Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | What India Really Eats -Balmurli Natrajan and Suraj Jacob

What India Really Eats -Balmurli Natrajan and Suraj Jacob

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Mar 7, 2018   modified Modified on Mar 7, 2018
-TheWire.in

At a time when food has provided so much grist for the identitarian and nativist mill, it is important to infuse into public discourse a modicum of reason through facts.

For long, India has been mythologised as a vegetarian, and particularly beef-eschewing, society. Such a representation has further been ideologically explained (and justified) by a wide range of scholars, politicians and popular discourse by constructing India as a society primarily shaped by religious norms which purportedly ‘explain’ the proclivity to vegetarianism and the beef-taboo. Such a representation has had obvious consequences over the last century or so, and much more recently in the openly toxic mixture of communalism and casteism.

While much has been done (and continues to be done) by scholars, particularly historians, to dispel this narrative, the scale and near-legendary status of the above representation has made it difficult to counter in a systematic manner. A key assumption that stands as a hurdle in countering this myth is the idea that social groups (such as religious communities or castes) in India are homogenous, with their members simply following culturally-prescribed norms of behaviour. Such assumptions hide the immense variability within any social group. They also contribute to false representations of Indians as exceptionally anti-individualistic and group-oriented. Indians thus appear as ‘cultural dupes’, mutely following rather than actively questioning, challenging, bending and transgressing social norms.

This short essay, a summary of our article in the current issue of the Economic and Political Weekly, is a challenge to the above representation of India and Indians. In that paper, we analysed three representative large-scale datasets of self-reported behaviour (National Sample Survey, National Family Health Survey and India Human Development Survey) to establish some basic facts about what ‘India’ eats. The findings seriously question many public claims about food habits – and importantly, suggest that no general claim based on a social group can pass muster.

How prevalent is vegetarianism in India?

The extent of overall vegetarianism is much less than common claims and stereotypes suggest; survey estimates show that between 23% and 37% of the population of India is vegetarian. Thus, far from being a vegetarian nation, India is a meat-eating majority nation. The notion of ‘non-vegetarian’ and the discourse around vegetarianism, then, reflect the hegemony enjoyed (thus far) by the ‘minority’ vegetarian population.

Please click here to read more.

TheWire.in, 5 March, 2018, https://thewire.in/229630/india-food-eating-vegetarianism/?utm_source=fbpage


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close