71 per cent of Indians are non-vegetarians, as per Sample Registration System published by the Registrar General of India ( Representative image) | Photo Credit: BCCL

After several years I flew on an Air India domestic circuit flight from Delhi to Kozhikode (Calicut) via Kannur. It was a four-hour flight which was delayed by 45 minutes, effectively making it a five-hour one. All I was offered to eat during that time was some vague looking gravy floating with some potatoes. It tasted terrible so I requested to be served an omelette – an item that, my memory told me, was always an option on the breakfast menus served on flights and trains throughout my life.

But somewhere down the line, I’d clearly missed this story. “No,” my national carrier told me, “no eggs as it's non-vegetarian”. It was said to me as if eggs were some impure thing that we ought not to be eating. I felt angry and as persecuted as students reportedly being denied eggs in mid-day meals despite their nutritional value. So I asked, “Then what the hell can you serve?” “Bread and butter,” I was told. “Ok, bring it.” Two bread rolls arrived but the butter was not Amul, the preferred brand for most, but something called 'Nova', which before that Air India flight, I had only seen being used as a dairy creamer.

The butter tasted terrible and I took note that in the packet of condiments, Air India still served salt and pepper that accompanies omelettes. Which meant that they’ve got rid of the eggs but not the condiments that were certainly not designed to rescue the mush they call “vegetarian” that we were all condemned to eat in case we find ourselves on an Air India flight.

This flight was to Kerala, a state with 97 per cent of its residents being non-vegetarians – with a vengeance. I would rediscover that as soon as I landed with my stomach rumbling. The two gentlemen who came to receive me were not from any minority community (as that must always be stated now), but they quickly offered me tender coconut on the drive along with banana chips. And then the food options they offered were beef biryani, fish, prawns, oyster fry and so on and so forth. I settled for mutton biryani and said it was delicious, but they insisted that the beef one was even better.

Data from the Sample Registration System (SRS) published by the Registrar General of India reveals that 71 per cent of Indians are non-vegetarians. Even Gujarat, the state perceived as being overwhelmingly vegetarian has 40 per cent non-vegetarians. However, the meat-eating and fish-eating people come from the coastal communities, Adivasis, Dalits and the minorities, whose lifestyles/food habits are not included in what is presented as ethnic 'Gujarati'. Of course, the two most famous and powerful contemporary living Gujaratis in India are strict vegetarians. But most people of India that they now rule are not.

Let us return to Kerala, where being non-vegetarian does not mean that there is no taboo towards fish, meat and poultry. It only means that many people MUST have these items in their daily diets. The SRS data published in The Times of India reveals that Telangana, Odisha, Bengal and Kerala have the highest numbers of non-vegetarians while Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan actually have more vegetarians than Gujarat.

In the face of all this data, why is vegetarianism being promoted by the state? It’s Brahminism that mostly promotes food taboos (although in Kerala and other parts even many Brahmins eat meat). Still, it is the promotion of a Sanskritised Hindu identity that is behind the push for vegetarianism – it seeks to “purify” those lower on the caste hierarchy of certain religious-social-cultural and dietary practice and make them feel that they belong to what they present as the 'Hindu fold'. The idea is to be like the Brahmin, although of course, you would never be a 'Brahmin'.

North India is way behind in reading this script. It’s the descendants of the Dravida movements that are on to what is happening. It’s fascinating to see how strongly Tamils respond to food bans and attacks on individuals for consuming beef.

On one day last week, the top trend on social media was #Beef4Life and #WeLoveBeef. This followed an attack on a 24-year-old man in Nagapattinam district. Mohammad Fisan had posted a picture of himself eating some beef curry, which he described as delicious, on his Facebook profile. He was attacked by four persons; stabbed with a knife and beaten with iron rods by members of a group called 'Hindu Makkal Katchi'. They yelled at Fisan and said he cannot eat beef curry; Fisan yelled back saying it was his right to do so. He survived and is in hospital.

Many non-beef eating residents of Tamil Nadu were utterly outraged. And so began this Twitter trend saying that Tamil Nadu is not a place where you can start beating up people for what they eat. This social media trend revealed dimensions of the Tamil psyche towards what they see as attitudes of the Hindi belt. And as a Tamil-origin resident of Kerala informed me, Tamils also see it as a back-room way to promote hegemony of the upper caste way of life, something that the Dravida movement had dismantled to a large extent.

In Kerala meanwhile, each day I am being offered beef. And no, it’s not by members of the minority community (again necessary to say this).

To return to airline tale, I had no intention of subjecting myself to the Air India food torture on a four-hour flight, so I returned by a private carrier. I’ll buy whatever I need to eat and not be subjected to the diet imposed by a prejudiced and/or ignorant state and bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the airline continues to be a disaster. I, once, used to be so proud of Air India in my childhood and take delight in seeing the plump Maharaja with the moustache. It’s a real shame that the pride has now taken a beating.



Saba Naqvi is a guest contributor. Views expressed are personal.