Why Sudha Murty’s vegetarian foibles must be defended

Infosys Foundation chairperson and now successful writer and Padma Bhushan awardee Sudha Murty’s well known simplicity sits uneasy with many people given her family’s fabulous wealth. But the fact that “strict” vegetarians like her are equally strict about the provenance of their crockery and cutlery should not strike anyone as casteist or objectionable. It is literally a matter of taste. Murty’s only crime was to be frank about her phobia.

Murty’s avoidance of garlic is also a matter of taste, although she connects it to being vegetarian. In many schools of vegetarian cookery garlic is avoided, not merely because of its supposedly ‘rajasic’ and ‘tamasic’ heating quality but because its smell tends to overpower other subtler aromas. For those who love garlic, its strong odour is a plus point; for others it is exactly the opposite. Even some Indian meat-eaters also abjure it.

It is precisely because of Murty’s privileged position, perhaps, that she revealed her predilection rather than become intimidated by the prospect of an imminent social media backlash and stay silent. Many vegetarians take their own food and implements when travelling; Murty and her spoon and packed food are no exception. It is a natural instinct of self-preservation and Indians of all dietary hues carry comfort food when going to new places.

Besides, science corroborates that vessels are never totally “clean”—sterile—so fears of meat residues are not silly. Utensils handwashed in water lower than a certain temperature retain near-invisible remnants. Dishwashers are uncommon in India, unlike the west. But even there, smaller objects are often handwashed when dishwashers are awaiting a full load before being switched on. So Murty’s precaution probably arises from personal experience!

As Murty’s cited London address—10 Downing St as per another one of her viral interviews—has been the venue of meaty meals since the 18th century, her concerns when visiting her daughter Akshata and son-in-law Prime Minister Rishi Sunak residing there now can only be imagined. After all, this month he hosted a ‘hog roast’ there for party colleagues and has earlier confessed to pancakes and bacon breakfasts with his daughters.

Nevertheless, a reasoned and evenhanded approach towards the concerns of vegetarians is needed. Vegetarians are no different from people with food allergies, who are wary of nuts or shellfish traces on vessels or implements that may touch their mouths. While food allergies can be life threatening, the mental and physical impact of inadvertent contact with “non-vegetarian” food can be quite deleterious for lifelong vegetarians too.

Though there are no health hazards from chance contact with most proscribed foodstuff, observant Muslims and Jews are equally concerned about whether everything they ingest is ritually “approved”, or kosher and halal, respectively. And the world has learnt to accept their views and even specially cater to them. India has kosher certification options and mostly halal meat is sold here—a minority norm largely accepted by the majority.

Sadly, “strict” vegetarians do not get the same sympathy from various majorities when it comes to habits, including from those who flaunt their love for meats proscribed by some faiths. There’s something about herbivores that really gets the others’ goats. Maybe because excavations and research have shown that our ancient hunter-gatherers were further down the evolutionary ladder from settled agrarian cultures that ate less or no meat.

That, of course, is no excuse for vegetarians to consider themselves morally or culturally superior, as they are often accused of being. More so in India, where most people are neither “pure” vegetarian nor “pure” non-vegetarian but somewhere in between. Many of the former are now “eggitarians”, but even more fall into the category of occasional non-vegetarians, as they eat these infrequently, or only on special days, or in restaurants.

Besides the highly popular vegetarian bhog-prasad consumed by crowds at temples and at langars of gurdwaras, southern Udupi restaurants serving idli-dosa-vada-uthapam-upma as well as northern chaat-kachori chains such as Haldirams testify to the fact that Indians are also happily vegetarian when they want to be. India’s highways have countless veg-only ‘Vaishnav’ dhabas, and upmarket vegetarian eateries are successful too.

The average Indian thali or platter also demonstrates this “mostly vegetarian” philosophy. Carbohydrates are centre stage and other nutritive categories come in small bowls from lentils to vegetables. The late American food anthropologist Sidney Mintz called it the core-fringe-lentil pattern. Animal protein is typically present (if at all) in just one of the bowls in a daily meal whether pieces of fish or meat, and usually less than 100gm per serving.

Even India’s fish-and-rice eaters usually have far more carbohydrates, with the gravy providing flavour rather than flesh. Favouring meats and fish over vegetables came into Indian diets relatively recently. Other nations with similar food philosophies underwent the same change and their earlier non-meat-centred diets were dubbed “cucina povera” (cuisine of the poor) or variants thereof by the west. The class bias is evident.

The opposite is true in India, ironically, as many of the most prosperous communities are traditionally vegetarian, such as Jains and Hindu Gujaratis. There is nothing poor about their all-vegetarian cuisine either. Animosity towards vegetarians in India, now brought into the public domain by social media trolling, probably stems from this factor rather than the Brahmin argument usually proffered to deride them.

“Pure” or “strict” vegetarian Indians of Murty’s type are certainly in a minority. But contrary to social media wisdom, this is not caste-specific. Besides Jains, the vegetarian and animal-loving north Indian Bishnois, for instance, include Rajputs, Jats, Banias and Brahmins. Vaishnav Hindu sects elsewhere in India too are totally vegetarian and have members of all castes. Yet “casting” this veg-nonveg divide in a casteist mould persists.

In fact, many Brahmins—at the top of the caste ladder—are traditionally meat and fish eaters, especially in the eastern regions of Bengal, Odisha, Assam, eastern Bihar, and in the Himalayan areas of Kashmir, Kumaon and Garhwal. The Shakta (Devi) worshipping Brahmins in these regions partake of meat from goat sacrifices. But there are vegetarian Brahmins there too, underlining the fallacy of the Brahmin-vegetarian argument.

Murty is from southern India, where most Brahmins—who number between 2% and 4% of the population of the region—indeed remain vegetarian. However, there are exceptions there too in that many Konkani-speaking Goud Saraswat Brahmins from the west coast are fish-eaters. Brahmins overall are a minority in most parts of India though, with Uttarakhand and Himachal seeing the highest percentage at 25% and 16% respectively.

It is well established now that “pure” or “strict” vegetarians constitute only about 30% of India’s population. That would make Murty—a Brahmin as well as a “strict” vegetarian—a very minuscule minority. It stands to reason then that she, and other Indians like her, deserve the same right as other minorities (including the vocal aficionados of proscribed meat) in this country: to practice and profess their beliefs without derision and hate.

The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._

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