INTRODUCTION:

While travelling to the villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh, it is common to witness so many slogans on trees and walls “Shakahari Bano”, “Jeevhatya se bacho”. Basically these slogans are made by Jai Gurudev’s followers (A religious sect). But the question is that if a man is herbivore and non-vegetarianism is unnatural? But as everybody knows that a human body can digest both, herbs as well as meat.

A pre-historic man learned gathering fruits and hunting before cultivating lands. They were cavemen, lived in the dense forests and they feed upon whatever they easily access. But this is the story when they were not civilized. Slowly- slowly using their approximately 1500cc mind they learnt about domesticating animals and growing grains in their fields.

In Indian perspective we learn the name of various dishes cooked in Vedic period. Many vegetarian dishes made of rice, wheat, chickpeas, lentils, and other agricultural products along with some milk and other dairy products. But meat eating was equally important at that time and there were no strict restrictions on any kind of meat. An animal was sacrificed at the time of yagna, while enthroning of a king, to greet some special guest and many other special occasions. Later, some sects like Jainism and Buddhism encouraged vegetarianism. Buddhism discouraged unnecessarily sacrificing of animals but never asked their followers not to meat, even Buddha himself had eaten ‘shukarmaddava’ before he got Mahaparinirvaana and according to many scholars it was pork meat.

Non-vegetarianism in India is a very complicated thing. While conducting a structural interview in Moradabad district of western UP, the fact came out that seven out of ten non-vegetarians do not like fish because of its smell while cooking. It is claimed in UP that Brahmins do Pooja-path so they never eat meat. But in the eastern part, Brahmins frequently eat meat. So, in the present time nobody can tell you for sure that particular caste doesn’t eat meat. Non-vegetarians also have lots of choices and many restrictions and their own descriptions. They have their own religious meat restriction. For many years chicken flesh was not considered as a good food in rural areas as compare to mutton among Hindus.

India is always claimed as a vegetarian country. In 2006 the Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation survey shows that only 31% Indians are vegetarian and 9% are eggitarian or ovo-vegetarian which means that 60% of Indians are non-vegetarian but 31% vegetarian population is also a large population and enough to claim that India has the largest population of vegetarians².

Food choices in India are influenced with many factors like caste, sect, religion and geographical conditions and health issues. Now the question arises that how these factors affect food choices? People describe vegetarianism in many ways. North Indian Brahmins do not eat onion and garlic. Even some of them also avoid jackfruit and mushrooms. They claim that it looks and tastes like any non-vegetarian dish. There are so many castes apart from Brahmins do not eat meat in northern region like Yadavas, Baniya, Marwadis are normally vegetarian. It is said that ahirs do not eat meat because they serve the cattle so they do feed upon dairy and vegetarian food. Along with caste gender also determines the kind of food. Mostly aged ladies do not eat meat. They say that is the time when they should worship god and leave meat and other lavishness. Generally in middle class families a tendency is seen that the male member eat non-veg food while the females don’t. When they were asked the reason they replied their mothers never eat and never made them try and as they became older they started feeling disgust even looking at flesh. “Drinking wine and eating meat is the subject to male’s platter and these things are not made for women in our society” was the claim of an old woman in a village of Muzaffarnagar which clearly demonstrates the male sovereignty in food choices. Although trends are changed now women are also getting freedom to choose their kind of food and girls are eating meat in a large scale but in rural area many things are yet to be changed.

After caste and gender sect and religion are another factor which influences the food choice. Jainism discourages non vegetarianism because they follow the concept of ahinsa which mean not to hurt anyone. The extremists Jain followers in ancient time use broom before putting their next step. Buddhism doesn’t allow eating the meat of those animals that have hoof. Hinduism has very confusing views about non-vegetarianism. Buddhism and Jainism arose against the sacrificing ritual of Hinduism and after many religious reform movements sacrificing the animals were discouraged. Nowadays in north India people do not eat meat but exceptions are there too. Hindus do not eat meat in Navratri days but on the last day of Navratri, they give sacrifice of a goat and eat that. On the occasion of Holi they cook and eat meat. Hindus and Muslims both have their own restriction on a specific kind of meat. Sometimes these restrictions become the reason for the clashes between the two. In Muslim society, there is no gender issue on meat eating because meat is a regular part of their platter. But it doesn’t mean that they have no restrictions and they have very smooth way of food choices. While there is the prohibition of a specific meat but apart from this they have another restriction that they can eat only ‘halal meat’ (halal means putting some drops of water into the mouth of the animal and reading the kalmias before cutting the animal. They just cut the breathing duct in halal method of sacrificing with which the animal dies slowly. While Sikhs do not prefer the meat of such animal who has been cut by this method. In Hindu and Sikh system while sacrificing any animal they use ‘jhatka method’ in which the cut the neck of the animal in one go so that the animal does not feel the pain of slowly dying. Sikhs usually eat meat but those who drink holy water on the occasion of Guruparab, don’t eat non- vegetarian food. There is a sect Satnami in the district Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh. They tie black thread in their wrists. Baba Jagjivan Das was the founder of this sect and he was contemporary of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. This sect forbids their followers to eat aubergine and Ivy gourd (Coccinia grandis). They have a story behind this that in a marriage ceremony the groom’s family put a demand of non-vegetarian food but bride’s clan were their follower and were pure vegetarian. They requested their guru to solve this problem and with his grace the vegetable of aubergine and Ivy gourd appeared meat to the groom’s side. So they consider both vegetables as non-veg.

The geographical condition is the most important factor which determines the food choices.

Figure 1 source: www.hoffingtonpost.in

Figure 1 is the map of India in which the green color shows the vegetarian percentage and red color shows the percentage of non-vegetarians state wise. The tendency of eating non-vegetarian food is high in the eastern coastal states mostly. This is because accessibility of fisheries industry is very successful on the eastern parts so they can get easily and that is why machhi-bhaat and other dishes of fish are so popular. Brahmins of Odisha and West Bengal eat fish and consider it sacred food. West Bengal is on the top in rice production as well as in fisheries productions. Their most popular food is Machhi-bhaat (Fish-rice) which clearly demonstrates and proves it. North-eastern states are the hilly areas and outlying from the mainstream India. Mostly they are dependent on the forests and they can eat more or less every edible meat, whether it is ant or frog or anything obtained from the forests. South Indian lands after Raichur doab are not much fertile as compare to North Indian plains. That area is rich in natural resources like oil and mineral. They grow World class coffee, cashews, dry fruits, bananas, coconuts and other cash crops but the land is not much suitable for regular crops like wheat, lentils, soyabean etc so people are dependent on meat. They have to fulfill their nutritious needs with meat. Marathis have mixed phenomenon because of its geographical position. In one hand half part of Maharashtra feces heavy rain while on other side the rest of the state remains waterless which affects its agricultural production and this is the reason of its mixed nature of food choices. Gujrat and Rajasthan have very dense population of vegetarians and the reason behind this is that most of them belong to the business castes of the society and there is a saying that a businessman has to remain humble and soft spoken and meat, ginger and garlic are considered as warm food so they avoid this. Apart from this a major part of the society is influenced with Jainism which means to be strictly vegetarian. Along with Jainism there is a sect ‘Bishnoi’, founded by Guru Jambheshwar belongs to Rajasthan. This sect is very envoirment friendly. They encourage animal husbandry and animal killing is banned in their community. So they can not kill or eat any kind of non-vegetarian food. Rests of the middle northern states have a very fertile land beneficiated with the green revolution. The rich and creamy Mughlai cuisine, Lucknawi nawabi cuisine took birth in these lands and in these cuisine most of the dishes were invented for the rulers and they were Muslims came from central Asia and were non-vegetarian by nature so non-vegetarianism became popular. So the eating choices of these areas turned mixed. In Hill region of India non-vegetarianism is necessary for survival because they have to keep their body warm and in those areas vegetarianism is only subject of personal choice and taste. Hilly regions are again tough to cultivate as they face frequent natural disasters like land sliding and floods. So eating meat and having wine are more necessity and less leisure.

Another very important factor which influences the food habit of any individual is its health. In older times those dishes were considered good who were rice in oil, cream, butter and made with fine grains like basmati rice, tur dal, lentils etc and nobody bother the coarse grains. Coarse grains were the symbol of poverty, only poor ate the coarse grains but with time as people are getting more conscious about health, they too started eating coarse grains like oats, ragi, millets and no oil recipes while just opposite to that puri, kachori type dishes are common among low income group too because they are cheaper than coarse grain food and any zero oil dish.

Thus, it can be seen people are very much influenced with their geographical conditions, their religious belief, fashion and health too. On the basis of food people can be divided into two categories, first who eat to live and other who live to eat. Food is not just a food, its an emotion, that’s why when anybody leave his house for studies or work, Indian mothers pack some sweets, savory dishes and pickles. Whenever gathering of people happens doesn’t matter it is happiness or sorrow, people eat and feed Brahmins, kanyas etc. vegetarianism or non vegetarianism also depends sometime upon need and sometime tradition and sometimes it is amateur. Food choices are always influenced by so many external factors as well as home customs and India has so many different cultures, religions, castes and sects so it is obvious to see different shades of eating cultures and trends in this country.

REFERENCES:

1. Singh Upinder, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12^th Century, Pearson, New Delhi, 2013, p. 191.

2. “Passage to India”, USDA, Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 November 2013. Retrieved on 16th August, 2018.

Received on 18.05.2019 Modified on 20.06.2019

Int. J. Rev. and Res. Social Sci. 2019; 7(4): 738-740.

DOI: 10.5958/2454-2687.2019.00049.2