A Curious Case of Food

From CNN whose headline is: Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here.]

First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him.

The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast of the colour he likes much, then he tells himself that the day is going to be “good” or “super good.” A food that doesn’t meet his standards causes him anxiety. He may simply refuse to eat the food.

Food is also a measure of trust and relationships. He trusts his father will prepare his food the way he likes it. However, that trust is broken by certain events that happen and Christopher’s relationship with food is challenged too. Later, when he runs away from father and reaches his mother, food plays a big role again in forging the new relationship.

My intention is not to discuss Christopher Boone or autism. This post is the penultimate of a 5-part series* which I wish to conclude with an actual visit with Maggie to The Old Monk Food Street in our hometown at the weekend. This post intends to look at the intimacy that food plays in an individual’s life and why the government or any such authority shouldn’t meddle with people’s food habits unnecessarily (as is happening in India).

For obvious political reasons, India’s present dispensation is imposing a lot of things on the citizens including food choices. The imposition is masqueraded as holy vegetarianism with all its supposedly-humane self-righteousness. But it isn’t as innocent as all that.

The imposition of the food choices of a particular section of North India’s population on the whole of India is an act of domination, an assault on identity, and a tool of assimilation. A lot of regional rituals and customs tied to food preparation and consumption are being expunged. Festivals and celebrations that centre around traditional dishes will eventually disappear. Worst of all is the undeclared intent to wipe out certain communities of people altogether from the country by depriving them of their staple protein-rich food.

Food has become a political tool in certain regions of India. The ruling party hasn’t been successful in imposing their food culture on certain states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the South and most states in the Northeast. And Kashmir, in the North, of course.

There is an unforgivable lot of hypocrisy in the way the BJP deals with the issue of beef in different regions. For example, the BJP leaders have asserted time and again in the Northeast, whose population is significantly tribal and Christian, that beef consumption would not be banned, and that the party would not interfere with people’s food habits. It is this same party that indulges in mob lynching of Muslim and Dalit people in the name of beef in the Hindi belt. And the painful irony is that cows are dying of starvation in that region. Such is their love for cows!

Beef is abundantly available in my state of Kerala too, though the people here don’t kill cows. What is sold here is buffalo meat, not cow’s. For some mysterious reason, Malayalis didn’t take a liking to the flesh of cows. That’s probably because they are very pragmatic in outlook and so realised the universal acceptability of the buffalo over the cow. Quite many of the Hindus in the state consume beef which is buffalo’s flesh. There could be a scientific reason too: buffalo meat is leaner and has a lower fat and cholesterol content compared to cow meat. 

Source here

The most ludicrous irony of the beef business in India is that most large-scale beef-processing and export companies are owned and operated by Hindus. Uttar Pradesh, the state which projects itself as the heart of the emergent Hindu Rashtra, is arguably the largest contributor to India’s beef production and export.

Beef is a political tool in India, in other words. For many poorer sections such as the Dalits, Adivasis, and Muslims, beef is staple protein and it is being snatched from them and is exported by the snatchers to other countries. Which is more patriotic: imposing Brahminical dietary norms on the citizens or contributing to the country’s export income? In 2023-24, India exported 1,295,603.15 metric tons of beef products worldwide, valued at INR 31,010.10 crores (approximately USD 3,740.53 million). Foreigners can consume beef, of course.

I started with the story of an autistic boy. I now end with a confession that I often feel disabled like Christopher Boone in my country because of the hypocrisy of my leaders, a hypocrisy that is not just ludicrous but inhuman too. The religious reverence for the cow is a mere surface rationale for what is actually a brutal power-game which is all about control, social engineering, and political consolidation. Food can be big politics!

As I sign off, let me repeat something that I’ve said many times earlier: I love North Indian food. What I question is their imposing of it all over.

 

* The previous posts in the series of  #BlogchatterFoodFest:

            Sethi da Dhaba

Dine in Eden

            Karimeen in Kerala Cuisine