Why is my plate not mine anymore ?

Ashish Kaul
Aah what a relief from beef and food bashing !.  I am finding it very strange that my plate is no longer mine. It is a space that other forces want to influence through soft power. Who knows where the jurisdiction of one ends and the other begins and how common people get stuck without knowing how to navigate these tricky waters. Equally interesting is how kabeer was quoted ‘kabeera teri jhopdi galkatiyan  ke paas (behold your house, for the butcher isn’t far away)….’
Basically, life is simplistically beautiful. I say simplistic because it begins from the gut and ends there. Come to think of it, if life’s about satiating hunger and getting two square meals a day, it should be fairly simple. But is it usually how it goes? The harsh reality is that my work, my wallet, my responsibilities dictate what would be served to me on my platter, or whether I would be served anything at all. Guardians of propriety, our news-makers, may dwindle between “Hawabaazi”&”hawalabaazi” but, are now also keeping a vigilant watch on our plate – so just beware of them.
Middle class india knows well that their consumption of food is an act of hunger and affordability rather than one of palate or choice. The ravenous hunger in their gut does not have a religion or agenda. It does not differentiate between dal roti and a fish curry. However, even knowing the simplicity of the gut’s desire, it does not make the road to fulfilling this universal formula to life any more attainable.
At a time, when in one part of the country,  many farmer families are afflicted by rising flames of hunger in their guts that fail to lead to soothing flames of a stove in the kitchens; another family from another state had to walk on fire every day after losing the head of their family to the slow and grim battle of starvation, when in a small village in Chhatisgarh, lives of soldiers are breathing slowly and dreadfully under an imminent gun point of Naxalite terror, a dismal air of mourning fills the air in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh our ‘Thalis’ our platters, our katoris , our meals  are grabbing attention of the policy and news maker fraternity. Do the media-makers, as representatives of our society, express angst and lend a voice to their suffering equitably? As an individual who is tracking media, I find these stories getting trampled over all the hashtags around meat ban in Maharashtra in honour of Paryushan Parva. According to me, for all practical purposes, that is an unfortunate mandate.
Will a political mandate dictate what will be served on my plate today, dal roti or fish curry? A large section of our population lives in dire uncertainty of whether they will get more than one square meal a day or not. Would they really have the time and resources to consider the morality and religious sentiment of what is served on their plate? Before the break of dawn and after the sun sets, the field worker is driven by a sole purpose – to find an antidote to his hunger pangs. Neither Ganesha, nor Mahaveer  or any other god or goddess can decide for him what he will really get to eat today, if anything at all.
If you consider statistics, 80% of the population is  non-vegetarian  , out of which a sheer 35% of the population incorporate non-vegetarian food in their daily diet in some form or the other. In the light of these statistics, is the sale of meat and meat products such a nationally-significant issue, one that has political parties waging war against one another? Do vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism also have political boundaries? And does the common man have no rights to determine which side he wants to choose and is that right also reserved to political parties and unions? When we say that, as individuals, we have the right to choose our religion and our mundane life decisions, why are we bound to somebody else’s perceived boundaries of morality to choose what can be served to us on our plates? Is the hunger to garner favorable votes and vote banks so great that it’s driving politicians to overlook drought-infested fields, farmer suicides, and dengue deaths in children and to break and enter through the walls of our homes in order to see what is our choice of meal today – vegetarian or non-vegetarian?
A two-day meat ban during Paryushan Parva has been in picture right since 1964, which was later increased to four days in 2013. Then, it has been reduced back to two days. Why was it four days in 2013 and why was it altered back to two days today? All of the media, political representatives and self-appointed social proprietors engaged in heated debates over this phenomenon, which then led to several agitations in Mumbai. Some sort of circus was created across the nation around this “grave issue” of utmost pertinence. The noise and limelight around it helped served a vested propaganda of winning hearts and votes. The lull before the Ganpati festival in Mumbai wasn’t favorable to many. Mumbai was gearing up for Ganpati festival peacefully. But in a matter of few weeks,  Mumbai’s become the base camp to a wind of religious sentimentality that is now sweeping across other states, including  Chhatisgrah, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, jumping on to the ban bandwagon, politicising it even further in the country. Political parties are now deploying the Hindu calendar in aid to its “religious honor” strategy to scout for days that can amass so much religious sentiment that it will curb the attention from ails of the poverty-stricken to faith and communal respect. Today, the Jain community is the chosen one as its breeding ground for curbing freedom of choice in the name of faith and honor, tomorrow it will be another community. If this wind of blind sentimentality is given shelter on their ground, all is well. If not, they’ll find a new territory – another community, another sentiment perhaps. Having said all that, basic thing is ,behold your house, for the butcher isn’t far away.’
( The author, is CEO of  Prakash Jha Films; views are personal)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com

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