The photograph below shows Gandhi seated at the front to our right, but it is the subject of some confusion. It the copyright of www.gandhiserve.org - which states that it is the Committee of the London Vegetarian Society (LVS) in 1890, they also state that Gandhi joined the Society, and joined the Committee, on September 19, 1890.

Gandhi stated in The Vegetarian (interview published June 20, 1891) that "I may be said to have known the L.V.S." from the International Vegetarian Congress, held in London, 11-13 September 1890. He also said that he had been reading The Vegetarian (London) for "a year and a half" (ie late 1889) and the Vegetarian Messenger (Manchester) for some time before that.

It is possible that he was co-opted onto the LVS Committee on Sept 19, but the LVS AGM was on January 9, 1891, and it is possible that he was elected to the Committee on that date (precise details seem to have been lost). The only reference in The Vegetarian to a photograph including Gandhi was after the meetings in Portsmouth on May 6, 1891 (it was not reproduced in the newspaper but a detailed account of it being taken - outdoors - was given). That report stated that the picture included two Indians, the other beng Gandhi's friend Mr. Mozumdar - who could be the man in the white suit, though another source states that as being his friend Dr. Josiah Oldfield who was him in Portsmouth. If this picture was in Portsmouth then the others are the delegates and speakers from the conference, not the LVS Committee (if it was the LVS Committee then Mr. Arnold Hills would have been centre stage, but he was not present in Portsmouth and, in comparison with another photo of him from that time, does not appear to be in this picture).

In February 1891 Gandhi started writing articles for The Vegetarian, a weekly newspaper published independently of LVS but in close connection with it (this is also more consistent with his having joined the Committee in January rather than the previous September). The articles below are reproduced from The Vegetarian, courtesy of the library of the Vegetarian Society UK (publication dates are in italics after each article.).

• (Leo Tolstoi - including his views on non-violence and passive resistance - December 21, 1889 - published around the time that Gandhi says he started reading The Vegetarian . . .)
  
  articles by or about Gandhi:
  
• Indian Vegetarians - part I, February 7, 1891
• Indian Vegetarians - part II, February 14, 1891
• Indian Vegetarians - part III, February 21, 1891
• Indian Vegetarians - part IV, February 28, 1891
• Indian Vegetarians - part V, March 7, 1891
• Editorial comment about Gandhi - March 14, 1891
• Indian Shepherds - part VI, March 14, 1891
• Some Indian Festivals - Divali - March 28, 1891
• Some Indian Festivals - Holi - April 25, 1891
• Extracts of reports from the Portsmouth Meetings on May 5/6 - May 9 and 16, 1891
• The Foods of India - text of his talk at Portsmouth, May 6, 1891 - published June 1891 in the Vegetarian Messenger (Manchester).
• Editorial comment about Gandhi leaving England, and report of the farewell dinner - June 13, 1891
• Our Workers - (an extensive interview with Gandhi, part 1) - June 13, 1891
• Mr. Gandhi's Narrative (concluded) - June 20, 1891
• On my way home again to India - April 9, 1892
• On my way home again to India (concluded) - April 16, 1892
• English Misrule in India - July 29, 1893
• To Indians in England (from South Africa) - April 28, 1894
• A Band of Vegetarian Missionaries, and their work in South Africa - May 18, 1895 (mostly about the Trappist monastery, and showing very clearly where Gandhi got his ideas for the later Ashram 'Tolstoy Farm')
• Vegetarianism in Natal - December 21, 1895
• Vegetarianism - copy of a letter to the Editor of the Natal Mercury - March 28, 1896
• Facts for Emigrants to South Africa - April 25, 1903

From other sources:

• Mahatma Gandhi’s early days in England (+ Timetable of Gandhi's Life)
  • Italiano I primi tempi del Mahatma Gandhi in Inghilterra
    
    

• Moral Basis of Vegetarianism - - from the 1957 IVU Congress souvenir book (same as below but different pictures)
  
• The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism - Speech delivered by Gandhi at a Social Meeting organised by the London Vegetarian Society, 20 November 1931 (the photo right, shows Gandhi seated next to Mr. Henry Salt - one of those in the Portsmouth photo above - at this meeting)
• Español: Gandhi: La Base Moral del Vegetarianismo
• Italiano Gandhi: La base morale del vegetarismo
  
  
  

• Vegetarian Experiments, M. K. Gandhi, From Gandhiji's Autobiography - from the 1957 IVU Congress souvenir book
• Experiments with Truth - Some aspects on the life and thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi
  • Italiano Esperimenti con la verità

• Vegetarianism: The Road to Satyagraha
  • Español: Vegetarianism: The Road to Satyagraha

• Books & videos by and about Ganhdi
  
  
• Mahatma Gandhi, Research and Media Service - external link to comprehensive site
  
  

I do not regard flesh-food as necessary for us at any stage and under any clime in which it is possible for human beings ordinarily to live. I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world - if we are superior to it. - Mahatma Gandhi, his Mission and Message

I hold today the same opinion as I held then. To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. - An Autobiography, the Story of My Experiments

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Vivisection is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing against God and his fair creation. It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practise elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures.
- This quote is from 'The Extended Circle, a dictionary of humane thought' published in 1985 by Jon Wynne-Tyson (reproduced with permission) - he gives the source as ' The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism' but we cannot find it in the 1931 talk of that title, or anywhere else. If anyone can verify this, or any other quotes, quote please contact IVU. We also have an alternative version of this quote as:
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way in which its animals are treated.
- but no source for that either...
However.... way back in 1882 Howard Williams published 'The Ethics of Diet - a Catena' a collection of articles by ethical writers. Williams was a friend of Gandhi at the London Vegetarian Society at the time he wrote the book, and is mentioned in Gandhi's autobiography, so it is certain that Gandhi would have read the book. In the section on Schopenhauer, p.287, Williams quotes Dr. David Strauss (Die Alte und die Neue Glaube) "The manner in which a nation, in the aggregate, treats the other species, is one chief measure of its real civilisation." - so wherever Gandhi might have used his variation of the quote, he did not originate it.

I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth. - quoted in Words of Gandhi

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence. - unknown origin

"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good." - unknown origin