A “nutrition transition” in India ?

2Current debates about veganism in the West clearly show that meat consumption does not depend only on economic parameters. Eating meat involves killing an animal and ingesting a flesh that is reminiscent of the human flesh. Hence, this act raises moral questions. India in particular is well known in the West for the historical prevalence of vegetarianism. Therefore, we can wonder about the evolution of eating habits in this country : does economic growth, and the dynamics of globalization and urbanization associated with it, induce a sharp increase in meat consumption ? In other words, is India experiencing a “nutrition transition”? This expression roughly refers to an increase in the proportion of animal protein, sugar and fat in the diet.

Cooking a chicken gravy in a home in Chennai (Tamil Nadu), 2013.

3Consumption statistics provided by the National Sample Survey Office of the Indian Government put the existence of such a transition into perspective. While the intake of fat and sugar has been increasing since the 1990s, the amount of meat eaten remains very low. In 2011 Indians would have consumed 500 g of beef, 720 g of “mutton” (sheep and goat meat), 90 g of pork and 1690 g of chicken as an individual average, for a total of 3 kg of meat (in contrast with 100 kg in the USA.

Meat served in the street in Chennai (Tamil Nadu), 2012.

4However, it is important to give a more complex picture of Indian meatscapes. First, meat consumption has been rising since the beginning of the 2000s. The intake of chicken are clearly growing, especially in the cities and among the wealthier categories. A form of transition is taking place, whereby the urban middle classes are the first to change their eating habits. Second, this consumption appears to be very heterogeneous across the country and between social groups. Southern and northeastern States show much higher levels than those of the center and the north-west of the country. A brief correlation study shows that the regions where meat consumption peaks are not those with the highest individual income, but rather those where the proportion of Muslims, Christians or people from low castes is the highest. Conversely, the lowest meat consumption levels are recorded in regions where high castes members are the most present and where the rightwing Hindu nationalist parties are the most established. In other words, the levels of meat consumption in India depend more on cultural and political parameters than on economic parameters. Obviously, there is nothing mechanical about the “nutrition transition” model.

5Statistics also help deconstruct the myth of a vegetarian India. In fact, only 30 % of the population would strictly abstain from meat – less than 2 % in a state such as Nagaland (in northeastern India). In the same way, the statistics contradict the image of a country that would worship the cow and, therefore, never consume beef. A recent article showed that about 15 % of the Indian population (Muslims, Christians, but also many Hindus) would regularly eat this meat (Natrajan & Jacob, 2018).

6The fieldwork that I conducted in the southern state of Tamil Nadu from 2011 to 2015 confirmed this great diversity of practices, but also the changes that affect these practices. Observations and interviews carried out with Indian consumers, but also with the supply chain actors (animal keepers, livestock traders, slaughterers, butchers, etc.) illustrate the fragmentation of practices and representations associated with meat in contemporary India.

Changing meat consumption rationales and patterns

7Several meat consumption (or abstinence) rationales can be identified. First, a “rationale of purity” tends to marginalize meat products in the diets. Many Hindus shun meat on specific days (full moon, etc.), when visiting a temple, after a relative’s death, sometimes for a whole month or after passing a certain age. This temporary vegetarianism is very common in Tamil Nadu. This practice aims at purifying the body – eating the flesh of a dead animal tends to keep the devotee away from the divine – but also at performing a form of asceticism. In a way, meat is still seen as something desirable : abstaining from it is a way to control one’s animality, which confers a simultaneously social and moral superiority. This discourse is common within strict vegetarian people, especially those belonging to Brahmin castes (originally serving as priests).

8This rationale of purity is rivaled by a “rationale of power”. For many Indians that I met – including Christians, Muslims and Hindus belonging to “average” or “low” castes – meat is a foodstuff that provides energy and strength to the body. For Maharajas and other Indian nobles who used to be involved in martial activities, meat-eating has long been considered as a sign of power, of success in the mundane and material world. Meat, generally perceived by the various humoral medicines prevailing in the subcontinent as a food that heats up the body, would therefore be suitable for robust individuals. Today, modernity and the secularization of society seem to revive this rationale of power. For many young men, but also for politicians or successful businesspersons, eating meat in public is a way to assert one’s power, and often one’s masculinity. However, the warming potential of meat can also contribute to its marginalization. Many elderly or sick people, as well as mothers, eschew it, fearing that the excess of heat would affect their bodies.

9The rationale of purity and the rationale of power can be exclusive. Yet they sometimes interpenetrate or substitute each other, depending on the context. A young man met in Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and serving as a pastry chef on a cruise ship reported indulging into heavy meat-eating to keep up with the hectic pace of work aboard, but being temporarily vegetarian when visiting his family temple during a stopover. Similarly, many Hindus are vegetarians at home but indulge in meat eating outside, notably at the restaurant.

10Meat consumption patterns are being reconfigured in Tamil Nadu. For a long time, a “ceremonial pattern” dominated, for Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The high economic and symbolic value endowed to livestock, as well as the moral issues related to animal killing, made meat (mainly the flesh of a young billy goat) consumption an episodic, if not exceptional act, taking place less than once a month. This practice was collective, often festive and ritualized. For more than a decade now, a “banalized pattern” of consumption emerged, especially in urban context. Meat-eating became more regular in many middle class homes. Meat is consumed in new, less ceremonial contexts (notably the restaurant). Available at any time, it potentially integrates the daily meal. Its status changes : it can now take the place of other side dishes. Chicken epitomizes this emerging consumption pattern : this meat is valued for its low cost, its rather neutral taste, its supposed leanness, its convenience for cooking and its white color, which barely evokes its animal origin. Obviously, it is the (massive) intensification of its breeding and the (relative) industrialization of its processing and distribution that have made chicken an almost generic meat.

Façade d’un restaurant « non végétarien » à Chennai (Tamil Nadu), 2013.

11This banalization, however, does not prevail over every section of the society. On the contrary, it goes hand in hand with a renewed politicization of meat (and especially of beef) since the BJP (the Hindu nationalist party) took office after the 2014 general elections. Newly elected politicians took steps to ban the slaughter of cattle and to clamp down on clandestine slaughterhouses. These moves often came along with violent actions by activists who happen to lynch to death anyone suspected of producing, selling or consuming beef.

12Meat production and consumption appear as problematic acts that need to be legitimized and regulated by cultural, social and political rationales – in the form of prescriptions, prohibitions, restrictions, or a simple conformity of practices to uses. Yet, these rationales are challenged by the reconfigured production structures and consumption patterns. Therefore, in the light of the situation prevailing in India, it seems that in the West, the crisis of the legitimization and regulation of meat-eating nourishes the moral and ecological crisis that the meat sector is currently undergoing. The banalization that accompanied the massification of meat production and consumption concealed the metabolic processes that link this peculiar food to the ecosystems, while denying any gravity, any solemnity to the ingestion of a substance that is similar to human flesh.