birch (2026) refers to as the ‘metaphysical commitments’ of South Asian spiritual traditions (e.g. Buddhism, Hunduism, Jainism) which, he argues, should not be accepted by secular animal ethics. However, we suggest it is not possible to understand ahimsa (and therefore ahimsaism) without situating it within that wider spiritual, ethical and cultural context. Nor is it possible to apply it meaningfully to the ‘insect challenge’ in contexts where dominant societal values, attitudes, and practices towards nonhuman lives are at odds with ahimsa. Unless, that is, steps are taken to directly confront and mitigate those dominant values, attitudes and practices.

Skanda Vale provides a useful illustrative example to clarify this point. The ashram is based in the UK, and therefore has to navigate UK legal and cultural norms, whilst simultaneously adhering to traditional South Asian spiritual and ethical beliefs and practices. This has resulted in some intractable examples of conflict, for example, the case of Shambo, one of the community’s temple bulls, who tested positive for bovine TB during routine testing (a legal requirement in the UK). Even though bTB is treatable, the UK government’s policy is that any animals who receive a positive test result must be culled. This led to a lengthy, and unfortunately unsuccessful, legal battle to try and save Shambo, a young, asymptomatic and otherwise healthy individual, from slaughter (Hurn 2017).

Ahimsa at Skanda Vale is reflected in all aspects of life in the community, including the practice of different Hindu yogas, especially Bhakti yoga (spiritual devotion), and Karma yoga (service performed as a form of devotion), through seva (self-less acts performed on behalf of others). These take various forms, including active participation in religious worship; adherence to a vegetarian diet (for reasons of both ahimsa and spiritual purity); the cultivation of the ashram’s grounds to support local wildlife (to create a sanctuary where innumerable lives of various species can be safe, as well as a conducive environment within which to receive God’s grace); providing pujas (temple services) and prasadam (blessed food) for visiting pilgrims; caring for rescued animals; and providing hospice and palliative care for humans and other animals. These latter activities facilitate the repayment of karmic debt for community members, pilgrims, as well as for recipients of care, regardless of species (Hurn 2017, 2018). Indeed, at Skanda Vale, other animals need to work through their karma too, and are capable of repaying their own karmic debt through adhering to ahimsa themselves, and engaging in ethical care work in the form of seva and yoga. While Birch suggests that responsibility for others is a human concern, such a view might also be challenged by work on care (e.g. Eason 2019) and humane labour (e.g. Coulter 2016; Warda 2025) in secular contexts.

Skanda Vale nonetheless shares many aspects of ahimsaism, albeit with some key variations. The community at Skanda Vale routinely use anthelmintics and parasiticides in the care of the rescued animals at the ashram, prioritising responsibilities to those individuals under their direct care at the expense of, in this case, parasitic insects. They also willingly cook meat for terminally ill hospice patients if that is what the patient requests, again prioritising relationships with, and responsibilities to, those individuals under their direct care. However, Skanda Vale’s approach to ahimsa also incorporates interconnected forms of virtue ethics (through cultivating love for all), and, most importantly, care ethics. Like contractarianism, care ethics is relational, but not always rational, because the responsibilities and relationships entered into may not arise through choice or strategic decision making, but rather out of necessity, reciprocity, and entangled moral obligations (e.g. van Dooren 2014; Donovan and Adams 2007).

Care ethics therefore demands an expansive fluidity in ethical responsibility akin to what the philosopher of science Donna Haraway (e.g. 2020) terms ‘response-ability’ – a reconceptualization of responsibility in light of the threats posed by the global ecological crisis. Whereas ‘responsibility’ of the sort discussed by Birch in relation to Gandhi’s ahimsaism appears to be paternalistic and anthropocentric, response-able care of, and often with, other animals focuses instead on entangled relationality, on recognising the subject (as opposed to object) of care as a being with intrinsic value, regardless of perceived characteristics.

However, perhaps most importantly in relation to ahimsaism’s potential for navigating the insect challenge, is that Skanda Vale’s fusion of ahimsa with seva and the yogas, the combination of contractarian and care ethics, enables a form of compensation for harms enacted in other areas of life (e.g. the cooking of meat for hospice patients). Taken out of the context of embodied lived religion, ahimsa as ahimsaism becomes much more difficult to support, and rather starts to resemble a justification of harms rather than a genuine attempt to mitigate them.

The second query we wanted to raise in response to Birch, and which also relates to taking ahimsa out of its traditional context, is the focus on sentience when it comes to safeguarding the rights or interests of insects, or indeed any other animal. While acknowledging Birch’s considerable contributions to advancing this issue elsewhere (e.g. 2024) we suggest that the reservation which still exists in relation to recognising invertebrate sentience is a result of binary framing – where sentience is something that an individual or category of beings either possesses or lacks. Rather than being sentient or non-sentient, we might acknowledge that different animals possess, for example, ‘dog sentience’, or ‘bee sentience’, and these can all be located somewhere on a spectrum – differences in degree rather than kind.

At Skanda Vale, and in line with South Asian religious traditions more generally, the need to repay karmic debt, and the ethically orientated actions required to achieve that, are believed to apply to all life forms, including insects, plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic organisms which/who are all also caught up in the cycle of Samsara. Birch rejects “the biocentric version of Gandhi’s view” because he regards “plants and microbes as very probably non-sentient and as lacking plans and projects” and therefore he doesn’t “think they can be harmed in any morally significant sense.” However, such a view is not just at odds with ahimsa in the context of its metaphysical commitments (and hence why it is important to be considered in this context), but also with a wide range of other ‘non-Western’ ontologies (e.g. de Castro 1998; Kohn ). The moral concern of these ‘insentient’ beings and entities is also the subject of widespread academic attention, where evidence for the capacities and moral worth of plant and other non-animal beings is compelling (e.g. Ferretti et al. 2024; Rousell and Tran 2024; Tsing 2018). While in multidisciplinary fields such as symbiotic ethics (Hurn et al forthcoming), and multispecies justice (e.g. Winter 2022), all stakeholders (human, animal, plant, fungi, mineral, ecosystem, ancestor, spirit, deity) are entangled and the focus of responsibility/response-ability and care.

We wonder whether sentience is prioritised in ‘western’ ‘scientific’ cultural contexts (and therefore why it might align with Gandhi’s ahimsaism, given his enculturation in the colonial British education and legal system) because of what Hurn has previously described as ‘anthropozoometricity’ (2012: 122) – in other words, using a human yardstick to measure the capacities or value of other animals, and placing greater moral weight on those we possess, or which we can easily recognise, reliably observe, and scientifically verify? The late primatologist Frans de Waal (2008) for example argued that while ‘Western primatologists’ long struggled with perceiving their research subjects as sentient, emotional and cultural beings, this was never an issue for their Japanese counterparts, because the latter’s ontological position was shaped by a syncretic fusion of Shintoism and Buddhism, and not post-Enlightenment science and human exceptionalism.

Recently, Vaidya and Menon (2026) have specifically used Jain ethics, also grounded in ahimsa, to also argue against sentience as the primary criteria for assessing moral standing. They advocate instead for the “capacity for problem-solving and goal-directed behaviour” (p. 11), which enables other ‘insentient’ beings including trees, plants, microbes, and AI to be recognised as subjects of moral concern.

Conclusion

It is clear from Birch’s paper why ahimsaism is appealing in the context of the ‘insect challenge’. It rests on contractual obligations and notions of responsibility primarily to those with whom a particular type of relationship exists. It therefore could be used to justify causing, or at very least overlooking (and therefore being complicit in causing) suffering, provided blame can be displaced. As Birch noted, “Gandhi himself writes that ‘for health we destroy mosquitoes and the like by the use of disinfectants’ (CWMG, Vol. 31, p. 544) regarding this as a clear case of justified violence”. This seems an unstable foundation for a deontological (i.e. rights based) ethical framework.

Maybe the solution lies not in navigating how to justify harms, but in finding ways to reduce them? Birch dismisses the metaphysical aspects of ahimsa as “too controversial and too deeply at odds with a naturalistic worldview to provide an attractive answer to the insect challenge” (2026). However, even if we reject the element of reincarnation from Samsara, it nonetheless encourages appreciation of the connection between all living beings across space, time, and species, and advocates shared responsibility (response-ability) for ethical conduct through the central tenet of non-violence.

To achieve ahimsa, a radical overhaul of how we think about and engage with other animals (including other humans) is needed. Haraway has suggested that in order to survive we must expand our circle of compassion to include all living beings, not just those directly under our care, or for whom we have direct responsibility for, or familiarity with. The difficulty of such an ask is acknowledged in Haraway’s use of the phrase ‘staying with the trouble’ – there can be no panacea or easy, quick fix for dealing with complex problems, including the ‘insect challenge’. The ethical and practical complexities of co-existing ethically with other animals while also doing what is needed to survive, are discussed by Badman-King (2021) in relation to permaculture. He demonstrates that even when striving for non-violence (e.g. through a self-sufficient plant based diet), it is still impossible to grow food without harming others in some way. To navigate this conundrum ethically requires a willingness to be immersed in and face the lives and deaths involved, rather than seeking to obfuscate, justify, or distance oneself from those harms.

A more holistic approach to living non-violently, such as that advocated by Badman-King (2021, 2026), and by Hurn et al’s symbiotic ethics (2026), and embodied in Skanda Vale’s combination of contractarian and care ethics, may ultimately help mitigate some of the harms which are currently routine and widespread. It is now widely recognised, for example, that excessive use of disinfectants, antibiotics, pesticides, anthelmintics and so on leads not just to environmental pollution and its collateral harms, but also to drug resistance, dysbiosis and ill health. It is also accepted, under the umbrella of One Health, One Welfare, that the wellbeing of all life on the planet is interconnected (e.g. Zinsstag et al 2023). Repopulating our microbiomes and restoring the ecological biome through supporting valuable microbes – the tiniest of creatures who, like bees and many other valuable invertebrates collaterally harmed when those agricultural pests and disease vectors are controlled – may be one step on that journey (e.g. Lorimer 2019). Exploring non-lethal ways to tackle problems is another – preventing the situations, such as intensive monoculture, which lead to explosions of agricultural pests. We suggest that solutions to the ‘insect challenge’ therefore need to refocus on how we should live with, rather than justify harm to, these beings, many of whom are integral to multispecies survival on our damaged planet (and therefore of significant moral concern).

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