Combat Vegetarianism

In Hyderabad, all the Irani hotels have become vegetarian! There are two reasons. Although Hyderabad is predominantly ‘non-veg’ its vegetarian population has increased in number and power. Both the ownership and the clients have changed. Many owners are Gujarati and Marwari. Then, many of these vegetarian clients don’t like non-veg places. So while a non-veg person can visit a veg place, the reverse is not true. Urban Non-Veg spaces have been taken over by Vegetarians. One may call it ‘counter-revolution’ because it is anti-poor.

About 90% of vegetarians in the world live in India. However, most Indians are not vegetarians. In truth, most of the vegetarians in India are concentrated in the few states of North West India–Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Western U.P. The reason is quite simple. Vegetarians depend on milk for their source of animal protein, and these states produce a lot of milk. In the whole of North Eastern India, Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, eastern U.P. and Chhattisgarh, there are practically no vegetarians. In South India and in Maharashtra, only traders and Brahmins are vegetarians!

Although small in number, vegetarian Indians enjoy much more power than their numbers indicate. This is mainly due to the fact that they are upper caste Brahmins and Bania traders from Western India, mainly Gujaratis and Marwaris, the prime movers of Indian capitalism. There is also a powerful group of South Indian Brahmins who are important in bureaucracy and education, who are ‘pure’ vegetarians and wield considerable power. Gandhi also made it an integral part of his moral precepts and influenced the Indian public policy and behaviour vis-a-vis diet.

Vegetarianism is not the same as being a vegetarian. From the beginning of human evolution, humans depended upon proteins from animals. It has remained an essential part of the human diet till today. Vegetarian food can be defined as consisting of animal proteins derived from milk products alone. The logic being that there is no direct killing of animals. Using the same logic, some people permit eggs as a vegetarian food. There is even a concept of treating infertile eggs as vegetarian eggs!

In the Hindu tradition, the word ‘religion’ is called ‘Sampradayas’. These are divided mainly in two types–Vedic and VedBahya. Vedic sampradaya is also called ‘Sanatan’. Apart from belief in the Vedas, they also follow the Manusmriti. They are mainly the three upper castes-Brahmins, Kshatriya, and trading castes, and some peasant classes in North West India. Among the Ved Bahya Sampraday, the most important ones are Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Lingayats. However, most of the artisan castes also belong to these traditions.

While all Sanatanis are vegetarians, most of the vegetarians are. Similarly, most of the artisan castes are not vegetarians, but some are. Practically No SC/ST is a vegetarian.

In the VedBahyaSampradayas, Jains and Lingayatas are vegetarians, whereas Buddhists are not.

It is the power of these Sanatanis that is making it so difficult for the poor to have access to non-veg food. So, access to non-veg food implies a class/caste struggle even though they are a majority. Is anything strange in a country where the majority of people are poor?

[Contributed by T Vijayendra]

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Frontier
Vol 58, No. 2, Jul 6 - 12, 2025