Food fascism: The vegetarian hypocrisy in India

Diced beef 2 Food fascism: The vegetarian hypocrisy in IndiaThis month a group of Dalit (or Untouchables, as they were formerly labelled) students organised a Beef Festival in Osmania University of Hyderabad. It was the festival to assert their culinary rights in public and make a political statement of dietary habits of Dalits and Muslims – by cooking and eating beef Biryani on campus.

About 2000 students participated and although it started out well, the festival was disrupted and students were attacked by right-wing Hindu fascists. The Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) released a statement describing how Meena Kandasamy, a writer and poet who participated in the festival, was singled out and threatened with gang rape and acid attacks.

This festival is very significant as some Dalit students have organised themselves to fight against food-fascism, campaigning against the very centre of Brahmanical Hinduism that connects caste with food. Culinary politics and contact with animals play a huge role in establishing purity-pollution rules to discriminate people in the caste system.

Have Brahmans always been beef-hating vegetarians? The answer is a resounding no.


Later, Buddhism and Jainism became critical of ritual and public sacrifices of animals and introduced ahimsa (non-violence). According to Ambedkar – Dalit leader, architect of Indian constitution and a strong critique of Gandhi’s ideals – ‘the clue to the worship of the cow is to be found in the struggle between Buddhism and Brahmanism’, a strategy to establish its Brahmanical supremacy over Buddhism.This explains why Ambedkar advocated Dalits to convert to Buddhism.

The historian D.D. Kosambi pointed out in his work The culture and civilisation of Ancient Indian (1964), “A modern orthodox Hindu would place beef-eating on the same level as cannibalism, whereas Vedic Brahmins had fattened upon a steady diet of sacrificed beef.”

During the colonial period, the cow became a tool of mass political mobilisation to unite Hindus by upper-caste led freedom movement. Gandhi said, “my religion teaches me that the conviction of cow-killing is a sin and that, therefore, it ought to be abandoned” and then declared, “I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world.”

In today’s independent India, the beef-hating Brahmanical vegetarianism made cow slaughtering and beef-eating not only a taboo, but also illegal in many states of India. It has even secured a supportive-protection in the Indian constitution: Article 48 of the Indian constitution directs the State to take necessary steps for prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves.

Many Indian states have banned cow-slaughtering and selling beef is not permitted in public. Beef sellers and buyers in those states have to conduct their trade like drug-dealers. In Delhi, the cow protection enforcement team visits supermarkets to ensure beef is off the shelves.

Common sense dictates that all these forceful bans go to prove that India has a significant beef-eating population. In fact, that consumption of beef and buffalo meat together top the list of highest meat consumption in India. Annually, India produces an estimated 1.5 million tonnes of buffalo meat, of which only 24% is exported.

To deny the right to eat their traditional diet is the denial of the right to live with dignity and without fear. The ban of cow-slaughtering and the violence of the cow-protection movement – where a ‘legal’ ban exists – are nothing short of state-sponsored caste based discrimination.

The ‘holy cow’ construct is plain food-fascism, and this culinary politics by Brahmanical Hindutva forces is an attempt to wipe-out cultural identities of Dalits and Muslims and discriminate their basic rights.

The construction of today’s India as a vegetarian-loving and cow-praying country is an outright lie and a false cultural-propaganda by right-wing upper caste forces to oppress Dalits, lower-castes and Muslims.

This vegetarian image is also now part of India Inc. and exported to the world. The brand-transformation of India’s colonial image from a country full of snake-charmers to IT savvy Brahmans who are mostly vegetarians, is a false-representation of millions of people’s every day politics and food practices.

Jairam Ramesh, an Iyengar Brahmin and former Minister for Environment, came up with a Brahmanical solution to world’s climate change problem: stop eating beef.  He added, “(T)he best thing for us, India, is we are not a beef-eating nation.”  He has conveniently forgotten that Indians annually consume 1.14 million tonnes of buffalo meat.

This year India will also overtake the United States as the world’s third largest beef exporter. The vegetarian hypocrisy in India has no limits: the beef-hating project is carefully engineered to advance Brahmanical Hinduism.

More worryingly, the food-fascism cuts across political parties and beef-eating remains an uncomfortable issue to most upper-caste vegetarian intellectuals and non-beef liberals. Asserting culinary rights in public domain is an important expression of cultural politics in the caste system.

When I was a small boy, I used to eat pork (not beef) with my father and brothers as if it was stolen from someone’s shop. We ate it secretly by hiding it from our neighbours. I used to lie about what I ate on that day, if my friends had asked me.

If our neighbours accidentally dropped by to chat – a common practice where I come from – I used to run to the kitchen to hide the meat.

After finishing my meal, my mother used to make sure I had washed my hands four or five items and applied talcum powder to ensure my hand was free from any ‘smell’. Personally, I hated it because I preferred the whiff of lingering aroma from my hand as I knew it would be sometime before I would enjoy the taste of meat again.

That is why celebrating a beef festival is significant as a mass political protest.

Next time you hear about Indian vegetarianism, you’ll know it is just a load of bull.

  • chiefwhippet

    I suppose essentially, I think the world would probably be better off without the human species. I cannot drum up any enthusiasm for us. What have we done for the world except take? We are terribly destructive and seem to spend our time dreaming of finding another planet to wreck. Or of a paradise provided by God. Why don’t humans value what is here and where they evolved an stop destroying things?

  • Niranjan

    This article is written with so much hate towards the Bhramins (upper cast), this is issue is totally religious. Many Bhramins today eat meat! Vegetarianism is good if you do it for the environment, for the animals & for your health! BTW I’m a vegan from a backward cast!

  • pearson

    “There are plenty of plants that, unless prepared properly, can give you issues”…now where exactly do you do your shopping? 
    Is it only vegetarians that eat these “plants” that you talk about?
    Based on your moronic comments you can say that vegetarians can get ill from eating faeces, broken glass and drinking engine oil, because vegetarians eat strange food that meat eaters don’t eat. 

    Stop talking through you sphincter muscle you idiot. 
    I know what I am talking about because for many years I NEVER had an upset stomach, and I know that this was due to my diet.

  • Bhaskararao

    “If lower castes in India are forced into vegetarianism, then that qualifies as oppression.” – No such things happens in India. 
    In India,
    - 95% of people don’t bother which caste the guy next to you is of.
    - No one force anyone into vegetarianism / Non-vegetarianism
    That 5% people with self-seeking interests does some things like this (Politicians and some other groups). 

    For eg, many people asks me why I am vegan. It doesn’t mean they are forcing me to be a non-vegetarian. 

    People have right to eat what they want. What we see hear in Hyderabad and what writers write based on what they “HEAR” is different. This is getting worsen and helping you to pick all negative opinions about India.

  • ayan

    I advise people who take this subject seriously to read this article about eating beef, and why the cow over thousands of years has become sacred 

    This is precisely why, I eat beef outside of India, but it is not wise to eat it in India (although if your willing to pay very highly, could be different)

  • XenoMuta

    lol… ( be 1/2 free, no humans please ).

    I respect vegetarians ( I used to be one too ), but I think that It shouldn’t be enforced.

    What If I become powerful and for some reason worship veggies and forbid people from eating it?

Most viewed



Property search
Browse by area

Latest from Independent journalists on Twitter