When Religious Sentiments Become More Important Than Feeding Malnourished Children

A certain kind of food politics seems to have suddenly taken over the country.

WrittenBy:Rajyasree Sen
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One of the worst habits of Indian hosts – and one I am guilty of as well – is to insist guests and family members eat whatever food you serve them. Whether they’re stuffed to the gills or not, or allergic to what you’re piling on to their plates – it matters not. This same philosophy to hospitality at home, it seems, is now being extended by our politicians to culinary diktats for those residing in India. And there’s no economic bracket being spared from the self-appointed Diet Board Of India’s meal plan for us.

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Most recently, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan rejected the inclusion of egg curry or boiled eggs in anganwadi meals in the tribal areas of Alirajpur, Mandla and Hoshangabad districts. “Milk and bananas will be served, but never eggs,” he said. Project officers – who I think may know a little more about nutrition than Chouhan – had recommended that eggs be served twice or thrice a week. Chouhan’s refusal to serve eggs to malnourished children has nothing to do with their nutritional value. It has to do with the Jain community, who raised the issue with Chouhan. Anil Badkul, Digambar Jain Mahasamiti spokesperson and egg-hater, reportedly said, “Do eggs grow on trees? No. Its consumption has several side-effects. When children eat non-vegetarian food, their sensitivity dies…Bachcho ko bachana hai, andon ko bachana hai (children have to be saved, eggs have to be saved).”

Thanks to Badkul’s statement, we have now found out the effects of not having eggs in your diet – a deadly combination of stupidity and verbal diarrhoea. Also, some general information for him and Chouhan. A third of the world’s malnourished children are in India. And 50% of children in Madhya Pradesh are malnourished. Eggs have 6 grams of the highest quality protein and 14 key nutrients. They are also one of the few foods to contain all nine essential amino acids.

Why would you want to deprive the country’s underprivileged malnourished children of such nutrition? The irony that a man who comes from a life of privilege where he can choose what he wants to eat, is curtailing the diets of children who are dependent on the state for a square meal seems to have escaped Chouhan. Also, if his decision was based on the fact that eggs are detrimental to the health of children, one would understand. But to base such decisions on religion, caste and your personal biases, is giving a new ridiculous meaning to the term “kitchen politics”.

But this isn’t the first time that our politicians have tried to tell us what to eat. Last month, Republican Party Of India’s chief and Rajya Sabha MP Ramdas Athawale threatened to launch a protest against restaurants in Maharashtra which are not serving Maharashtrian cuisine. According to him, “It is necessary for restaurant owners to understand the importance of traditional Marathi cuisine in our state. Hotels today serve all kinds of food except traditional food items. This is not right. I will speak to the restaurant owners about this and hope they will start respecting the sentiments of Marathi people.”

Aah, there’s that word again – sentiment. The Indian Hotel and Restaurant Administration (AHAR), as a result, has agreed to serve Maharashtrian dishes such as batata-vada and poha in every restaurant in Mumbai. The concept that if I want Maharashtrian food, I can go to a Maharashtrian restaurant and not to Ling’s Pavilion, is too much for our elected representatives to grasp.

Before this, Maharashtra had introduced a ban on beef. Why? Because it’s the holy cow for Hindus and eating cow is against our culture. Sentiment, again. That we should be free to eat what we want, and that not just Hindus live in Maharashtra or India has escaped the government in this case. The sale or possession of beef is now punishable by a five-year jail term or a fine of Rs 10,000. Maharashtra’s chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, tweeted to our President, saying “our dream of ban on cow slaughter becomes a reality now”. The measures include a ban on the slaughter of bulls and bullocks, which was legal till date as long as you had a vet’s certificate. The water buffalo, not being holy, can be slaughtered. Ironically, this is the same Ramdas Athawale who announced a state-wide agitation against the beef ban and had said that the ban would affect thousands of people.

Why is it that our well-fed politicians insist on playing politics with food? That too in a country like India which, according to IndiaSpend, has the highest number of undernourished people in the world at 194.6 million. And for the rest of us who are not malnourished, let us have the freedom of choice to put what we want on our plates as long as we aren’t eating endangered species or humans. Earlier we were concerned about moral policing by political parties. Now it seems their kitchen politics will be our undoing. The way things are going right now, we’ll all soon start resembling the army of kids from Children Of The “Corn”, staring unblinkingly into space, while paying allegiance to the vegetarian culinary powers that be.

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