In what seems like another step in the direction of an already regressive and discriminatory food policies in campuses of Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Madras has introduced separate entry and exit points, separate wash basins and separate utensils for vegetarian and non-vegetarian students on the campus .

The mess in question is ‘R R North Indian Mess’ which introduced this segregation three days ago. As this is the vacation period, only three messes are currently operational at the campus.  There was no official communication sent out to the students regarding the segregation. To the surprise of students, posters were put up inside the mess, indicating entry and exit points and separate wash basins for non-vegetarian students etc. The segregation has also introduced separate seating space, and separate plates for non-vegetarian students. Also, IIT Madras recently introduced a ‘vegetarian only’  mess to cater to vegetarian students on the campus.

One such student Mohan*, who was not aware of segregation said, “Three days back I sat towards the vegetarian side, I had an egg in my plate, the management came and forced me to sit on the other side, I was told that other students do not like if non vegetarian students sit here, so they asked me to sit on the other side.” Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle, a Facebook page by IIT Madras students, termed this move as  ‘full fledged’ untouchability.

The issue of food choices and targeting of non-vegetarian food has been going on for the last few years. In 2014, the MHRD through its under secretary forwarded a letter to 14 IITs asking them not to provide “tasmic” food and the action taken in this regard was also sort from the Directors of IITs. Earlier this year, IIT Bombay asked the canteen in the civil engineering department to stop serving non-vegetarian food including eggs. Again, the same campus in one of the hostels asked student who have non-vegetarian food to use separate plates.

Currently, students eating non vegetarian food have been forced to enter from other side of the mess, and take separate plate for food. Students intend to take up this issue and  file a complaint against this segregation with the administration

*Name changed to protect the student

Courtesy: Two Circles
 

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India, whose population is predicted to overtake China’s, is rapidly changing from an agricultural society to an industrial economy with a surging urban population. This is driving the fastest-growing poultry market in the world, as cultural norms change and eating meat becomes a status symbol.

Total vegetarianism is rare

Vegetarianism in India has been gradually becoming less strict over the past 30 years. Only about three in ten Indians now claim to be vegetarian, and a 2016 national survey found that more than half of people aged between 15 and 34 eat meat.

A recent National Family Health Survey found that only 30% of women and 22% of men describe themselves as vegetarian. Other studies have similarly found that a relatively small minority practise vegetarianism.

(India has a booming poultry market. Credit: Pau Casals/Unsplash) 

Even these numbers may well be underestimates. Indians are said to underreport their meat consumption due to religious and cultural stigmas associated with it.

Tastes like chicken

Poultry is India’s most popular type of meat, and India is projected to be one of the world’s largest growth markets for poultry consumption.

The rise in meat consumption is predominantly driven by urban India, and the highest percentages of non-vegetarians come from southern states such as Telgana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Another reason may be that chicken can be considered a universally acceptable meat, given the religious taboos associated with beef among Hindus and pork among Muslims. Although 80% of Indians are Hindus, India is home to several other major religions and sub-faiths, each with its own strictures about food and eating. Vegetarianism is less common among Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Bahais, Parsis and Jews who collectively make up 15% of India’s population.
 

Upwardly mobile urbanites

In addition to religious and cultural variations, several key factors have influenced India’s shift, overall, towards meat consumption. These include rising urbanisation, increasing disposable incomes, globalisation and cross-cultural influences. Many urban Indians are embracing consumerism as a sign of upward social mobility and meat is widely considered to be a status symbol.

Despite this, others still consider meat-eating to be socially and culturally unacceptable. A 2015 study found young people felt “you eat [meat] in secret, away from your family”.

This appears to reflect differences in front-stage and backstage behaviours, a trait mainly found in collectivist cultures. “Front-stage behaviours”, which is how we act in public, may have more role-playing elements than backstage behaviours, which tend to be carried out in private.
It seems urban Indians today face a dissonance. On one hand, increasing exposure to new lifestyles is creating cultural change, but there is still pressure to adhere to traditions that have prevailed for centuries.

This contradiction is reflected in some of the urban Indian attitudes from the 2015 study on meat consumption. On one hand, some felt:
 

…in our Bhagvad Gita, Ramayan (in reference to the Hindu holy books) there are old teachings that non-veg is impure. It is the food of demons/monsters.

On the other hand, it was also claimed:

[When it comes to] holy men and Brahmins, it’s not like they don’t like eggs or meat. In front of people they will behave, but on the quiet/sly, they will smoke and drink and eat everything else.

Meat eating in India is a complex issue, with many facets. However, recent trends and figures certainly seem to indicate one thing: it is a mistake to label India as a vegetarian nation.
 

Tani Khara, PhD student in Sustainability, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Indian Railways Kitchen Coach
 
However, around 80% of Indian men and 70% of women consume eggs, fish, chicken or meat occasionally, if not weekly, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of national health data. But their daily diet tends to be vegetarian, consisting of milk or curd, pulses or beans and dark green and leafy vegetables,
 
Overall, 42.8% Indian women and 48.9% men consumed fish, chicken or meat weekly, according to the National Family Health Survey, 2015-16 (NFHS-4).
 
It is important to assess the average diet of an Indian because both malnutrition and obesity are a problem: 53.7% women and 22.7% men are anaemic and 22.9% of women and 20.2% of men are thin (with body mass index of less than 18.5) while 20.7% of women and 18.9% men are overweight or obese, according to the same data.
 

The ministry of health and family welfare had recently courted controversy when it tweeted an image that grouped non-vegetarian foods such as eggs and meat with junk food, implying that both cause obesity. The image was subsequently deleted.
 
In 2015, Madhya Pradesh government had banned eggs from meals served in anganwadis or day-care centres allegedly due to pressure from Jain groups.
 
These moves come despite the recommendations of the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), Hyderabad which advocate the consumption of protein-rich animal foods such as milk, meat, fish and eggs–and plant foods such as pulses and legumes.
 
“Animal proteins are of high quality as they provide all the essential amino acids in right proportions, while plant or vegetable proteins are not of the same quality because of their low content of some of the essential amino acids” said NIN’s dietary guidelines.
 
The Indian Railways are now planning to celebrate the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, a vegetarian, as ‘vegetarian day’. It plans to serve only vegetarian food on its premises and appeal to all its employees to abjure meat that day, reported Times of India on May 21, 2018.
 
Dietary risk including poor diet–low in fruits, vegetables, whole grain but high in salt, fats–is the third biggest risk factor for death and disability in India after air pollution and malnutrition, IndiaSpend reported in November, 2017.
 
In women, 37.4% have eggs, 36% fish, chicken or meat weekly
 
More men than women eat non-vegetarian food in India; almost three in ten women do not consume eggs (29.3%) and chicken, fish or meat (29.9%) compared to two in ten men who do not consume eggs (19.6%) and chicken, fish or meat (21.6%)
 
Among women between 15-45 years of age, 45% have milk and curd, 44.8% have pulses or beans and 47.2% have dark green, leafy vegetables daily while 37.4% eat eggs and 36.6% eat fish, chicken or meat weekly. Almost half–51.8%–of them have fruits occasionally.
 

Source: National Family Health Survey, 2015-16
 
Among men between 15 to 45 years of age, 46.2% have milk and curd, 46.5% have pulses or beans, 46.6% have dark green, leafy vegetables daily while 44.7% eat eggs, 43.3% eat fish, chicken or meat weekly and 47.6% have fruits occasionally.

 
Source: National Family Health Survey 2015-16
 
Age, marital status, geography, wealth and caste are factors
 
Weekly consumption of food items is not the same for all groups and follows different trends. But those over 19 years tend to eat more eggs and any kind of meat every week.
 
Among men, the highest consumption of eggs and meat was among those who were never married (50.5% for eggs and 49.2% for fish, chicken or meat). Also, urban men (53.8% for eggs, 52.8% for fish, chicken or meat) eat more non-vegetarian food than rural men (47.1% for eggs, 46.5% for fish, chicken or meat).
 
Among women, the highest consumption of eggs and meat was among those who were widowed or divorced or deserted (41.5% for eggs and 47.4% for fish, chicken or meat).
 
Education appears to decide the choice of vegetarian/non-vegetarian foods. Those who have studied up to five years eat the highest amount of eggs and meat–men (54.2% and 57.6%) and women (48.2% and 51.8%).
 
Among religions, Christians consume eggs and meat the most–men (71.5% and 75.6%) and women (64.7% and 74.2%). This is followed by Muslim men (66.5% and 73.1%) and women (59.7% and 67.3%).
 
The highest consumption of eggs and fish, chicken or meat is among those who said they did not know their caste–men (49.2% and 51.6%). This holds true for women as well for eggs; for fish, chicken and meat it is highest in ‘other’ caste.
 
And while the consumption of eggs and meat increases with household wealth, a lower percentage of men and women among the richest 20% Indians consume eggs and meat.
 

Source: National Family Health Survey 2015-16
 
Most meat eaters in Kerala, fewest in Punjab
 
Data on women show that Kerala (92.8%), Goa (85.7%) and Assam (80.4%) have the highest weekly consumers of fish, chicken or meat while Punjab (4%), Rajasthan (6%) and Haryana (7.8%) rank the lowest.
 
Figures for men show that Tripura (94.8%), Kerala (90.1%) and Goa (88%) are the highest weekly consumers of fish, chicken or meat while Punjab (10%), Rajasthan (10.2%) and Haryana (13%) are the lowest.
 
The consumption of meat on a weekly basis is high in the northeast and south India. It is the lowest in the north for both sexes.
 

Source: National Family Health Survey, 2015-16  
 
(Yadavar is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)
 
We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.
 

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Vegetarians, vegans and religious groups are up in arms about the use of tallow in the new plastic fiver. Yui Mok PA Wire/PA Images

Of course, the introduction – for use by the British army and its Indian troops – of a new cartridge for the 1853 Enfield rifle which had allegedly been greased in pig and cow fat, was not the key trigger for the British Empire’s biggest revolt. Its power lay more in its force as a rumour than it leading to actual cases of Hindus or Muslims being directly polluted via contact with animal products.

But this is in some ways beside the point – as is the case with the petition started by Doug Maw, a hotel worker from Cumbria. The 120,000-odd petitioners – including vegetarian and vegan cafés across the UK and a range of religious groups – are probably aware of the fact that plastic bags, crayons, cosmetics, soaps and detergents, latex, toothpaste, and candles contain animal fats, too. But the tangibility and exchangeability of a banknote – its symbolic and material power – brings a greater social significance to the contaminated fiver.
 

Cartridges and chapatis

Like the greased cartridge affair of 1857, then, these symbolic campaigns suggest that the state’s relationship with consumer groups is fragile and the nature of political communication is ebullient. Key aspects of the £5 protest are its forms of rapid transmission. In 2016, social media allowed Maw’s greased fiver petition to quickly gather momentum. Similarly, the mysterious appearance of thousands of chapatis being passed from hand to hand among sepoy soldiers across northern India in February and March 1857, led British officials to surmise that the spread of this odd secret message, which outpaced the mail service, might be the harbinger of something serious.

The Sikander Bagh in Lucknow was the venue for a fierce battle during the Indian Mutiny.

The chapati wave had no proven link to the rebellion of May 1857 – despite official beliefs to the contrary. Nevertheless, government disconnection and security paranoia – as well as the enormous possibilities of mass communication via objects – characterise these moments of symbolic token distribution at both times.

So it is worth pausing to consider the historical signs running through these bendy notes, both religious and secular. In calling people to join the fiver ban, the National Council for Hindu Temples in the UK made explicit reference to 1857, and the use of pig and cow grease in its statement of 1 December 2016.

The ensuing revolution has been called the First Indian Revolution … and helped to focus such a sense of national identity that many remark that it created the wave of anti British rhetoric which coalesced in the expulsion of the colonialists and ultimately the demise of the British Empire. Could an adharmic £5.00 be an equally expensive mistake? Time will tell.

Claiming that the “devout Brahmin” Mangal Pandey’s discovery of the contamination sparked the ultimate “demise of the British Empire” is hyperbole, but Hindu organisations in particular draw on a deeper history of anti-colonial protest rooted in animal product taboos. From the 1880s through to the 1930s, for example, protests against the slaughter of cows and the use of cow products in manufactured goods served as a mobilising (albeit religiously divisive) symbol across north India.

Ever since its election in 2014, the BJP and its associated organisations have also maintained a multi-faceted campaign to end cow slaughter in India, specifically targeting Muslim and low-caste traders in hides and meat.
 

Moral dilemma

In other ways, though, these reactions are predominantly secular and illustrate how minority groups perceive or articulate their political rights. Hindu, Sikh and Jain temples have pointed to the importance of “charitable donations” to their sustenance and the moral dilemma posed by the £5 note. Likewise, cafes in the UK banning the note have pointed out that they make a living by not having animal products anywhere near their establishments.

The twitter storm around the dirty fiver made references to the “rights” of vegans, vegetarians and religious communities, whose ire was raised against Professor David Solomon, inventor of the note for Innovia, for describing protesters as “stupid”.

But we might also consider here the significant moral purchase of vegetarianism in relative terms. There have been no protests yet against the inclusion of Winston Churchill’s image on the note – a diehard opponent of Indian independence and a man widely believed in India to have been responsible for the deaths of more than 3m during the Bengal Famine of 1943.

It may be that the UK Treasury will bite the bullet and consider new forms of manufacture before it releases the planned polymer £10 note featuring the image of Jane Austen in 2017. And in that year of the 70th anniversary of India’s independence, we might also consider anew – like Austen’s Colonel Brandon with his East India fortune, or the Austens’ friendship with Warren Hastings – the many difficult and ambivalent relationships between Britain and India.

Author is Professor of Indian History, University of Leeds

This article was first published on The Conversation

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