The Taste by Vir Sanghvi: Why India isn’t the vegetarian nation you’ve been told

Contrary to popular belief, India isn’t as vegetarian as many think. Let’s uncover the truth behind our eating habits and debunk some common myths.

A lot of nonsense is spoken about food in India. But in no area are the myths and misconceptions as prevalent as they are in the case of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food habits. People still like to claim that the majority of Indians are vegetarians. If they are challenged, they say that anyway, the majority of Hindus are vegetarians. It is Muslims and Christians who skewer the numbers. Regional variations are subject to as many misconceptions. South Indians tend to be vegetarians, we will be told. Punjabis are largely non-vegetarians. Sikhs love nothing more than butter chicken. Every single one of those assertions is, of course, totally wrong.

Despite the widespread belief that India is predominantly vegetarian, the reality is quite different.(Freepik)

Let’s start with vegetarians. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research last year six out of ten Indians said they would not describe themselves as vegetarian. Pew left it to the respondents to define vegetarianism. So, even if a person ate a little fish now and then, for instance, but if he or she considered himself or herself a vegetarian, that was okay with Pew.

But even going by this loose definition (and allowing for the fact that people from strict backgrounds may not want to admit to eating meat) only 39% of all Indian adults surveyed said that they would describe themselves as vegetarians. The majority of Indians said they were non-vegetarians. So, why is there this myth about vegetarians? Why do people claim that because India is a vegetarian country, meat should be banned in some residential buildings and at schools?

Well, it could be because the proportion of vegetarians among upper caste Hindus is higher than the national average. If, for instance, you were to look at a list of India’s richest people, then I guess that seven out of 10 would be vegetarians (or may be eight out of 10). In India, vegetarianism is associated with certain caste groups such as banias, the traditional business community. Seven out of ten of India’s richest people are banias. Two out of two of India’s most powerful politicians are vegetarians.

But because billionaires are vegetarians, it does not follow that the majority of Indians are also vegetarians. It’s not even true of the majority of Hindus. According to that same Pew survey, over half of all Hindus surveyed (56%) did not consider themselves to be vegetarians. Keep in mind that such surveys rarely penetrate into Dalit and tribal areas where more people are non-vegetarians.

As for the view that all Sikhs like butter chicken, Pew found that 59% of Sikhs considered themselves to be vegetarians. That is to say, a higher proportion of Sikhs than Hindus are vegetarians. In fact, of India's religious communities Sikhs were second only to Jains in the percentage identifying as vegetarians.

If you don’t trust a survey conducted by a foreign agency, here are some statistics from the Indian government’s own ministry of statistics and programme Implementation. According to the ministry, the average person in Punjab eats 205 grams of chicken every month. This is less than half of chicken consumption in Bihar where the figure is 518 grams per person.

The national average is 210 grams of chicken per person per month. It shoots up in the Northeast to 684 grams of chicken per head per month. But even in Gujarat, where propaganda suggests that the figure should be near zero, an average of 145 grams of chicken per person is consumed every month.

It is interesting that the figures for Punjab and Gujarat are much closer than you might think. The figure for Punjab, as we have seen is 205 per month while the Gujarat figure is close at 145 grams. The ministry’s figures also demolish the myth of non-vegetarian North Indians and vegetarian South Indians. Chicken consumption in Haryana is 133 grams per month. In Rajasthan it is as low as 85 grams per head. But in the five South Indian states 681 grams of chicken per head are consumed every month. With 823 grams consumed every month, Kerala is near the top of the list.

According to an analysis of the ministry’s survey by Nikhil Rampal in The Print, what many miss is that rural India is consuming much more non-vegetarian food than we realise. While meat, eggs and fish only accounted for 9% of rural India's monthly food budget in 2011-12, which was the last time the ministry conducted this survey, that figure has doubled to 18% in the current survey. (The figures for urban Indians are nearly almost the same in both surveys.)

What do these figures tell us?

Well, several things, One: It is time to finally polish off the myth of a vegetarian India. Not only do the majority of Indians not identify as vegetarians, even the majority of Hindus don’t say that they are vegetarians.

Two: We have to stop drawing conclusions about the whole of Indian society by looking at certain caste groups like banias. Even brahmins in some Indian states are not vegetarians.

Three: Nearly every regional generalisation — about Punjabis or South Indians or whoever — is wrong. Let's stop dealing in caricatures.

Four: Despite the intolerance, the pro-vegetarian bigotry and the propaganda of the last decade, India's basic eating habits have not changed. We have not become more vegetarian. And in villages, the consumption of non-vegetarian food has actually gone up.

Five: Let's stop this hypocrisy about how vegetarianism is spreading. Even Gujarat is much less vegetarian than people may think. No matter how much effort has been poured into replacing biryani with khichdi, it hasn’t worked. In the end people will never waver from the basic principle. We eat what we enjoy. And it is nobody else’s business except our own.