So the ban on beef is a device to create a monolithic Hindu community? You also have to ask the question: When did the idea of not eating beef and meat become strong? Gandhi was essentially a Jain; he campaigned for cow protection as well as vegetarianism. If the Dalits were not affected, it was because Ambedkar immediately started a counter-campaign. When Gandhi began to work around the concept of Harijan and mobilising people around it, he had put in some conditions.
Two, they should pray in praise of Ram. Ambedkar realised that what Gandhi was doing was literally converting the Dalits to Hinduism. Ambedkar, therefore, started a campaign arguing that the Gandhian campaign was not going to help the Dalits. Ambedkar said the Dalits had to be respected along with their cultural roots. He said this because Buddhists have a culture of eating beef.
For instance, Buddhism in China, Japan and Korea allows multicultural food. Why did the RSS adopt cow protection as one of the principal items on its agenda? The RSS logic is that the cow has to be given protection because it gives Indians milk—the reason why it has been historically treated as a divine animal. But India does not live on cow milk; India lives on buffalo milk.
If you look at the law in Gujarat, it has extended the ban on cow slaughter to include the bull and the bullock as well, but it is silent on buffalo meat. They started exporting buffalo meat. This is absolute racism. Yet, you kill the buffalo because it is a black animal.
American racism once upon a time destroyed the buffalo population there. You see, the buffalo has always been present in India. But the cow came to India with the Aryans. The RSS wants to protect the Aryan animal. This casteist and racist approach has been extended to food culture. This is dangerous.
Are you saying that in order to establish the cultural hegemony of upper castes, the RSS seeks to project the Muslims as the only consumers of beef?
The internal discourse of the RSS, as evident from its publications, states that. But empirically, they are wrong.
They claim that the only consumers of beef in India are Muslims and, therefore, they should give up eating it. That the Muslims are cow-killers and we the Hindus should fight them. This argument worked very well with the upper-caste Hindus. But what is dangerous is this idea that the RSS has taken to the other backward classes OBCs , who are increasingly rallying around it.
One, they are saying that there was no culture of eating beef before the advent of Muslims. This is absolutely false. Of late, they have started saying that even untouchability was created by the Muslims. It is through this theoretical framework that they are trying to reach out to the Dalits and also convert them to Hinduism and vegetarianism.
Thus it is akin to the term 'non-whites' coined by 'whites' to capture an incredibly diverse population who they colonised. Secondly, the researchers say, some of the stereotype is enabled by migration. So when south Indians migrate to northern and central India, their food comes to stand in for all south Indian cuisine.
This is similarly true for north Indians who migrate to other parts of the country. Finally, some of the stereotypes are perpetuated by the outsider - north Indians stereotype south Indians just by meeting a few of them without thinking about the diversity of the region and vice versa.
The foreign media, say the researchers, is also complicit "as it seeks to identify societies by a few essential characteristics". Also, the study shows up the differences in food habits among men and women. More women, for example, say they are vegetarian than men. The researchers say this could be partly explained by the fact that more men eat outside their homes and with "greater moral impunity than women", although eating out may not by itself result in eating meat.
Patriarchy - and politics - might have something to do with it. Clearly, the majority of Indians consume some form of meat - chicken and mutton, mainly - regularly or occasionally, and eating vegetarian food is not practiced by the majority.
So why does vegetarianism exert a far greater influence on representations of India and Indians around the world? Does it have to do with "policing" of food choices and perpetuating food stereotypes in a vastly complex and multicultural society? Cooking the world's oldest known curry. What Indians have done to world cuisine. Image source, AFP.
Vegetarian cities in India. Where the concern of eating beef really belongs is its effect on the human spirit and whether or not eating beef is considered sinful. According to Manusmriti above, it is not sinful to eat meat. Good news for those who love to eat beef! Vedanta philosophies toward the presentation of cows, in general, invoke the reliance that all things work together.
For example, the cow is not of a holy nature. It is a respected animal that should not be consumed during famine due to its ability to provide continued sustenance to many for years to come with the milk it can provide over and over. Is it sinful to consume the cow?
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