Devotion beyond the Plate

On Day 5 of the 4th Test in Manchester, India had batted more than five sessions to take England’s win out of the equation and in the process, the prime actors in the middle—Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, were also nearing their individual centuries. Stokes tried to persuade the Indian batters on the field to shake hands and call it a draw, but when the latter refused, it triggered a barrage of taunts and barbs from the English players although the Indian duo was well within their rights to continue batting.  Commenting on the incident, former Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa pulled no punches as in a YouTube channel he remarked:

“It’s like saying ‘you can’t eat non-vegetarian food because it doesn’t agree with our morals.’ If I am eating non-vegetarian food and you are having vegetarian food, how does it matter to you? We can happily co-exist.”

Uthappa’s analogy felt quite relevant: today’s religious fasting and pilgrimages, once inward spiritual journeys, increasingly translate into public decrees—telling meat eaters to change their diet, food vendors to identify themselves, shut down, or yield to devotions they don’t share.

A Long History of Policing the Plate

Food control has long enforced caste and communal boundaries. Pre-colonial customs barred Dalits and lower castes from serving food to the upper castes or drawing water from shared wells. Meat—especially beef—was branded “impure,” ensuring exclusion was baked into dietary laws.
Colonial authorities often deepened this divide. The 1893 cow slaughter bans across northern India sparked communal riots in Punjab, Bihar and the United Provinces. Though framed as respect for religious sentiment, these prohibitions crippled local butchers and herders. During festivals like Navratri, local administrations banned meat sales under pressure from dominant caste groups—policies that were less about neutrality and more about managing and dividing communities.

Post-Independence Continuities

Independence offered no liberation from dietary policing. In 1960, Gujarat enacted one of India’s toughest beef bans—year-round prohibitions that disproportionately disadvantaged Muslim butchers and Dalit leather workers. In the 2000s, cities such as Delhi, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad routinely shuttered meat shops during Navratri, often through coercive municipal enforcement and raids. In Rajasthan in 2019, even egg vendors were asked to hide their carts—for nine days. The message was clear: majority “sentiments” trump minority livelihoods. In several parts of India, recent administrative orders banning the sale of meat during Hindu religious festivals such as Kanwar Yatra and Navratri have triggered heated public debate over personal freedoms, religious sensitivities and the role of the state in regulating food habits.

In Delhi, multiple municipal corporations announced restrictions on meat shops during Navratri, citing “respect for the sentiments” of fasting devotees. Similar curbs have been implemented in Gurugram, Ghaziabad  and parts of Uttar Pradesh, where officials ordered meat vendors to keep shutters down during the annual Kanwar Yatra—a pilgrimage in which devotees of Lord Shiva travel on foot carrying holy water from the Ganga.
Supporters of the bans argue that the move is about maintaining the sanctity of religious occasions and preventing offense to fasting devotees. The argument favouring the ban basically that people who undertake spiritual journeys or are fasting for days, should not be disturbed by the smell or sight of meat being sold or cooked and in this regard the administration has to ensure that their devotional sentiments are not hurt. 

Ambedkar on Food and Power: Meat-Eating, Caste and Control

B.R. Ambedkar, one of the principal architects of the Indian Constitution and a fierce critic of caste hierarchy, repeatedly argued that control over food—especially the prohibition or stigmatization of certain diets—was a tool of social domination. Ambedkar observed that in the Hindu caste order, dietary restrictions were not merely about health or religion, but about maintaining social stratification. The “pure-impure” distinction assigned to certain foods—particularly meat—was central to how caste hierarchy operated. Brahmins and upper castes often projected vegetarianism as a marker of ritual purity. By stigmatizing meat-eating and associating it with lower castes, Dalits and many Bahujan communities, upper castes reinforced the idea that lower castes were “impure,” thereby justifying their social exclusion.

In Annihilation of Caste (1936), Ambedkar noted that religious injunctions on food were a means to discipline and control the social behaviour of subordinated groups, ensuring their continued compliance with caste norms. As B. R. Ambedkar famously wrote in Annihilation of Caste:

“The meat-eating habit of the non-Brahmin classes is the subject of much prejudice… The object is to force them to conform to the dictates of a class that has arrogated to itself the title of the custodian of religion.”

Ambedkar saw any state-supported ban on meat as an extension of the same casteist logic. Such bans were not merely dietary preferences; they were modes of exclusion that marked certain foods and the communities who consumed them as “unclean.” They elevate the dietary preferences of certain upper-caste Hindu groups to a public and legal standard. Additionally, it forces economic hardship on occupational groups dependent on meat, leather and related industries—many of whom were Dalits and Muslims. In modern India, where political power often intersects with religious majoritarianism, Ambedkar’s warning becomes sharper: controlling what people eat is one of the oldest and most effective ways to control them.
Even Gandhi, a lifelong vegetarian, cautioned:

“I have no desire to force vegetarianism on those who do not believe in it. My religion teaches me that every man must be respected in his own faith.” (Young India, 1927)

The Present Echo of the Past

Current meat bans, identity mandates for vendors and the targeting of Muslim-owned businesses are not novel—they are the same old script in new costumes. Fasting is personal; making others bear its burden is a perversion of devotion. India’s Constitution guarantees rights to religious freedom (Article 25) and to conduct lawful trade (Article 19(1)(g)). But rights must co-exist. Your fast must end where another's business begins.

When religious sentiment masquerades as public reason, it betrays our secular contract. Faith belongs in the heart—not on someone else’s plate. True devotion, if it is to mean anything at all, must be an inward journey, untouched by the plates and preferences of others. Faith that falters at the sight or smell of someone else exercising their right to eat, live and earn is not faith—it is fragility dressed as piety. The divine does not demand that we police another’s kitchen or livelihood; it asks for humility, compassion, and a mind unshaken by difference. If our belief is genuine and profound, it will not be contaminated by another’s menu—it will be enriched by our ability to coexist with dignity.

Also Read: Khilonjiya: The Changing Terms of Belonging in Assam