Dec 26, 2024 13:24 IST
First published: Dec 26, 2024 at 13:22 IST
On Sunday, December 22, the last day of the 87th Kannada Sahitya Sammelan, Mandya’s Mitatarians scored a small victory. Boiled eggs were served to more than one lakh participants on the last day of the annual three-day event for the frenzy of meat-feeding on all days. The demand came from several groups who claimed that meat-eating, especially in the Vokkaliga heartland of Mandya, was a cultural heritage and practice that had long been denied an equal place in Karnataka’s most important cultural events. Even Kannada literature that focuses on or talks about meat, some progressive groups claimed, was a taboo subject in previous conventions. On Saturday night, rebel meat workers, sporting badges about the “historic” step for equality between themselves and vegetarians, brought “badutta” – “vegetarian” food, including home-cooked eggs and chicken biryani and other meat dishes, for distribution at food counters. to over 500 participants.
A hard-boiled meat fanatic will rightly question eggs as a substitute for the real thing. But even such a pyrrhic victory can be a giant symbolic step forward. Abbots of several important monasteries in North Karnataka have expressed strong opposition to the introduction of eggs as part of the mid-day meal scheme in seven districts in 2021. At the time, Mathadis cited statistics showing that a large proportion of children were not accustomed to eggs, and preferred to serve bananas, or peanuts, in schools. As a large minority of 16 to 17 percent of Karnataka’s population, the Lingayats, along with Brahmins and Jains (ironically, the BJP) chose to oppose the government’s plan, despite all evidence that the stunting and waste index needs to be changed. Northern seven districts through this nutritional change. Tamil Nadu has successfully introduced eggs to turn around its nutritional status since 1989, and as studies have shown, BJP-ruled states have increasingly resisted this nutritional innovation.
It is another matter that good feeling has prevailed, and with additional help from the Azim Premji Foundation, eggs are now supplied to all government and aided schools throughout the week. But even as KS Singh’s Peoples of India project covers about 83 percent of the population, well-entrenched prejudices persist even as all evidence points to rising meat consumption across the country. Of course, India is in India, it varies, those who eat meat only on Sunday, or every day except Tuesday, or outside the house, but not inside, only on boneless chicken, or when a family member cooks or only. When they drink. Karnataka also boasts of a self-confessed “chicken-eating Brahmin” (Gundu Rao). All these caveats will prove a headache for color coding on maps.
But the protesters weren’t just claiming equality: they were pointing to the deep-seated value attached to vegetarianism, which places “shameful” meat on separate counters, and views meat-eaters as impure, if not criminal. Only in Kerala have I seen signs promising “pure non-vegetarian” food. Here too, the negative connotation of “non” was difficult to erase.
An attachment to purity toward food items, their producers, or consumers has led to the branding of everyday items in overtly ethnic terms. Where else can “Brahmins” just become the unique selling point of sambar masala? Where does “Sankethi” suggest a reliable and tasty brand of snacks? And of course, the colloquial “bhattaru” for cook also refers to the Brahminical monopoly of public cooking.
We can’t imagine publicly branding food cultures from opposite ends of the racial spectrum. Food preferences are many and varied: Arvind Malagatti, in his unforgettable autobiography, Sarkari Brahmin, recalls the revulsion he felt when he first entered a house that used “dung of the devil” (hing/hing) for cooking. But food preferences don’t need to be prejudices, and our youth need to be taught this distinction right away.
75 years after independence and long after India overcame food scarcity, traces of civilizational concern about food remain. “Have you eaten?” is the standard greeting in Karnataka. According to some accounts, the Chinese also opened their conversations with this question, but, after the revolution of 1949, and the pushback against the severe privatizations of the early revolutionary decades, it disappeared from everyday use. This is not only an important nutritional change, but an equally important, linguistic one.
So it may not be a coincidence if there is a small victory in the Kannada Sahitya Sammelan. Besides making the smell of “meat” more acceptable, it strongly suggests that nothing less than a linguistic revolution is needed. Cultivating tolerance by removing the negative connotations associated with eating meat – in schools, colleges, public events – will go a long way in making the plurality of food cultures acceptable, which characterizes our diversity. Perhaps nothing less than revolution will ensure this, but in the meantime, small victories should suffice.
The author is a Bengaluru-based historian and professor of history at JNU, Delhi.
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