Are You What You Meat?
Hinduism has long existed as a spiritual haven for self-proclaimed progressive thinkers of the West. Echoing early Said, white people seeking spiritual refuge have long idolised India as an oasis where Shanti (peace), Ahimsa (non-violence), and vegetarianism converge. However, since the induction of the BJP in 2014, the underbelly of a violent upper caste, justified by an ancient dogma, has come to surface. The Hindu Caste system is social stratification separated into 4 distinct areas. Brahmins are at the apex of this and are ‘pure’ by birth, and maintain this purity by eating Sattvik (pure) foods. Kshatriyas are the warrior and ruling caste, positioned to maintain the caste interests of the Brahmins. Vaishyas and Shudras, exist below them with the duty to support the economy through labouring, business and the arts. Together, they form the four castes, or the savarna, where the Dalits, derogatively known as the untouchables, exist outside of the caste system. Avarna, literally outcasts, are condemned to the dirty work that no one else wants to face; the handling of deceased animals, janitorial roles, and all the tasks that support the bustling Indian economy. These politics of oppression culminate in the general ideological direction of Indian politics right now. Hindutva is a populist ideology adopted by the incumbent BJP, seeking to reduce Indianness to Hinduism; a dangerous, nationalist framework. Herein, the thali (plate) has become a nexus for Dalit oppression, as Hindutva weaponises vegetarianism in an attempt to construct a monolithic Indian Identity.
The Assumed ‘Vegetarian’ National Identity
Vegetarianism shares a complex relationship with ‘Indian’ identity. Through colonisation the popular notion emerged that the pan-Indian diet is vegetarian, in contrast to the flesh-heavy diets of the coloniser, despite meat consumption being integral to the myriad of cuisines within the subcontinent. In the 1860s, the first systematic documentation of food consumption was carried out by the British. Colonial-era India saw the construction of a normative Indian diet as mostly consisting of cereal. It was deemed inferior to the metropole’s meat-based diet. Hence, within the crucible of the Indian Independence Movement, the embracing of vegetarianism as the swadeshi diet became an act of protest. Gandhi, drawing from the Upanishads (ancient Hindu scripture), linked his vegetarianism with ahimsa, declaring that the “only basis for having a vegetarian society and proclaiming a vegetarian principle … must be a moral one.” Cementing the idea, in the minds of both those on the subcontinent and in the West, that vegetarianism in Hinduism is inextricably tied to non-violence. However, Gandhi’s claims, as informed by his Hindu savarna status, were shortsighted. They form another link in a long chain of culinary apartheid and food-fascism enacted upon the Dalits and other minorities. By rooting the Indian identity in the vegetarian diet, the rich tapestry of Dalit cuisine is erased by its alleged impurity.
Moreover, the impression that India is a vegetarian state also arises from overinflated figures surrounding the incidence of vegetarianism. In a report for the BBC, writer Soutik Biswas notes that “people under-report eating meat — particularly beef — and over-report eating vegetarian food”, whether out of stigma or sense of conformity, with only around 20% of Indians being actual vegetarians. This is considerably lower than common claims of around 80%. Investigating India’s vibrant culinary practices supports these claims, as regional Indian cuisines are shaped by their geographical and climatic circumstances. For instance, seafood forms a large part of coastal Indian diets, including those of the Konkani Brahmins from Maharashtra and Goa. They rationalise their consumption of fish as simply “vegetables from the sea”.
Further still, the assumed ‘vegetarian’ national identity of India can be attributed to the active othering of non-vegetarians. The usage of the term ‘non-vegetarian’ is limited to the Indian subcontinent, in order to delineate the meat-eater from the normative vegetarian. By coining a specific term for ‘what is not vegetarian’, the consumption of meat has been otherised. In contrast, in other parts of the world where eating meat is considered the norm, it is the term vegetarian that substitutes for ‘non-meat eater’. A language based war is being waged on the meat-eating minorities, with no other choice but to play by the rules of the Brahmin. There is no real escape from this cultural pigeonhole. By culturalising meat eating as impure, the brahmanical order not only justifies its own rule, but erases the agency, culture, and status of anyone who is not them.
Savarna Morality
As the justification of Hindu Nationalism turns towards violence, savarna morality is being used to actively malign the diets of the oppressed. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the father of the Indian constitution, theorised that Hindu food taboos manifest on two specific lines of division. The first, the divide between meat-eaters and vegetarians, and the second, those who eat the cow's flesh, and those who do not. The second dividing line is the most important, separating the savarna from the Dalits. This serves a singular purpose; to keep them ‘untouchable’. Ambedkar further states, that the savarna justify claims of Dalit impurity by emphasising their consumption not of freshly slaughtered cattle, like the Kshatriyas, but carrion. Living on the doles of the upper caste, they are forced to scavenge for work — including the removal of dead animals. With the lack of access to live cattle, Dalits were forced to consume cow carcasses, making them polluted in the eyes of the savarna.
Not only does this have sweeping consequences on nutrition rates within the community, but also on their quality of life and mortality. A study by the United Nations found that Dalit women die, on average, 15 years younger than savarna women. It can be attributed, in part, to Dalit women having a high prevalence of chronic energy deficiency, at rates higher than the national average. Inadequate energy intake is particularly dangerous for pregnant women, as this leads to insufficient weight gain during pregnancy and impacts foetus development. This follows Dalit children into infancy and beyond, positioning them to face the brunt of food-based discrimination. A joint study between the University of Heidelberg and Ashoka University found that despite India having a high incidence of stunting, children being too short for their age range, it was Dalit children that were disproportionately affected. While the prevalence of stunting in Indian children is attributed to chronic undernutrition, repeated infection and inadequate psychosocial stimulation, height gaps between savarna and Dalit children seem to increase in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where the practice of untouchability is higher. While roughly 26% of savarna children were stunted, this frequency nearly doubled in Dalit children, at around 40%. It is hard to ignore the elephant in the room; the nutritional status of Dalit women and children could be improved if they had greater, unrestricted access to the traditional Dalit food system, as opposed to being victimised by savarna morality.
Cow Vigilantism
The pervasive nature of savarna morality and its stipulations on what can and cannot be consumed is particularly insidious due to its codification in the law. Hindu scripture outlines the spiritual significance of the cow, which was systemised by Congress in 1955, through a ban on cow slaughter. After the rise of Narendra Modi, this policy has seen significant intensification in recent years. The ban was expanded in 2015 to include bulls and buffaloes, but not water buffaloes. Intensifying in 2017, Uttar Pradesh amended its cow protection laws to increase punishment; speaking in support, Vikram Saini, local BJP lawmaker, stated, “I had promised that I will break the hands and legs of those who do not consider cows their mother and kill them.” This is all despite beef eating being prevalent amongst most religions in India, and forming an integral part of different regional cuisines.
The actions of these law-makers has led to the increased stigmatisation of the culinary practices of already marginalised communities. This has created an environment that has bolstered the extralegal activities of Gau Rakshaks, literally Protectors of the Cow. Their actions have been near-legitimised by a government that either looks away, drags their feet when it comes to taking action against those perpetrating crimes in the name of cow protection, or by actively supporting the Rakshaks. National attention was drawn to the targeting of the Dalit community after a viral video showed cow vigilantes publicly stripping and flogging four Dalit men for skinning a dead cow in Una, Gujarat, on July 11, 2016. The incident sparked an unprecedented wave of protests by Dalit organisations, across Gujarat, resulting in a death of a policeman, while several Dalits attempted suicide in protest of upper-caste violence. Dalit organisations urged their followers to defy traditional caste roles by refusing to dispose of cow carcasses, even going so far as to deposit dead cows on the streets. This is not an isolated incident. Between 2016 and 2019, 44 people were lynched and 280 were injured by Gau Rakshaks, who reportedly stripped and beat Dalit men in Gujarat, force-fed cow dung and urine to two men in Haryana, raided a Muslim hotel in Jaipur, and raped 2 women in Haryana for allegedly eating beef at home. This blanket of state supported terror goes largely unnoticed by an ignorant Western world, incapable to see beyond their caricaturisation of India.
A notable aspect of this cultural shift is the weekly newspaper, Gau Bharat Bharti, dedicated to the welfare of cows. Published in Mumbai, it is distributed across Maharashtra, Delhi, and Gujarat, reflecting the widespread support for cow protection. Gau Bharat Bharti is just one part of a broader effort to encourage the perception of India as a vegetarian and ‘pure’ nation. This initiative extends into popular culture in various ways. For example, MasterChef India, a local spinoff of the internationally acclaimed cookery show, has featured vegetarian seasons. Additionally, in the telecast of international editions of cookery shows, the word 'beef' is systematically muted, further promoting vegetarianism.
Non-Vegetarian Activism
As cow vigilantism has thrust beef-eating into the centre of communal and caste politics, the consumption of beef has become a subversive political act. It has become a marker of identity, an identity that has weathered centuries of aversion and humiliation at the hands of the brahmanical order, forming the basis of key political mobilisation against hegemonic vegetarianism.
In Maharashtra, during the 1970s, when Dalit literature was a burgeoning movement, festivals would be organised where beef was served as snacks. It was a way of protesting against savarna literary festivals, dominated by Brahmins, that did not acknowledge or accommodate space for Dalit writers and poets. More recently, beef-eating festivals have been brought back by students in Tamil Nadu, a state that is chiefly perceived as vegetarian because of the outsized influence of Brahmins on its popular culture. Even though the state is the birthplace of the famous Chettinad preparations of chicken, mutton, and beef, it is the dietary preferences of the Tamil Brahmins that dictates perceptions of Tamilian cuisine. Thus, this state has become a battleground for anti-caste movements, like the one led by activist Periyar in the twentieth century, who would utilise ‘non-vegetarian’ food as a primary argument against the Brahmin discourse of ‘purity’. More recently, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras briefly derecognised the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle (APSC), an independent student body, due to their distribution of circulars opposing the shutting down of the non-vegetarian cafeteria on campus. Originally, IIT Madras served only vegetarian food at its main cafeteria, but this rule was changed in 2013, only to be reinstated in 2015, despite the institute being home to students from all parts of India, many of whom consume non-vegetarian food.
This is but a manifestation of hurdles that food activists face when discussing caste. As food preferences and practices are hidden from view, confined to the domestic sphere and delineated as cultural practices, it is markedly difficult to have a conversation about castes without critics reframing the debate as one of cultural differences — the culturalisation of caste. The discriminatory politics of casteism have embedded themselves so thoroughly within the practices of the upper-castes that it has enshrined Dalit suffering into savarna culture. The formation of caste into cultural groups, naturalises and justifies their morality as practises in ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’ rather than the buttressing of the caste hierarchy. This ‘diversity’ has manifested itself into classic segregational policy, whether that be separate vegetarian and nonvegetarian areas, and the usage of language like ‘impurity’, all to maintain the illusion that the deconstruction of caste is no longer a necessary condition for democracy in India. In turn, reinforcing savarna structures of power and domination that have made vegetarianism the dominant norm.
To quote social scientist M.S.S. Pandian, “to talk about caste would incarcerate one into a pre-modern realm.” The omnipresence of caste has made the savarna believe that the avarna are mired within the futile and divisive politics of identity, rather than actively fighting for their marginalised palettes. Therefore, when the West flattens India as a shining example of vegetarianism, it undercuts the socio-cultural and political nuances of the diet. There is value in viewing vegetarianism as the sustainable, environmentally friendly alternative to Western meat-consumption, and there is much to be gained through sharing recipes and exploring what the myriad of Indian cuisines have to offer. But, to understand Indian vegetarianism as non-violent is unequivocally false, betraying centuries of the Dalit thali being systemically and culinarily maligned. Food forms an intrinsic part of how one not only engages with and performs culture, but how one understands themselves. When these foodways are deemed impure, one loses their connection to their community, and with that, voids both their connection to their own personhood, and how their being is fundamentally constructed. Protein forms the muscles in one’s body, fortifies one’s bones, and runs in one’s blood. Quite literally, you are what you meat.