Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India is another addition to the growing literature on anthropology of food in India.
James Staples conducted his study primarily in Andhra Pradesh. He writes that the book offers an anthropological perspective on “the contemporary moment that has led to the apparent turn away from the hitherto secularist approach of post-Independence India.” Staples emphasises that this is a book based on existing accounts and his own study about how “non-activists – a wide category of people who position themselves neither as cow protectionists nor as pro-beef activists…” and thus he claims to be able to document “the frequently overlooked ambivalences that exist between these two poles.”
Cover photo of Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian: The Everyday Politics of Eating Meat in India.
Staples relates a story of how his Telugu teacher Victoria Rani, a Christian, insisted on having beef curry she had made despite being aware that he was a vegetarian. She tried to tempt him into partaking something she knew he did not eat and she was even offended when he refused; this was an experience that was new to him. He realised that she did this because she wanted him not not to deny himself the sensory pleasure which he as a Christian and a foreigner was not forbidden from doing but also because eating beef would have identified him as an ally.
He writes that to Victoria-Rani “my vegetarianism could be read as a political act; an implicit acceptance of the sacred status afforded by higher-caste Hindus to the cow, and by association, of her Hindu-defined impurity. I seemed to be siding with a Hindu theology…”
I have quoted this incident because it resonated with my own experience with many Naga friends whose first question is “do you eat pork” and I have always answered “yes, of course, I eat everything, dog, cat and snails.” But more recently I have developed a preference for vegetarian meals and I find myself eating meat only as an act of solidarity with anyone who offers it as an act of defiance against the ruling Hindutva ideology. Eating meat in general and beef in particular has also become a symbolism of liberal cosmopolitanism.
The book covers a wide canvas from a chapter on differential histories of meat eating in India to the economics of the beef industry – in which he points out that India remains one of the biggest exporters of beef on earth; and 60-80% of the population identify themselves as non-vegetarian. Besides beef has been most highly consumed meat product by quantity after fish.
The book concludes that caste continues to remain central to Indian food-ways but there is little attempt to relate caste factor to patriarchy and class or religion in a way to offer new nsights.
While the book does make a case against regulating meat without looking at the relationship between humans and animals it is just too broad and general in its sweep and offers no new insights into the anthropology of food or on the present controversies over beef eating.
Nandita Haksar is a human rights lawyer and an award-winning author.
