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What do we make of the latest Zomato controversy where a certain Amit Shukla declined to take delivery of food, because the delivery person was Muslim and Zomato decided to blow it up for some free publicity? The answers aren’t easy because they end up damning everyone involved.

Food is an intensely personal choice, be it on religious, ethical or health grounds. In that sense, food is an expression of oneself, be it regional or national cuisine, of ingredients, of techniques or indeed of dietary choices.

These religious dietary choices, in fact, have driven an immense creativity and diversity of food. For example, it is the “widow cooking” of Bengal that has given rise to delightful dishes like onion and garlic-free mutton and fish curries labelled “niramish” or “vegetarian”. It was Jewish dietary laws that forbade the use of the northern European staple fat – pig lard – which led to the fattening of geese to produce the delightful foie gras, and the ban on pork that led to the invention of luscious fatty beef pastrami. Bizarrely, and contrary to sociological theory, food exclusion creates a pleasant diversity.

Also read: Zomato App gets 1-star ratings as backlash for ‘being biased against Hindus’

Religious cuisines & strict laws

However, what happens when your religious diet states that kosher food can only be prepared or supervised by a certain religious person?

Again, this part is legitimate mostly because religious cuisines have strict laws on how to prepare food. The first part is about piety, where food is seen as an offering to the gods. Can such an offering be made by people who are not pious – for example, how will the “sacrifice” be a “sacrifice” if it’s done by an atheist?

The second part is expertise: Kashrut, for example, is notoriously complicated and requires a significant level of Jewish canonical knowledge. Similarly, Tamil-Brahmin food has several rules that require the cook to bathe, say certain prayers, cook in a specified manner (the preparation area has to be completely different from where used dishes are washed) etc. etc. As such, the rule here is – would you accept having a tumour in your brain operated on by a chiropractor just because they’re technically “all people”?

This brings us to the third issue, which is food delivery, and this is where things start getting a bit more complicated, for the simple reason that food delivery is a modern phenomenon. Technically, Kashrut, for example, must also be served by a Jew. However, the canonical law states that because of modern techniques like plastic packaging etc., the serving can be done by a non-Jew as long as the preparation and packaging is done by a Jew. Yet again, because Hinduism doesn’t have a strict codification or arbitration of these rules to suit modern realities, each person interprets them differently.

Why Amit Shukla is a bigot

This is where the case of Amit Shukla comes in and why he is a bigot. For starters, he did not care who had prepared the food or who had packed it. All he cared about was the fact that the delivery boy was Muslim. This is why his explanations as to this being the month of shravan seem like past-facto rationalisation.

This is also why Zomato’s initial response – cancelling the order and still charging him as the delivery boy had collected the food – was correct. In fact, Zomato has several options to cater to religious sensitivities. It has a button to show vegetarian-only options, it has an option for showing halal certification, and it has a special requests box where one can make special requests like “please ensure the delivery boy is Hindu as this is shravan”. Whether Zomato would’ve conceded to his request or not is now academic, but technically speaking, Amit Shukla was seeking to add caveats to the order post the completion of the contract.

Also read: Customer cancels Zomato order over Muslim delivery boy, company’s reply wins internet

Zomato’s cheap publicity trick

Where Zomato screwed up was that all its actions thereafter reeked of cheap publicity and inciting communalism.

First, it decided to virtue signal about ‘food having no religion’ – a blatant falsehood given the halal and vegetarian options it offers. Of course, given the blatant bigotry of Shukla’s tweet, why Zomato chose to blow it up is anybody’s guess, but we can all agree that one factor was some cheap free publicity.

To cap it, Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal decided to virtue signal some more, positing himself as some bulwark against bigotry. Again, one is hard pressed to find any motive save cheap publicity. The Madhya Pradesh police has taken suo-moto cognisance of Amit Shukla’s tweets and may possibly file a 153A/295A case against him.

I oppose this. Unless one actively incites violence, bigots have a right to their bigotry. However, if one chooses to proceed against Amit Shukla, it is equally necessary for the police to file cases under IPC Sections 153A & 295A against both Zomato and Deepinder Goyal as they deliberately chose to inflame a situation, amplifying hatred to their lakhs of followers, with a deliberate intent for publicity.

Who is worse?

It is this possibly deliberate refusal to understand the first principles of policy that makes the liberals supporting Zomato come off as two-faced opportunists. They remain quiet on government money funding waqfs, who stick to their dietary practices, but want ISKCON-run NGO to change its dietary practices for mid-day meals because it receives government money. They also want Air India, a government entity, to reverse its vegetarian-on-domestic flights policy, despite knowing fully well that vegetarian food will have the least overhead cost.

Basically, personal beliefs, economics, policy and legal precedent should all cater to the liberals’ whims and fancies. That said, let us be clear they are right that Amit Shukla is a badly educated bigot. But by that same standard, Deepinder Goyal, allegedly an “IIT graduate” is something far, far, worse; a vulture, who is the peacetime version of a war profiteer who knowingly and deliberately makes money off conflict.

Also read: Zomato wants to close India’s gender pay gap, one of the worst in the world

The author is a senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. He tweets @iyervval. Views are personal.

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