For several years now I have been doing a television programme, ‘Elections on My Plate’ that takes viewers on an election campaign trail with food as an added attraction. Actually, the cuisine is the ‘star’ of the show, quite simply because there is no country in the world which can match India’s remarkable food diversity. To then have the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand police resort to food ‘policing’ during the Kanwar Yatra is to strike at the very essence of what it means to be Indian.
Where else but in India will you find an amazing restaurant called Amma’s Kitchen near the iconic Meenakshipuram temple in Madurai that serves some of the best Chettinad non-vegetarian food, its crab omlette and rabbit stew a real speciality. Where else will you come across a three floor restaurant in old Jaipur run by a Muslim family for generations which serves the most delicious Mughlai food right located next to a ‘shudh’ vegetarian eatery. Where else will you have a roadside dhaba named Jai Tulja Bhawani on the Pune-Solapur highway where the family cooks the most yummy mutton dishes. The family are Dhangars, an OBC community, deeply religious but also firmly non-vegetarian. And where else but in India will you have a food street in the heart of Vijaywada where a stall selling half a dozen types of Andhra biryani is slap bang next to an idli-dosa joint.
Peaceful co-existence has always been the way of this country’s gastronomic journey. A restaurant is not judged by the name of its owner but the quality of its food. For the Yogi Adityananth government to ‘direct’ the UP police to ensure that every street vendor or roadside restaurant has the owner’s name-plate plastered on it is to deliberately sow the seeds of division in civil society. The UP government’s claim that the order is only meant to ensure there is no law and order disturbance along the yatra route is being highly disingenuous. There is hardly any evidence of the yatra over the years being caught in a tangle over the food habits of the yatris. Instead, it is the government’s not so subtle discriminatory food politics that can incite trouble.
A mandatory name-plate is actually meant to signify social segregation, encouraging those along the yatra route to avoid any kind of contact with Muslim-owned establishments. In effect, this amounts to a social apartheid, designed to sharpen religious polarization on the ground. Which stall owner, desirous of customers, would serve kanwar yatris any kind of food that goes against their religious beliefs? Even the attempt to contrast the outrage over name-plates with ‘secular’ silence over ‘halal certified’ products that are meant to conform to Islamic rules is misplaced. No one stops a restaurant board from displaying a ‘pure’ vegetarian sign. But advertising food that conforms to a particular diet is very different from singling out an owner on the basis of religion.
To make matters worse, a pernicious social media campaign has sought to target Muslim-owned establishments as ‘impure’ and ‘unhygienic’. This is another brazen communal untruth, one which betrays a deeply prejudiced mind. Exploring the country’s lip-smacking street food , hygiene has often been a concern but it is hardly community-specific. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is meant to ensure that food quality standards are maintained; the FSSAI is not meant to judge the hygiene of an eating place by the religious identity of its owner.
A parallel maybe drawn here with the toxic campaign that was ignited during the first Covid wave when a spike in Covid cases during a Tableeghi Jamaat meeting in the national capital led to all Muslims being viciously targeted as Corona spreaders. So effective was this awful stereotyping of an entire community that Muslim vegetable vendors faced an economic boycott in upscale neighborhoods. This is precisely what the Kanwar Yatra controversy would have achieved had the court not intervened speedily and declared the name-plate directive as patently unconstitutional and violative of fundamental rights to life and personal liberty.
That the controversy should be triggered off in Uttar Pradesh just weeks after the ruling BJP suffered dramatic electoral reverses in India’s most populous state should come as no surprise. Ever since the election verdict, the BJP has been caught in a bind in the state. Amidst the blame game, a virtual open war has been declared between various factions in the UP BJP in an attempt to corner chief minister Yogi Adityanath. The BJP’s central leadership, wary of overtly taking sides, has allowed the issue to fester. The saffron-robed monk has responded in an aggressive manner that fits in with his popular image as an unapologetic militant Hindutva warrior, a leader who will not be chained by traditional notions of politically correct behavior. By championing the ‘sanctity’ of the Kanwar Yatra, the Yogi government wants to re-emphasise its Hindu credentials amongst its core supporters. If this means demonizing Muslim vendors and restauranteurs, then it is a strategic choice made in total disregard of constitutional principles.
But where Adityanath and his cohorts may have crossed the line this time is in failing to recognize that majoritarian identity politics is no longer a guaranteed recipe for electoral success. In the 2024 elections, the BJP in UP was cornered by a Dalit-Muslim-Yadav-OBC consolidation, primarily on account of the party’s failure to build upon an inclusive agenda on the ground. Caste fault-lines in particular are sharpening once again: if today it is Muslim street vendors whose livelihoods are at stake, who is to say it won’t be Dalits or lower OBC communities tomorrow? After all, notions of food ‘purity’ and ‘untouchability’ have been at the heart of caste discrimination in Hinduism for centuries. Rather than reviving past prejudices, any enlightened government must look to the future. ‘Sabka saath, sabka Vikas’ has no place for communal dog-whistles over food politics. Post-script: In my food travels, I recall having a delicious chicken curry at a restaurant called ‘Munnas Kitchen’ on a UP highway. Munna was actually a nickname for the owner, Mohammed Khan. One of his main cooks was a Yadav. This is the magic of India.