The Flesh Eaters of India

krsna · October 28, 2005

BY: ARVIND KALA

Oct 26, INDIA (TIMES OF INDIA) — Though largely unnoticed, a historic dietary shift is taking hold in India. Non-vegetarian Indians are eating eggs, chicken, and meat more often and in greater amounts. And a vast number of vegetarians - 20% of India's population, according to the authoritative Peoples of India - have begun to try out flesh foods outside home.

Hard data and anecdotal evidence bear out this dietary shift. India's per capita consumption of poultry meat has doubled in the last five years. Though urban areas eat three-quarters of India's poultry meat, the consumption of egg, fish, and meat has also gone up in rural homes, reports the National Sample Survey.

This dietary change isn't surprising because global trends show that increa-sed meat-eating accompanies rising incomes. For India, however, it's an irreversible moment in its history. Home to over 90% of the world's Hindus, Hinduism is the world's only major religion with a streak of vegetarianism. But globalisation is changing that, as Indian food habits move in tune with a meat-eating world.

India's per capita consumption of meat is still tiny at 5.2 kg per annum. The average Pakistani, Chinese and American eats two times, 10 times and 23 times more meat, respectively, than an Indian. The Hindu unease over flesh food has fallen for three reasons.

First, the falling price of eggs and poultry meat thanks to spiralling production; second, the seductiveness of inexpensive tandoori chicken available at every street corner; and third, the overseas travel of some four million Indians every year. When they go abroad and find everybody eating meat and vegetarian food hard to find, they can't help but be influenced.

The cheapest meats will sell the most in a poor country. This is entirely true of India. Despite BJP propaganda, hard data suggests that Indians have little aversion to eating beef (available only in West Bengal and Kerala) and buffalo meat. These two meats sell nearly twice as much as chicken because their cost is half.

And chicken sells four times as much as goat meat because it's much cheaper by Rs 40 a kg in Delhi. It's all a question of money. Pig meat, for instance, is widely regarded by traditional Hindus as unclean. But it sells much more than goat meat, thanks to its lower cost. A person's wallet decides his meat preferences.

A non-vegetarian Muslim Bangladeshi eats less meat per capita than a partly vegetarian Indian because Bangladeshis are poorer. Despite a trend towards increased meat-eating, India has more vegetarians than the whole world put together. A few decades can't wipe out centuries of tradition. Meat-eating (and even egg-eating) in India is full of idiosyncrasies.

Strict vegetarians will eat a cake with egg in it but will recoil from a fried egg. Experimenting vegetarians will eat a meat kebab or mutton curry but not a meat piece. Lakhs of north Indians will eat mutton but not fish or buffalo meat. More men than women eat meat. People don't eat meat on religious days and when they grow old.

Meat sales fall on Tuesdays, a Hindu holy day. Many Hindu pilgrim towns don't permit the sale of meat and even eggs. Widespread vegetarian eccentricities make it impossible to estimate the number of vegetarian households in India. The National Sample Survey puts the percentage at a questionable 42. But it's the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation which best describes India's dietary shift to meat.

"Strict vegetarians are becoming less strict", it says. Globalisation, however, irons out crinkles in human behaviour. Globalisation plus the need of the stomach has even eroded India's taboo against eating beef and buffalo meat. Twenty years ago, beef and buffalo meat accounted for 3% of India's meat production. Today, they account for 50%.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that it's only the upper castes estimated at 16% of India's population in the 1931 census which avoid buffalo meat. Other castes have no such reservations. They have the numbers.