Recently, there has been much fuss about vegetarianism at IIT Bombay. You can read more about it, but the very short summary of the matter is that a group of vegetarian students in Hostels 12, 13, 14 demanded separate tables marked exclusively for vegetarian food (meaning, on such tables, students would not be allowed to eat non-vegetarian food). The hostel council agreed to this request, and marked a few tables in the common mess as “vegetarian only”. Another group of students started protesting against this, calling it separatist/casteist and other things and forcibly brought and ate non-vegetarian food on these tables as a way of protest. There is certainly more nuance to this matter, but this should be sufficient for context.

I am a vegetarian from birth (so is my entire family) but I had never given much thought to this concept before this. But this debacle provoked me to think a lot about this matter, leading to deep discussions with friends who supported the hostel council’s decision as well as those who didn’t. Following are some tarkas (arguments) used in and nishkarshas (conclusions) drawn from these discussions, about vegetarianism in general.

It is morally superior

First off, what is vegetarianism? Is it a food preference? Yes, of course. Is is just a food preference? No, it is also a food practice. And a morally superior one, at that. Calling vegetarianism just a food preference is not incorrect, but doing so dilutes that fact that it is a morally and ethically better practice, based on non-violence and non-cruelty.

It might be the case that some (or majority) of Indians who follow vegetarianism don’t give much thought to the ethical aspect of it, and follow the practice just because everyone in their family does so. But this should not be a reason to demerit the idea of the practice itself.

And, for a moment, keeping aside the history associated with this practice, it is a simple fact that, not killing an animal (for eating, or for whatever reason) when you don’t need to, is an ethically better decision than killing one.

Is killing animals for food illegal? No. At least not yet. But it might very well happen that, 100 years from now, killing an animal is considered murder and is punishable by law (just like killing a human today is). That is just how society progresses. People’s values change, and then the laws change to reflect these new values. Think about it – what is right and what is wrong can be decided at a personal as well as a societal level. Laws mostly only document what the society as a whole thinks is wrong, and prescribe penalties for doing such things. Today, vegetarians believe that animal killing is wrong (on a personal level). If (hypothetically), 100 years later, majority of the society turns vegetarian and starts believing that killing animals is wrong, a law could be made for the same. But the point is, irrespective of what the law is, each individual should be free to act according to their own beliefs on what is right and wrong, as long as those beliefs (like not eating meat) are compatible¹ with the law.

And this logic is not limited to vegetarianism. There are people (who call themselves “vegans”) who believe that humans should not be using any animal products at all, because that can result in animal cruelty (for example, humans consuming cow-milk can lead to exploitation of cows). Jain people believe in not eating any plant roots, because harvesting a root of a plant (unlike harvesting fruits) inevitably results in the plant being killed. There should be no doubt that both of these practices are ethically superior even to the usual practice of “vegetarianism”. But just because vegetarianism is 80% there instead of 100%, does not mean we should discount it and ignore the 80%. The point is, one should be able to look at these concepts and decide what is objectively better and more progressive, irrespective of other things like the history of the concept, or its believer-base.

It is a family sanskaara

For many people in India, vegetarianism has been practiced from many generations in their families. It is imbibed on children by parents just like other good values, like those of not telling lies, not indulging in alcohol etc. And this is done with a similar degree of seriousness as those other values.

If one has been taught that lying/alcoholism is bad, he might decide to stay away from politics and bars. In a similar vein, if one is taught that eating non-vegetarian food is a bad thing, he might prefer to stay away from people who are eating non-vegetarian food, at least while he himself is eating. It is only natural that we as a society understand vegetarian people who are not comfortable eating while non-vegetarian food is around, and at least not make their life harder by intentionally eating meat beside them. This is similar to how smoking rooms are arranged for smokers, so that non-smokers are not affected. Except that, in this case, because the smokers are a minority, they have to do the effort of going to a smoking room and then lighting their cigarettes there. In our case, since vegetarians are in a minority, it makes sense for them to be the ones who are alloted a different space, so that the majority crowd (non-vegetarians, that is) does not face inconvenience.

And I’ve learnt from personal experience that it takes quite a bit of personality development for someone who’s raised in a strict vegetarian background, to understand that while eating non-vegetarian food is a bad thing, the people who eat non-vegetarian food aren’t necessarily bad people. Similarly, to continue the analogy, it takes significant personality development (or “जग बघणे” as it is called in Marathi) to realize that, even though alcoholism is a bad habit, people who even regularly indulge in alcohol might not necessarily be bad people. Again, as mentioned earlier, people have varied ways of defining good and bad. Exposure to the world shapes these definitions. But just because someone’s definitions are different, that doesn’t give anyone a license to bully them by forcibly having them eat in the vicinity of non-vegetarian food.

It is casteist

There is a line of thought that vegetarianism is associated mainly with Brahman castes, and is a tool for Brahmans to exert their superiority over others (in ways unknown to me). There is some truth to this, in the sense that Brahmans have been following vegetarianism historically, but there are two major aspects to consider here:

1. Within Brahmans, the rate of vegetarianism is declining. In post-90s generations, within the Brahman friends that I have, significant folks do consume non-vegetarian food. And this is with their families knowing this and being OK with it. The older generations are much more strict about not eating meat for themselves, but not so much about their children/grand-children eating meat. And there exist Brahman sub-castes who have traditionally been eating meat/fish.

   And for the sake of completeness, it is worth mentioning that, within Hinduism, according to most texts, the prescribed way of life for everyone (not just Brahmans) is that of non-violence (“ahimsa paramo dharma”), and of a dead-animal-free diet.

2. There are many non-Brahman communities who follow a strict vegetarian diet within Hinduism. And outside, of course, the Jain community is also known to have a strictly vegetarian diet (along with some other rules). So is vegetarianism associated with the Brahman community? Yes. But, so is it associated with many other communities.

So vegetarianism is far from a Brahman-only thing. And just because it is associated partly with Brahmans, and Brahmans have been accused of discrimination/oppression/what-not, does not make vegetarianism-the-practice by itself a casteist/oppressive thing. The practice itself deserves to be understood on it’s own merits (discussed in the first section)! Not doing so would be like boycotting cricket because it is associated with England (who oppressed India), which just doesn’t make sense.

Closing thoughts

It should hopefully be clear from the above discussion that, while taking any decision regarding practices like vegetarianism, one should look at only the practice itself, and not the propaganda around it. For the specific case of IITB, the decision to allot or not allot separate tables for vegetarian-only food should be a function only of (1) what the practice of vegetarianism itself entails, and what effect will people following the practice have on the student community as a a whole, and (2) how much accommodating and inclusive the institute aims to be of student demands (especially those of minority student groups). The decision better not be based on imagined second-order issues like discrimination increasing between students because of separate vegetarian-food tables, for which there exist other, more direct ways to fight.