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Resisting Culinary Fascism

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A fortnight later – on 14-15 April – violent clashes broke out at Osmania University (OU), Hyderabad over a beef-eating festival organised by dalit and left leaning student activists on the campus to protest against brahmanical food restrictions.

Beef-eating as a carefully constructed divisive symbol has been historically on the agenda of the Sangh parivar in particular, and used essentially to target the Indian Muslims and Christians.

While it is true that a campaign against eating beef has been the defi ning feature of the ideology of culinary fascism in India, that is certainly not where the story ends. For instance, the addition of pork, incidentally a prohibited meat for Muslims, on the agenda of NM is a pointer towards that. Given the complexity surrounding the dietary habits of Indians, a beef-centric view of culinary fascism would therefore offer only a non-nuanced understanding of that ideology. The Indian variety of culinary fascism is premised (and practised) upon a divide between the Hindus and Others (including non-vegetarian Hindus) which, in turn, feeds into the pure, vegetarian and impure (dangerous) nonvegetarian food divide. Obviously, we need to recognise that culinary (food) fascism in India is marked by an acute everydayness and extends far beyond the issue of beef consumption alone to include all kinds of non-vegetarian food. Other varieties of non-vegetarian food if not being able to stir such “heightened, passionate” feelings as with beef surely do no less.

I would argue that an approach to counter culinary fascism in India necessitates an understanding of how the vegetarian and non-vegetarian divide resting upon a selective and hence, biased study of Hindu (and Jain) myths, texts, and so forth operates at the micro level on an everyday basis. And it is just not about beef eating but also pork, chicken, fish, egg, and so on. And it is also not about dalits, Muslims and Christians alone but numerous non-vegetarian upper a nd middle caste (Bengali, Kashmiri, Maithili, and Assamese) Hindus. We need to remember that no community, dalits in particular, has a monolithic culinary culture just as not all Hindu brahmins are vegetarians or Muslims/Christians meat-eaters. The fascist ideology propagated by a section of “devout Hindus” – even if not all are officially part of the Sangh parivar – obviously operates on the constructed “Indian (vegetarian) culinary culture” which forbids inclusion of all kinds of non-vegetarian food and consequently excludes, hates and targets not only the Muslims/Christians (presuming all are non-vegetarians) but also the lesser non-vegetarian Hindus (including dalits). Interestingly, even Hindu deities are often ranked along ambrosial lines. As the EPW editorial “Beef Festival at Osmania”, 28 April 2012 pertinently points out: It is the north Indian, Hindu, uppercaste male who has had a free run for more than a century and a half in defining Indian food and culture” (p 8).

It is perhaps not incorrect that culinary fascism grows and thrives in northern (and parts of western) India, in the Gangetic plains to be precise, yet southern India is not far behind. My personal experience of being a Hindu, Bengali, nonvegetarian, upper caste woman living in north India (in Delhi, where my intolerant western Uttar Pradesh born neighbour routinely humiliates me by saying that I eat “meat, fish and what not” kind of food) and teaching in a south Indian managementrun college (non-vegetarian food is forbidden in the college premises) affi liated to the University of Delhi suggests that.

While I certainly stand in solidarity with the agenda of NM and the students of OU I would reiterate the need to extend the

vol xlviI no 19

EPW

Fact-Finding on Mega Dams in North-East

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One team headed towards upper Assam and another towards the Tipaimukh dam site. The first team visited North Lakhimpur, Dhemaji in Assam and Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh covering the Lower Subansiri, Lower Siang and also the downstream area of Lohit and Dibang river projects in Tinsukia district. The second team visited Tipaimukh project which would affect people living in Manipur, Mizoram and Assam. An interim report has been prepared.

The fact of the matter is that nearly every river will have several dams each; Lohit basin will have 10, Subansiri basin 12, Dibang basin 12, Siang basin 39, Kaming basin 43….these figures can go up were all data to be made public by the Arunachal government. To build so many dams in an area which is earthquake-prone carries incalculable risk for all living beings.

Each MoA is accompanied by a monetary advance by the project developer to the Arunachal Pradesh government at the time of signing the deal. This implies that the project gets sanctioned even before any of the mandatory reports and clearances are given.

This makes the entire scheme of building projects which will destroy the Brahmaputra basin a colonial project that is meant to benefit rest of India at the expense of north-east. It is also of interest to note that the maximum number of projects have been awarded to private companies. In most of the projects, impact assessment studies have not been done. Indeed some developers who claim to have got this study done have confi ned them to between five and 10 km of the project. The Siang river project indeed claims that no agricultural land would be submerged, whereas nearly every household in 35 villages would lose their cultivable land! The misinformation by the authorities is accompanied by a deliberate attempt to hide the truth from the people by manipulating studies.

The fact-finding was conducted by following organisations, (1) Asansol Civil Rights Association (ACRA), West Bengal;

Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisation

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may 12, 2012 vol xlviI no 19

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