What you eat is entirely your business

Almost all Indians – no matter their religions – respect vegetarianism.

Even non-vegetarians recognise that India has many vegetarians, that many people are brought up to be vegetarian for reasons of faith and we should respect their beliefs.

 

Take my own example. I eat meat but many of my relatives are vegetarians — which is not unusual in a Gujarati Jain vanya family — and some of them also follow restrictions on the consumption of potatoes, onions, garlic and other seemingly harmless vegetables. I respect their beliefs and always take them into account when we have a meal out or when they come over.

 

   Or take my wife who comes from a Punjabi Brahmin family and grew up vegetarian. She occasionally eats meat and fish now but most of her family does not. This does not make her feel gastronomically superior to them.

 

   In fact, because of our family backgrounds, both of us are more understanding of vegetarians and their preferences and fears. For instance, when there was a social media uproar over Sudha Murthy when she said that she took her own cutlery to restaurants, I wrote a supportive column about the incident saying that I understood what she was trying to say.

 

   I offer all this by way of background to explain that I am the sort of person who thinks that what you eat is entirely your business. It is a matter of individual choice. It may be affected by religious considerations and social conditioning but ultimately, the choice is yours.

 

   Now, here’s my problem: not all vegetarians seem to take the same food-is-an-individual -choice-that-must-be-respected attitude when it comes to non-vegetarians. Every time a Muslim festival draws near, social media is full of fake sympathy for goats who may be slaughtered and there is always a collection of humbugs who will post photos of their vegetarian meals to tell us how wonderfully moral and guilt-free they are because no living things were harmed in the making of their meals.

 

   The prejudice extends across society. For one, it is a convenient way of hitting out at Muslims without having to specifically mention that it is Muslims they are targeting. It’s the same kind of hypocrisy that leads housing societies to say that non-vegetarians will not be admitted as neighbours. What they mean, of course, is Muslims.

 

   We know that the majority of Indians are non vegetarian but some Hindus have convinced themselves that vegetarianism is a pillar of Hindu belief. In fact, it is by no means clear that Hindu religious (or even mythological) figures were necessarily vegetarians or preached compulsory vegetarianism. Yet to listen to today’s bogus propaganda is to believe that Lord Krishna broke away from telling us about the importance of duty in the Bhagwad Gita to add that Kababs were totally immoral.

 

   History does not support the notion of a vegetarian Hindu renaissance either. The great Hindu kings like Chandragupta Maurya ran kingdoms where meat was regularly consumed. The Vedic Aryans, from whom today’s Hindus draw some of their heritage, were not vegetarians. In the South, it is sometimes claimed that the term ‘pulao’ may come from the ancient name for a dish of meat and rice that was popular long before Muslims arrived.

 

"If vegetarians really believe that then they should first give up dairy products because in India, something like over 90 per cent of methane-releasing cows are raised for dairy purposes and not for their meat."

   So, why do we pretend that vegetarianism and Hinduism are inextricably linked? Why do some North Indians get so agitated when they discover that Bengalis celebrate their Puja festival by eating meat? Why do propagandists gloss over the fact that the Kashmiri Pandits have a refined non-vegetarian cuisine?

 

   There is only one answer that makes sense: caste. Vegetarianism became the preserve of the upper castes in some parts of India. Of course there were other parts where even Brahmins ate meat (Kashmir and Bengal, for instance). But the veneration of vegetarianism is still largely an upper caste phenomenon.

 

   Both my wife and I are by no means ashamed of or embarrassed by our caste heritage but we recognise that our families have been privileged by the Indian caste system for generations. Our caste-based privileges have not extended down the pyramid and we have no right to judge those castes where there were no injunctions against meat-eating. And yet so many of us do exactly that.

 

   The notion of food-purity is essentially an offshoot of the even more offensive idea of caste-purity. And it really has no place in today’s India.

 

   As for the non-religious, non-caste, so-called logical arguments in favour of vegetarianism, they are non-starters.

 

   The we-can’t-take-lives-when-we eat rhetoric is based on imposing a caste system on all living things. We all know that bacteria are living beings. Yet we have no hesitation in eating up bacteria: in dahi or in fermented foods

 

   Vegetarians think this is okay because bacteria are a lower form of life. Well okay, what about plants then? We know that they have life too. They grow, they feel pain and eventually they die. Why is it okay to kill plants for food? Well, because they too are a lower form of life, say some vegetarians.

 

   Even if you take the line that plants and micro-organisms are at the bottom of some caste-pyramid of all life, and it’s fine to kill them, there is another problem. Most agriculture involves the use of chemicals and pesticides to kill pests and other living creatures. The chemicals kill innumerable insects, spiders, reptiles and the like only so that food can be cultivated for human beings. The process of harvesting grain mechanically also invariably involves killing insects and animals who get in the way.

 

   Vegetarians would have to claim that all of these living beings do not possess what they regard as life because if they did not make such a claim, then the average vegetarian has had thousands of living beings killed each year for his or her lunch and dinner.

 

   In recent years, vegetarians have found refuge in the save-the-planet movement. And yes it is true that the methane released by barnyard animals can put the planet at risk.

 

   But if vegetarians really believe that then they should first give up dairy products because in India, something like over 90 per cent of methane-releasing cows are raised for dairy purposes and not for their meat.

 

   There is nothing more ridiculous than some self-righteous vegetarian putting a picture of a paneer curry on social media and patting himself or herself on the back, for being so moral and so virtuous. In fact, given how hard it is to eat beef in India, it is the dairy-loving vegetarians who are doing the most harm to the environment.

 

   Bigotry, hatred self-righteousness and snobbery have no place in food. People who use food to show off some imagined moral superiority are not just wrong; they are usually idiots.

 

    And people who use other people’s food habits to discriminate against them and to spread hatred are beneath contempt.