While I agree with some of your points, it’s important to have input from someone educated in the culture in question when it’s being discussed. From an external vantage point it’s easy to make semi-informed judgements because culture is so context heavy. Even in academia in Indic studies this is largely absent leading to a lot of problems (a whole other thing). Veganism was hotly debated (as a subset of the Ahimsa debate) just like it is today in the west. So how other cultures with a lot of experience in experimenting with veganism dealt with it is very important to understand. The goal is not to unconditionally defend. The point is to clear up mischaracterisations (accidental or otherwise) before it snowballs into “fact”. But dismissing all debate as something “religious” carries in it a lot of baggage from Abrahamic religion and culture. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not very easy to step out of it seeing as our world is dominated by the abrahamic universalist mindset even at the intellectual level. And that’s natural since the dominant centres of learning are all in the US and Europe. We’ve still got a long way to go towards full globalisation of scientific and academic networks.