The boxer responds to it casually, as if he is used to such blood lust on his phone — after all, several real-life incidents of lynchings have been recorded on video and shared across Indian social media. Later in the film, when the boxer is invited to his lower-caste coach’s home to eat meat, a bunch of thugs barge in and beat both men savagely.

Mr. Kashyap, the director, does not specify whether the meat was beef, but the coach is a Dalit, and Dalits, the most marginalized caste, do eat beef. “Mukkabaaz” channels the unanswered questions around the lynchings over suspected beef eating and asks: How can a freedom as fundamental as what we eat be taken away?

A rare, stunning film about rising Islamophobia in India, “Mulk,” which is written and directed by Anubhav Sinha, begins with the birthday celebration of the father of a large Muslim family. The film spends a few deliberate moments inhabiting the cooking, smelling and eating of meat. A lovely dig at Hindu vegetarian pretensions follows as the father teases his meat-loving Hindu neighbor and friend with a plate of meat, knowing that he cannot admit to eating meat in public.

There is a peek at meat again in Mr. Sinha’s most recent movie, “Article 15,” a powerful examination of the caste system that won critical and commercial success. The protagonist, an earnest Brahmin policeman investigating the rape and murder of two lower-caste girls, gags when he opens a shack and sees raw pink unskinned carcasses. The comment is sharp: The caste of pig-skinners lives next to this shack while the mutton-loving officer can’t bear the sight of carcasses.

Hindi film and politics have an old relationship. Before Indian independence, films made in Bombay were anticolonial. After India’s independence in 1947, the country’s leading movie stars, Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, propagated the values of liberal democracy, secularism and inclusiveness championed by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister. Now there are a slew of films embracing the muscular Hindu nationalist worldview, and even the policies and projects championed by Prime Minister Modi. “Toilet: A Love Story,” for example, is about Mr. Modi’s mission to make India free from open defecation.

Mr. Modi himself has revealed a far greater crush on Bollywood than previous prime ministers, posing for selfies with stars and roping them in for government campaigns, such as an initiative to promote voting and a film to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s birth. It is likely that this proximity is the impetus for films about toilet habits and food choices.

The Hindu caste system is structured around food. Food choices signify degrees of purity and pollution — meat, especially beef, is polluting and triggers base instincts. Vegetarian food cooked without garlic and onions is wholesome.