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‘Dietary shifts away from meat are seen to align with improvements in agricul-
tural sustainability, climate change-related emissions reductions, human health,
and wellbeing of animals. In the Indian case they also represent a cultural fusion of
nationalism with religion. Read Fischer’s systematic and careful study for deeper
insights into what makes for diet transformations. This enduring contribution
brilliantly highlights the structures and drivers that yield dietary persistence vs.
change, with a direct focus on vegetarianism in India.’
Arun Agrawal, Professor, School for
Environment and Sustainability, University
of Michigan

‘Written by a seasoned ethnographer of religion and markets, this is a multi-

sited and multi-scaled dissection of cosmopolitan middle-class food culture in
Hyderabad and of the production-distribution-regulation system through which
it’s provisioned. Fischer offers a carefully grounded social analysis of many
paradoxes and contradictions in the world’s leading vegetarian nation. Both veg-
etarianism and meat-eating are festooned in scientised claims about health and
nutrition but both communicate enduring social meanings and dietary norms. This
should be essential reading for anyone interested in human values and markets,
especially for food.’
Barbara Harriss-White, FAcSS, Emeritus
Professor and Fellow, Wolfson College,
Oxford University

‘In this important book Fischer shows the political significance of controversies
around vegetarianism and meat consumption in India. The Hindu nationalist myth
that India is a vegetarian civilization is belied by the increasing popularity of meat,
especially among middle classes. In his ethnography Fischer focuses on the con-
tradictory realities of Hyderabad in South India. A must read for anyone interested
in the politics of vegetarianism in India.’
Peter van der Veer, Emeritus Director of
the Max Planck Institute for the Study of
Religious and Ethnic Diversity
Vegetarianism, Meat and Modernity
in India

Never before in human history have vegetarianism and a plant-based economy

been so closely associated with sustainability and the promise of tackling climate
change. Nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than in India, which is home to
the largest number of vegetarians globally and where vegetarianism is intrinsic to
Hinduism. India is often considered a global model for vegetarianism.
However, in this book, which is the outcome of eight months of fieldwork
conducted among vegetarian and non-vegetarian producers, traders, regulators
and consumers, I show that the reality in India is quite different, with large sections
of communities being meat-eaters. In 2011, vegetarian/veg/green and non-
vegetarian/non-veg/brown labels on all packaged foods/drinks were introduced
in India. Paradoxically, this grand scheme was implemented at a time when meat
and non-vegetarian food production, trade and consumption were booming. The
overarching argument of the book is that a systematic study of the complex and
changing relationship between vegetarian and non-vegetarian understandings
and practices illuminates broader transformations and challenges that relate to
markets, the state, religion, politics and identities in India and beyond.
The book’s empirical focus is on the changing relationship between vegetarian/
non-vegetarian as understood, practised and contested in middle-class India,
while remaining attentive to the vegetarian/non-vegetarian modernities that are
at the forefront of global sustainability debates. Through the application of this
approach, the book provides a novel theory of human values and markets in a
global middle-class perspective.

Johan Fischer is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and

Business, Roskilde University, Denmark. His work focuses on human values and
markets. More specifically, he explores the interfaces between class, consump-
tion, market relations, religion and the state in a globalized world. He is the author
of numerous books, articles in journals and edited volumes. He is editor of the
Routledge book series Material Religion and Spirituality and is on the editorial
boards of the journals International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, Contemporary
Islam and Research in Globalization. Currently, he is working on a research pro-
ject on vegetarianism and meat-eating in a global perspective.
Vegetarianism, Meat and
Modernity in India

Johan Fischer
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
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© 2023 Johan Fischer
The right of Johan Fischer to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fischer, Johan, author.
Title: Vegetarianism, meat and modernity in India/Johan Fischer.
Description: New York, NY: Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical
references and index. |
Summary: “Never before in human history have vegetarianism and a
plant-based economy been so closely associated with sustainability and
the promise of tackling climate change. Nowhere is this phenomenon
more visible than in India. The book’s empirical focus is on the changing
relationship between vegetarian/non-vegetarian as understood, practiced
and contested in middle-class India, while remaining attentive to the
vegetarian/non-vegetarian modernities that are at the forefront of global
sustainability debates. Through the application of this approach, the book
provides a novel theory of human values and markets in a global middle-
class perspective”–Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022051658 (print) | LCCN 2022051659 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032334837 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032334844 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003319825 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Vegetarianism–India. | Meat–Health aspects–India. |
India–Social life and customs.
Classification: LCC TX392 .F56 2023 (print) | LCC TX392 (ebook) |
DDC 613.2/620954–dc23/eng/20221214
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022051658
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022051659
ISBN: 978-1-032-33483-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-33484-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-31982-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003319825
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
To Sille, Anton and Oscar
Contents

List of Figures x
Acknowledgements xi

1 Veg or Non-Veg?: Transformations in Retail and

Consumption and the Rise of Meat Modernity in the Age
of ‘the Green’ 1

2 Setting the Scene: The Publics and Politics of Green

and Brown Labels 31

3 Markets: Manufacturing and Selling Veg and Non-veg

Commodities 51

4 Consuming Veg and Non-veg Food 86

5 Good Life Clubs: Of Students, Dalits and Vegans between

Meat Modernity and the Second Green Revolution 119

6 Conclusions and Broader Perspectives 143

References 151
Index 166
Figures

1.1 Vegetarian (left) and non-vegetarian (right) instant noodles 2

1.2 A popular restaurant in central Hyderabad serving both vegetarian
(veg) as well as non-vegetarian (non-veg) South Indian food 3
1.3 Rao’s portrayal of Telangana 4
1.4 SPAR Hypermarket in central Hyderabad 6
1.5 Greening India 20
2.1 A poster depicting the holy cow in central Hyderabad 36
2.2 A veg and non-veg food stall 37
2.3 A multi-cuisine restaurant displaying red/brown labels 37
2.4 A global food chain outlet 38
2.5 A 100% pure veg restaurant 38
3.1 A Hindu temple in Nampally 63
3.2 A Nampally veg shop 64
3.3 A beef shop in Nampally 65
3.4 HI-TECH Pork Shop 65
3.5 A chicken and seafood shop 66
3.6 A veg shop next to a non-veg restaurant 67
3.7 The farmers’ market 68
3.8 A food cart and a convenience store in central Hyderabad 69
3.9 Green drinks 71
3.10 The brown Mars Bar 72
3.11 Green toothpaste 74
3.12 The meat/fish/egg section in a hypermarket 75
3.13 The non-veg section in a Hyderabad mall 77
3.14 Green and brown dishes on a menu 81
Acknowledgements

Most of all, I would like to thank my informants for their willingness to par-
ticipate in and patience with my exploration of meat-eating and veg(etari)anism
in a variety of contexts. My research assistant, Raj Kattula, provided invaluable
support, without which this project would not have been possible. I would also
like to extend my gratitude to the Indian organizations and institutions that were
most helpful during my fieldwork. An Erasmus Mundus outgoing mobility grant
secured affiliation with Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Danish Council for
Independent Research in Social Science who funded this project: I am most grate-
ful for the help and support. A special thanks goes to Neil Jordan and Gemma
Rogers at Routledge. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Sille, and sons,
Anton and Oscar, for enduring my absences during extended periods of fieldwork.
1 Veg or Non-Veg?
Transformations in Retail and Consumption
and the Rise of Meat Modernity in the Age of
‘the Green’

In November 2017, while conducting fieldwork in India over a period of eight

months, I was in the audience when Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered
his speech at World Food India, a major food fair held in central Delhi, which
attracted more than 2,000 participants and 400 exhibitors from 20 countries.
Modi, who in 2019 secured a second landslide victory in the general elections for
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is a strict vegetarian and promotes vegetarian-
ism as a national project. In his speech, he explained that India was the world’s
largest producer of milk and the second largest producer of rice, wheat, fish, fruits
and vegetables. Adopting a broader perspective, he then stated: ‘India is today one
of the fastest-growing economies in the world. (…) Increasing urbanization and
a growing middle class are resulting in an ever-growing demand for wholesome,
processed food.’ What Modi failed to mention was that India is also one of the
world’s largest and fastest-growing producers of meat and water buffalo beef, in
particular, and that the country had witnessed a meat revolution over the last two
decades. Meat is being sold and consumed throughout India, especially among the
rapidly expanding urban middle class. Modi’s omission points to a much larger
issue or paradox in light of the prevailing vegetarian or green ideology, claiming
that India was, is and should be a vegetarian nation. Upper-caste groups that have
traditionally promoted vegetarianism, and the Hindu nationalist movement spear-
headed by Modi, deliberately and strategically support this idea, accepting at face
value the notion that most Hindus are, or desire to be, vegetarians, while Muslims
and lower castes are not, and do not wish to be, vegetarians.
These issues remain as salient as ever. The association drawn between COVID-
19 and non-vegetarianism was apparent in the title of an article ‘No Meat, No
Coronavirus: Indians on Twitter Blame Non-Vegetarians for the Outbreak’ (News
18 2020). The hashtag #NoMeatNoCoronavirus was an attack directed against
India’s non-vegetarians, who have been blamed for bringing the disease to the
country. The belief underlying this claim was that the virus spreads through eating
meat; consequently, only meat-eaters would be affected by the disease. To a great
extent, these claims have been propagated by the Hindu Mahasabha, a prominent
Hindu nationalist organization, and revolve around the central notion that God did
not intend for humans to be meat-eaters and that meat-eaters were sinners. The
organization’s president at the national level has stated that ‘Corona is not a virus,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003319825-1
2 Veg or Non-Veg?

Figure 1.1 Vegetarian (left) and non-vegetarian (right) instant noodles.

but [an] avatar for the protection of poor creatures. They have come to give the
message of death and punishment to the one who eats them.’
Moreover, the threat to sustainability posed by the production and consump-
tion of meat, and especially beef, in the context of global climate change has
made meat and meat-eating more contentious than ever. In 2011, under the
Congress-led government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Food
Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) under the Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare introduced green/vegetarian/veg and brown/non-vegetarian/
non-veg labels on all packaged foods and drinks in India, with major conse-
quences for producers, retailers, regulators and consumers (Figure 1.1). In India,
veg/non-veg can refer to both vegetarian/non-vegetarian foods as well as veg-
etarians/non-vegetarians. ‘Non-veg’ (meat, fish, eggs and alcohol) is an Indian-
English term that originated in the early 20th century and was used in menus at
restaurants and resorts catering to middle- and upper-class British and Indian
patrons. In its traditional usage, the term denotes an antinomic position by nam-
ing things that do not belong within normal, polite and socially orthodox Hindu
practices, whereas ‘vegetarian’ indicates a ‘normal’ position. While vegetarian-
ism in India reflects a cultural vision of normativity, it is not a dominant practice
(Novetzke 2017, 367). To this day, the veg/non-veg binary is ubiquitous in pub-
lic space in India (Figures 1.1 and 1.2).
Under the heading ‘Clearly Mark Food Items As Veg, Non-Veg’, The Times of
India (4 March 2022) reported that in connection with a plea by Ram Gau Raksha
Dal, a trust working for cow protection as cows are venerated in Hinduism, Delhi
High Court called for the FSSAI to enforce ‘a complete disclosure’ regarding
food items being veg or non-veg. The court stated that:
 Veg or Non-Veg? 3

Figure 1.2 A
 popular restaurant in central Hyderabad serving both vegetarian (veg) as
well as non-vegetarian (non-veg) South Indian food.

Since the right of every person under Article 21 (protection of life and per-
sonal liberty) and Article 25 (freedom to conscience and free profession,
practice and propagation of religion) under the Constitution is impacted by
what is offered on a platter, in our view it is fundamental that a full and com-
plete disclosure regarding the food article being vegetarian or non-vegetarian
is made a part of consumer awareness.

The court argued that using non-veg ingredients in commodities labelled as veg
‘would offend religious and cultural sentiments of strict vegetarians and interfere
in their right to freely profess their religion.’ These debates are ever-present and
ongoing in India, and they also circle around the issue of whether care products/
cosmetics should be labelled as green/brown.
The dominance of Hindu culture, the notion that India is a ‘Hindu’ place and
the belief that ‘Hindu’ primarily means vegetarian, especially with reference to
the practices of high and dominant castes such as Brahmins, the Hindu priestly
caste within the Varna (caste/class) system, and the exclusion of lower castes
and Dalits (untouchables), are at the core of vegetarian politics in India, includ-
ing the 2011 law on green/brown labelling. The 2011 law was implemented at
a time when meat and non-vegetarian food production, trade and consumption
4 Veg or Non-Veg?

Figure 1.3 Rao’s portrayal of Telangana.

were thriving in India, and nowhere was this more visible than in Telangana,
the youngest Indian state. Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in June
2014, becoming the 29th state of the Indian Union. Hyderabad is the state capital
of Telangana, whose first and current chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has
been instrumental in developing Telangana, and Hyderabad in particular, into a
vibrant and business-friendly metropolis that attracts migrants and investments
from across and beyond India (Figure 1.3), including investments in abattoirs that
are often accused of illegally slaughtering ‘holy’ cows.
Arguably, Telangana is the Indian state with the highest percentage of non-
vegetarians. There are nearly 3,000 retail meat shops in metropolitan Hyderabad,
and the findings of surveys that have been conducted on this topic, including my
own, indicate that Telangana/Hyderabad are among the least vegetarian states/cit-
ies in India (The Hindu, 1 March 2014). In Telangana, 98.8% of people are meat-
eaters (higher than in the US or Australia, for example) while the annual volume
of meat consumed is low (approx. 4.5 kilos per capita). In India, gross value added
from livestock is about 7%. The unorganized sector dominates, as most abattoirs
are unregistered as well as uninspected and meat is often sold in traditional meat
shops, while there are increasing domestic demands for processed food products
in super/hypermarkets (a combined supermarket and department store that car-
ries a large range of products) and a growing young population that is exposed to
globalized cultures and food trends that support meat-eating. At the same time,
export markets for meat and seafood are growing (Statista 2022a).
 Veg or Non-Veg? 5
In the context of Hindu nationalism and liberalized markets, new meanings of
meat/beef affect Christians and lower-caste groups in South India (Staples 2020),
although Staples’ book is less interested in the emerging Hindu middle-class uni-
verse that is central to the changing veg/non-veg relationship – for example in
hypermarkets that have opened within the last decades or so. I recall being in the
Star Hypermarket in Gachibowli, a modern suburb and IT hub located about 20
kilometres west of Hyderabad, where several of my middle-class Hindu inform-
ants lived. This is also the place to look for processed ‘veg’ and ‘non-veg’ foods
such as the instant noodles depicted in Figure 1.1. The Star Hypermarket opened
in 2017 just before my fieldwork started, and like all other stores across India,
all wrapped food items (except for actual vegetables and meat), drinks and most
personal care products carry distinctive green or brown labels. After coming to
power, Modi decreed that not only all food products but also all nutraceuticals
(dietary supplements), personal care products and cosmetics should be labelled
as either green or brown. Local and multinational industrial players who have
entered India in large numbers in the wake of the country’s market reforms and
liberalization starting in the 1990s filed a lawsuit arguing that the law was rushed
through without any kind of consultative process being carried out, resulting in
high costs and highly complex challenges in its implementation. To my knowl-
edge, this issue is still unresolved.
In the Star Hypermarket as well as in hypermarkets such as SPAR, which
have outlets across India, including in the suburb of Gachibowli and in central
Hyderabad, a wide range of fresh meat items and (live) fish are readily avail-
able for consumers to buy. And they are certainly popular. During my fieldwork
in Hyderabad (and shopping in a Delhi outlet of SPAR Hypermarket), I often
encountered long queues in front of the meat sections in these hypermarkets,
and their managers told me that meat sales were booming, including among new
groups of consumers who were traditionally considered vegetarians.
In the SPAR Hypermarket outlet, which opened within the Oasis Centre in
central Hyderabad in 2007 (Figure 1.4), the meat/fish section remains enclosed
behind a glass wall that clearly sets it apart from the main shopping area. The side
of the glass wall facing the main shopping area is lined with vegetarian or ‘green’
products, including Organic India (the country’s largest producer of organic prod-
ucts that are also marketed internationally). Thus, the division between the meat/
fish section on one side and the main shopping area on the other is clearly marked
and ‘fortified’ by ‘green’/organic products that appeal to many middle-class con-
sumers, even though they may harbour doubts about the ‘organicness’ of these
products. In hypermarkets such as Star Hyper that opened more recently there are
no walls partitioning the meat/fish sections from the main shopping area for two
reasons. First, meat/non-veg food consumption is gaining increasing acceptance
in South India, even among traditionally vegetarian (Hindu) groups. A second
reason is that newer hypermarkets are designed to accommodate meat and fish
sales. In these hypermarkets, chicken, in particular, is promoted as being healthy
and wholesome on posters displayed in the meat sections, and this portrayal reso-
nates with my qualitative and quantitative findings, as illustrated by an empirical
6 Veg or Non-Veg?

Figure 1.4 SPAR Hypermarket in central Hyderabad.

example drawn from my fieldwork. The manager of the SPAR outlet at the Oasis
Centre explained to me that even though vegetarianism remained widespread in
India, this trend is changing. Now, even his friends who are Jains (a religious
group that traditionally adhere to strict vegetarianism) have started eating meat
that is promoted as healthy and nutritious and sold in standardized and sanitized
retail spaces. In the SPAR’s meat section, two posters on display during my visits
explained that the chicken sold there is of superior quality, sourced locally from
quality assured farms and fully traceable from farm to fork. Another poster con-
tended that chicken is low in calories and high in protein and can ‘relieve stress’
and minimize the risk of heart disease. The store manager asserted that even doc-
tors now recommend meat as part of a healthy and nutritious diet. In this way,
meat is becoming a modern and mass-produced remedy.
Neoliberal reforms and the intensified globalization of food markets, com-
mencing from the early 1990s, have evidently led to a profusion and pluraliza-
tion of shopping desires and choices. In this book, I examine these desires and
choices and show how religious, vegetarian/vegan (avoiding all animal-derived
products) and ‘green’ protests and regulations struggle to keep up with but also
legitimize food production, trade and consumption. I explore the middle-class
universe of Hyderabad through the conceptual lens of a changing veg/non-veg
binary, attending to the multiple components of this universe that comprises not
 Veg or Non-Veg? 7
only middle-class shoppers/consumers but also producers, managers and bureau-
crats actively involved in resignifying the veg/non-veg relationship in Telangana
and at the federal level.
My study is not so much about the cultural landscape within which food is
prepared and eaten, but primarily about contemporary public manifestations of
this relationship between veg/non-veg in contemporary Telangana/Hyderabad.
In other words, my aim is to explore how my informants understood, practised
and contested the ubiquitous public transformations of this relationship and the
underlying reasons in a context of what I refer to as the retail revolution, changing
consumer culture and meat modernity in the age of the ‘green’. Of course, food
cultures and the veg/non-veg binary are extremely diverse across India, and most
of all my study focuses on Telangana/Hyderabad with an eye to federal/national
trends such as law and Hindu nationalism.
Moreover, I show how large and growing numbers of middle-class Hindu
consumers are confronted with all of these extensive changes on a daily basis. I
pay specific attention to sanitized forms of vegetarianism that are not necessar-
ily related to meat, that is, the revolution that has occurred within the processed
food sector as well as to non-food products, notably health supplements and
personal care products, such as toothpaste, that are also subject to new forms of
regulation. However, as I reveal, butcher shops retain their importance within the
non-veg food landscape in Telangana. Notably, butcher shops are predominantly
located in the bazaar near Nampally station in Purana Shaher (the Old City).
Here, beef, poultry, mutton and seafood are available, whereas pork, which is
haram (unlawful) in Islam and not halal (‘lawful’ or ‘permitted’), is sold by
butchers who are Dalits, other lower-caste Hindu groups or Christians (Staples
2020).

Meat-Eaters, Flexitarians, Vegetarians and Vegans

Through its focus on ‘veg’ and ‘non-veg’ at different levels of the social scale,
this book explores the paradox between an increasingly dominant (Hindu nation-
alist) ideology of vegetarianism and the reality of a rise in meat production in
India that is being promoted in the name of meat modernity, according to which
meat and non-veg diets, more generally, are associated with health, nutrition and
urbanized/flexible lifestyles. My central research question centres on why and
how this powerful vegetarian ideology and green/brown regulation have created
the hegemonic view of vegetarianism as a dominant and proper Hindu practice
and how Hindu middle-class groups (meat-eaters/non-vegetarians, vegetarians
and vegans) and also Dalits in Telangana respond to and are affected by this ide-
ology. Moreover, I explore the paradox entailed in India’s introduction in 2011 of
one of the world’s most stringent regulations on vegetarian foods in the context
of changing patterns of meat production, trade and consumption. The findings of
my study reveal that the relationship between veg and non-veg is being redefined
in contemporary South India. The long-held idea that a higher social status is
associated with greater adherence of individuals and social groups to a vegetarian
8 Veg or Non-Veg?
lifestyle is challenged. Moreover, being vegetarian or non-vegetarian is increas-
ingly an individual lifestyle choice within middle-class groups that is determined
by concerns such as health rather than religious orthodoxy. What is ironic is that
all of these shifts are occurring in a context of strict state regulation of veg (green)
and non-veg (brown) products.
While there is a large body of historical works on vegetarianism (Stuart 2015;
Barstow 2017) and meat (Lestel 2016), most meat ethnographies have focused
either on production (Gewertz 2010) or on consumption (Williams-Forson 2006)
and do not discuss meat-eating versus vegetarianism in depth at differing levels
of the social scale. Meat has always evoked multiple and ambivalent meanings
(Leroy and Praet 2015), and for many people, meat is synonymous with ‘real’
food (Fiddes 1991, 14). At the same time, it is mostly particular types of meat that
are taboo, as is the case with beef consumption in India. Meat is often considered
prestigious and vital for nutrition on the one hand, and dangerously immoral and
potentially unhealthy on the other hand (Fiddes 1991). What is more, meat is often
associated with male dominance and power (Adams 1990). Notwithstanding con-
siderable anthropological reflection on cultural rules and functional systems sur-
rounding meat-eating, empirical studies of meat-eating (Staples 2020) are scarce
but necessary to explore how daily practices of vegetarianism are shaped by a
wide range of factors, such as household dynamics, risk, trust/blame, emotions,
taste and modern life, as well as the relationship between humans and animals
(Sutton 2017). For the most part, studies on vegetarianism and meat-eating have
focused on more generalized and stable notions of preference, rarely exploring
everyday practices, changes and complexities.
Clearly, there are significant social stratifications and variations across time
and space, and this is especially true in India. Evidently, most meat-eaters are
omnivores who consume not only meat and non-vegetarian food but also vegetar-
ian food, as illustrated by the following empirical example. A single man in his
mid-20s at the time of my fieldwork, moved to Hyderabad from a ‘non-vegetar-
ian village’. He became a vegetarian and subsequently a vegan after moving to
Hyderabad. He explained that ‘I didn’t even know what a vegan is. I had never
heard of the term until I came to Hyderabad three years back.’ His family was
non-vegetarian, but when he took his sister to a vegan potluck, she too became a
vegan. The point that I wish to make here is that many Hindu families are com-
posed of veg(etari)ans and non-vegetarians, whose numbers are increasing in the
wake of the transformations that I explore in this book, including what I term meat
modernity.
A flexitarian or semi-vegetarian diet is primarily vegetarian but occasionally
includes meat or fish (Derbyshire 2017), while a vegetarian diet never includes
flesh of any kind. However, there are subcategories of vegetarians, such as lacto-
vegetarians (who consume dairy products but not eggs) and ovo-vegetarians
(who consume eggs but not dairy products). Whereas empirical investigations
of beliefs and practices associated with vegetarianism are recent, the recorded
history of vegetarianism begins in ancient Greece (Ruby 2012). Highlighting
the limited cultural scope of existing research, a study (Ruby 2012, 14) called
 Veg or Non-Veg? 9
for broader cross-cultural investigations, both quantitative and qualitative, and
a shift away from the prevailing conception within the literature of Indian cul-
ture as a ‘collectivistic culture’ (Haidt et al. 1997) in which people are vegetar-
ians from birth and display a strong relationship between feelings of disgust and
morality judgements. The book The Bloodless Revolution (Stuart 2015) explores
how vegetarianism, influenced by an Indian ethos, has been a potent social force
in Europe over the last 400 years that has helped to forge the image of India
as the world’s most populous vegetarian nation. The debate on vegetarianism
and non-vegetarianism qualifies as a surrogate comparison between Western and
Eastern cultures (Sengupta 2010). Other historical works have also portrayed
vegetarianism in India as an age-old practice that is generally cultivated from
birth and associated with tradition, power and status (Spencer 1993; Preece
2008). Furthermore, Indian vegetarianism is also thought to be influenced by
cultural values of asceticism and purity through the avoidance of bodily pollution
associated with meat consumption.
Before returning to the discussion of veg(etari)anism, the above points evoke
the qualification of the designation ‘Hindus’ essentialized in much of historical
Western scholarship. Through this Orientalist lens, vegetarianism was seen as a
marker of a flourishing and collectivistic Hindu civilization in which Hinduism
came to be the true and underlying subject of the thinking of Hindus and an
unchanging agent of practices such as vegetarianism (Inden 1990). In the context
of contemporary India, ‘Hindus’ is no longer a designation that can be used to
both indicate a general, somewhat unmarked population of people with a par-
ticular belief system, but rather a designation of nationalist affiliation according
to the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu
political organization that seeks to secure social dominance by upper castes and
cultural nationalism/conservatism (Chatterji et al. 2019). A parent organization of
the BJP, RSS has mobilized upwardly mobile groups around cow protection as a
key narrative of Hindu nationalism and Indianness (Andersen and Damle 2019).
Central to the Hindu nationalist project is to produce and project Hindu identities
that are not prescribed, but are open and intricate and in which vegetarianism is a
qualification or practice that marks proper Hinduness. Bearing in mind the above
points, I asked informants about their self-identification in terms of ethnicity and
caste and as we shall see in Chapters 4 and 5, informants who identified them-
selves as Hindus would at times qualify or de-essentialize this designation – for
example by explaining that Hinduism or caste were not primary markers their of
identity and self-identification.
A continuum of categories of vegetarianism can be mapped, entailing progres-
sive degrees of avoidance of animal foods. Thus, there are categories of vegetar-
ians who consider themselves vegetarian but occasionally eat red meat or poultry;
who avoid consuming meat and poultry; who avoid fish; who also exclude eggs;
who exclude dairy products produced with rennet (enzymes extracted from the
stomachs of young calves); and who consume only vegetable-derived foods,
avoiding all animal-derived food products (vegans). Even if vegetarianism is
understood and practised in widely differing ways, key concerns about animal
10 Veg or Non-Veg?
welfare, personal health and the environment are shared concerns among many
vegetarians (Beardsworth and Keil 1992).
Vegetarianism can entail a focus on morality, food production, religion/spir-
ituality, the ‘New Order’ (political critiques of the ‘conventional’ social order)
and health/physiology, as well as aesthetics or gustation (Twigg 1979). For some
vegetarians, consumed meat is associated with the quality of rottenness and,
more broadly, the corruption of human relations or of the state (Twigg 1979).
Being vegetarian or non-vegetarian impinges on the status of the body and con-
ceptions of purity, which are foregrounded in a central argument or ideal that
prevails within vegetarian thought. Accordingly, vegetarianism reflects pure
nature and natural unity at a deeper level. Notwithstanding its complexity, veg-
etarianism crucially entails a rejection of cruelty relating to the treatment of ani-
mals and a concern about health, although few vegetarians would ascribe to just
one issue. Other central concerns relate to the wastefulness of meat production
and the exploitative aspects of the world economy. Purification (of the body)
whereby disjunctive features of life are eliminated and substituted by wholeness
is at the core of the foundation of vegetarianism. Ultimately, it is the practice of
vegetarianism that conveys its expressive power. Complexity and diversity of
understandings and practices of vegetarianism surround meat-eating and vege-
tarianism, and many individuals are temporarily ‘vegetarian’, and this point calls
for a reconsideration of vegetarianism as a model that positions meat-eating and
vegetarianism as oppositional (Willetts 1997). A commonly held belief is that
the widespread adoption of vegetarianism would reduce societal dysfunction and
that there would be increased ‘warmth’ within a veg(etari)an society (Judge and
Wilson 2015).
Vegans eschew all animal products (as illustrated by my informant introduced
earlier), including dairy produce as well as leather clothing and items (Lea et al.
2006). They often argue that animal mistreatment is at the centre of their absti-
nence (Germov and Williams 2004). Veganism can be situated within a framework
that encompasses family, faith, sexuality, gender, music, culture, embodiment and
activism, pointing to the hostile reactions that vegans may face (Griffin 2017). In
sum, the relationship between ‘the veg(etari)an’ and ‘non-vegetarian’ is a com-
plex and changing one that is fraught and characterized by multiplicity across
time and space, and nowhere is this more evident than in contemporary India.

Ahimsa as a Modern Food Taboo

In sacred Hindu texts, dietary laws/customs and social stratification/privilege
were inseparable: there is a distinction between foods classified as kacca, that is,
uncooked, and ordinary food without ghee (clarified butter that is costly and nour-
ishing) that may be received from or handled by members of any caste or person.
Conversely, pakka foods are carefully prepared and can thus only be accepted
from an equal or a superior. This distinction is common for North India but not
to the same extent in the south. Cooked rice, for example, is prone to pollution
and can only be taken from those of equal or higher status whereas this is not the
 Veg or Non-Veg? 11
case with snacks (Cantlie 1981; Caplan 2008). Different types of meat are graded
according to their relative amount of pollution, with beef being the most defiling
(Zimmermann 1987). Conventionally, the status of vegetarians was considered to
be higher than that of meat-eaters due to the polluting contact with dead animals,
but there are exceptions to this purity/pollution binary, for example the use of
proper food and vessels (Marriott 1976; Khare 1986).
Ahimsa originally signified non-violence relating to living beings and had
nothing to do with vegetarianism (Alsdorff 2010 [1962]). In the Brahmanical trea-
tise Lawbook of Manu, leeks, garlic, onions and mushrooms are forbidden foods,
as they are considered ‘heating’ and may arouse sexual desire. Ahimsa is based
on a ‘magico-ritualistic’ dread of destroying life, but the origins and source of
ahimsa remain to be explored satisfactorily. The concept of ahimsa within legal
texts featured in the gradual emergence and assertion of vegetarianism and cattle
protection. However, vegetarianism and the cow taboo should be distinguished.
Historically, Buddhism and Jainism reinforced Hindu understandings of vegetari-
anism, but its origins remain unclear (Alsdorff 2010 [1962]). Therefore, my study
moves beyond ‘rationalist’ answers and a tendency to essentialize vegetarianism
as an unequivocally Hindu phenomenon across India.
Eat Not This Flesh (Simoons 1994) is a classic study that explores various
historical forms of vegetarianism in India, covering the entire gamut from meat-
eating ‘vegetarians’ to strict vegetarians who reject meat, fish and eggs, as well
as many other types of food. Traditionally, strict Jain and Hindu vegetarianism
was accorded the highest social status. The Hindu Dravidians in South India, the
Reddys of Hyderabad and tribal peoples who breed pigs for sacrifice were excep-
tions as meat-eaters. Cow veneration in India is the best known surviving cattle
cult globally and entails the rejection of beef as human food, despite the impor-
tance of cattle in Indian economic life. The origins of cow veneration and the
reasons for the ban on beef are not only contested as we shall see throughout
this book, but they are also dynamic in nature, changing over time. For example,
Brahmins accepted beef-eating during an early historical period.
A plethora of explanations for Hindu, Muslim and Jewish food taboos have
been proposed. For example, one argument is that taboos are arbitrary; they make
no sense to human beings and can only be understood by God. Another explanation
is that such injunctions were based on sanitary concerns. Symbolic explanations
offered by the anthropologist Mary Douglas (1975, 2004) posit that acceptable
animals for consumption are associated with proper human behaviour, whereas
banned animals are associated with sinful human behaviour. Some scholars have
argued that food laws originated in the rejection of cultic practices of alien peo-
ples and social groups whose worship of foreign deities and particular ideas/prac-
tices relating to food set them apart from other people in the mainstream. Some
anthropologists, most famously Marvin Harris, have posited a more contemporary
explanation, namely that the prohibitions are grounded in economic, environmen-
tal and/or ecological rationales (Harris 1977, 1998). Traditionally, for some Hindu
groups ‘internal pollution’ may be worse than pollution resulting from external
contact because it entails penetration of the body by pollutants, including impure
12 Veg or Non-Veg?
foods. Moreover, according to Harris (1977), Hinduism was profoundly affected
by Islam that to a large extent influenced the emergence of ahimsa.
Taboos can protect specific components of the universe and induce consensus
and certainty about the organization of the cosmos, thus reducing intellectual and
social disorder (Douglas 2004), as can be seen in the manner in which Hindu
vegetarianism is evoked as Hindu ‘culture’ or a ‘green label’. However, feelings
of uncertainty and disorder often underlie the certainty and order that is produced.
These doubts mostly surface within everyday strategies for dealing with ever-
intensifying demands for practising consumption according to religious or social
norms, as illustrated by the promotion and patrolling of vegetarianism through the
green/brown binary. Elsewhere, Douglas (1975) argued that when people become
aware of encroachment and danger, dietary rules controlling what goes into the
body have an analogous function to the corpus of cultural categories of risk. The
debate over the origins of the ban on beef in Hinduism is far from being resolved,
given the lack of sufficient historical evidence. My brief discussion of the argu-
ments of two anthropologists, Douglas and Harris, is intended to introduce the
reader to central arguments within a debate that has spanned decades and that
still apparently inform scholarly and popular controversy over not just the beef
prohibition but also the nature of taboo itself. On the one hand, I am drawn to the
explanation that the ‘sanctity of the cow’s body and the prohibition against killing
and eating her is made real for Hindus through crucial ritual performances that
communicate a variety of cosmological constructs’ (Van der Veer 1994, 87). On
the other hand, as I show, meat modernity is prevalent in India for a number of
contrasting reasons.
Gandhi’s vegetarianism, encompassing a gastro-politics, ideology and ration-
ale, has critically influenced Indian food systems and impacted tangibly on the
connections among ahimsa, celibacy/bodily administration and leadership (Alter
2000). Gandhi’s programme of social and political action focused on somatic con-
cerns and a bio-moral public health imperative. For Gandhi, an ideal meal would
be simple and natural, consisting of moderate, minimally cooked, unprocessed
and quickly prepared ingredients. According to this understanding, vegetarianism
is intrinsically good. While Hindu nationalism is often associated with vegetari-
anism, at least rhetorically, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who in 1923 coined the
term Hindutva, signifying a form of political Hinduism that sought to organize
and militarize Hindus as a nation, viewed Gandhi’s vegetarianism as effeminate
and retrogressive (Nandy 2014).
Hindu nationalist projects of cow protection are troubled by the incompat-
ibility of the undifferentiated/abstract metaphor of the cow mother of the Hindu
nation on the one hand and materiality of actual cows on the other (Govindrajan
2018). There is more to vegetarianism than meets the eye; it is not simply a mat-
ter of personal choice, and it is also distinct from the Brahmanical rationale of
purity and from Jain spirituality, which has traditionally entailed strict vegetari-
anism (Laidlaw 2015). As I show throughout this book, meat production, trade,
regulation and consumption are challenging the status of the cow mother, and
the question of vegetarianism is one that is ever-present in the country’s modern
 Veg or Non-Veg? 13
history. Moving beyond meat, I explore the consequences of processed and pack-
aged foods that carry green/brown labels, such as the instant noodles depicted
in Figure 1.1. Such products reflect the success of global capitalism and a form
of ‘consumer citizenship’, wherein industrialized foods enable affluent groups of
consumers to assert that they belong to the modern world and to transform social
relations within India (Baviskar 2018).
Interestingly, none of my vegetarian informants referred directly to ahimsa as
a rationale that explained their vegetarianism. For example, one informant, Satish,
who is in his 50s, described himself as a ‘pure vegetarian’ and would often refer to
Hindu scriptures when discussing food and vegetarianism but never to ahimsa. He
explained that ‘I have a distaste for non-vegetarian food. Even if it is cooked in my
house, I have that feeling. My wife is fond of fish, but I don’t like it.’ He further
explained that his ‘distaste for non-veg is certainly not a religious sentiment and I
support animals’ rights.’ This example reveals that among middle-class Hindus in
Telangana, vegetarianism is not explicitly related to ahimsa; rather, it is linked to
a range of other factors that will be explored in Chapters 4 and 5.

The Argument
In this book, which is the outcome of eight months of fieldwork conducted among
veg and non-veg producers, traders, regulators and consumers, I argue that many
existing studies and understandings of vegetarianism in India have taken the dom-
inant ideology for granted, namely that vegetarianism is intrinsic to Hinduism and
therefore self-evident. Accordingly, vegetarianism purportedly does not require
systematic empirical investigation. However, the reality in India is quite different,
with Muslims, Dalits, Scheduled Tribes and large sections of Hindu communities
also being meat-eaters. The book’s main focus is on the changing relationship
between vegetarian/veg/green and non-vegetarian/non-veg/brown as understood,
practised and contested by the Hindu middle-class in Telangana, taking account
of national/federal transformations such as the 2011 law that marks a move from
Hindu dietary law towards law as culture (Rosen 2008), that is, law as a cultural
domain that possesses distinctive histories, terminologies and personnel. Law
must be considered when exploring how a culture operates, and law is always part
of and connected to culture so that problems in legal systems move in tandem with
the features of their broader cultures.
The Hindu middle class does not just comprise shoppers/consumers, as most
of the literature would have it; it also includes those who are actively involved
in resignifying the relationship between veg/non-veg as producers, managers and
bureaucrats. Questions of who eats and with whom and what is rejected as food
are fundamentally linked conceptually to empire, decolonization and globaliza-
tion, especially in the context of India’s recent emergence as a superpower with a
booming economy and expanding middle class (Roy 2002). The polarity of ‘car-
nivory’ or meat modernity versus everyday/ideological vegetarianism illustrates
this argument. Thus, food can advance understanding of how people respond to
and resist the circulation of power within colonial and postcolonial modernities.
14 Veg or Non-Veg?
Exploring meat and beef, but also moving beyond these, I argue that the law on
green/brown coding, introduced in 2011, is an attempt to redefine, surveil and pro-
tect the vegetarian domain, which, especially in the context of the processed food
revolution, has meant that all packaged products across India are required to carry
green/brown labels. The overarching argument of the book is that a systematic
study of the complex and changing relationship between veg and non-veg under-
standings and practices at different levels of the social scale illuminates broader
transformations and challenges that relate to markets, the state, religion, politics
and identities in India. Food in India is inseparable from sentiments of community
(caste, ethnicity, region or nation), and controversies surrounding cow slaughter
and beef/meat-eating on the one hand and vegetarianism on the other is at the core
of contemporary debates (Bhushi 2018).
More specifically, I present the following four sub-arguments to support and
qualify the main argument. First, India is emerging as a major producer/exporter
of meat, and of water buffalo beef in particular. Production and consumption of
meat, especially chicken, have been increasing since the 1980s. Comparatively,
meat consumption in India is still very low compared to almost any other country,
but meat/non-vegetarianism is being mainstreamed and legitimized in new ways.
At the same time, the country is undergoing a retail revolution, and its consumer
culture is being transformed. India’s consumer landscapes have changed signifi-
cantly since the implementation of the 1991 reforms that resulted in the lowering
of trade, the effective dismantling of the policy of state regulation of industrial
production and the liberalization of investments. These transformations also mir-
ror wider societal changes, most notably urbanization, increased affluence and the
growth of the middle class. With the introduction of hypermarkets within the last
two decades or so, major retailers are now, selling fresh meat and fish alongside
veg products on a massive scale under one roof.
Second, my study extends beyond meat, as I explore the introduction of green/
brown labels as signifiers of a Second Green Revolution, that is, a preoccupa-
tion with all that is ’green’ and of an Indianized form of green ideology. My
understanding of this Second Green Revolution differs from the Green Revolution
conceptualized as adopting genetic engineering of new food crops to increase
crop yield as well as nutrition. By focusing on the bigger institutional picture,
including regulation that frames everyday consumption, I offer a multi-sited eth-
nography at different levels of the social scale (discussed in the methodology sec-
tion at the end of this chapter) of the overlapping technologies and techniques of
production, trade and certification/standardization that together warrant a product
as veg or non-veg, thereby helping to shape the market. I analyze this type of
regulation, conceived as an expression of state power and ideology in the context
of vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism. In doing so, I argue that it is essential to
move beyond the confines of meat/beef/cow veneration/ahimsa concepts to gain a
deeper understanding of the bureaucratization/scientification of Indian food mar-
kets with regard to the explosion of processed foods, such as instant noodles, as
depicted in Figure 1.1. While numerous studies have examined violence and ‘cow
lynchings’ inflicted on Muslims and Dalits and provoked through discourses of
 Veg or Non-Veg? 15
militant Hindu vegetarianism, I show that the proliferation of standardized, sani-
tized, impersonal and, in principle, democratic shopping spaces in which more
and more social groups encounter, shop for and consume meat/fish/non-veg items
may serve to counter the historically controversial role that meat has played in
India. After all, in plural societies such as that of India, members of communities
mostly meet in markets (Siegel 1997), and these communities increasingly rely
on technological means of regulating food to the same extent that they rely on
religious authority.
Third, why and how Hindu middle-class groups eat meat are not well under-
stood; the prevailing assumption within the existing literature is that the Hindu
concept of ahimsa (non-injury to all living creatures) along with cow veneration,
and the consequent banning of cow slaughter, prevent many Hindus from eating
meat – as part of ‘collectivistic’ Hindu culture. A further assumption is that the
relationship between vegetarianism and meat-eating is relatively simple and sta-
ble among Hindu groups. In Hindu elite/nationalist discourses as well as in many
scholarly studies, Hindu meat-eating is often seen as exceptional and attributed to
ritual or religious circumstances rather than being viewed as an everyday practice.
Scholars writing on Indian vegetarianism, including the author of this book, may
favour vegetarian principles and are seeking to understand how vegetarianism in
Europe and the United States, influenced by an Indian ethos, has been a potent
social force over the last 400 years.
Fourth, while numerous studies have been conducted on food/vegetarianism/
meat in cities such as Mumbai (Anjaria 2016, Solomon 2016) and Delhi (Ahmad
2018), the booming city of Hyderabad, and South India more generally, have
attracted considerably less attention. An exception is work on beef politics in
South India among Christians and lower-caste groups in particular (Staples 2020).
Furthermore, Muslims play an instrumental role in India’s meat markets, as most
of the meat processed in abattoirs is halal and can only be certified as such by
Muslim organizations. What is more, Hyderabad’s culinary culture should be
seen against the historical backdrop of Islamic influences. In this book, I attend to
vegetarians and non-vegetarians among the more fastidious Hindu middle-class
groups in line with the general tendency within scholarly research. However, I
also include ‘ordinary’ Hindu groups who are not at the forefront of contem-
porary religious or political developments and who are somewhat ambivalent
about them, exploring why and how the middle class eat meat and non-veg food,
including beef. In Chapter 2, I argue that the promotion and patrolling of the
veg/non-veg binary within the public sphere has substantive effects on the urban
middle-class universe of Hyderabad.
I chose Hyderabad as my primary fieldwork site because this city has expe-
rienced a massive retail revolution and a changing consumer culture – and
Telangana and Hyderabad are often seen to qualify as the most developed/mod-
ern state and city in India. As we saw above, the vast majority of people are
meat-eaters (my own survey supported and detailed this finding), and there are a
substantial number of abattoirs. The economic boom and high growth rates have
led to an influx of well-educated migrants and, most notably, to social mobility
16 Veg or Non-Veg?
among Hindu groups. For example, increasing numbers of international super/
hypermarket chains, such as Star Hyper and SPAR, where I conducted field-
work, are opening outlets in the city and especially in the surrounding suburbs.
Moreover, the city embodies a striking blend of a Hindu majority and a large
Muslim minority, while Telangana’s Muslim heritage and cuisine have been
formative influences. Within India, Muslims and Dalits are typically character-
ized as meat-eaters.
Hyderabad’s environment is quintessentially middle class. The city is
dynamic and bustling, and its emerging suburbs, such as Gachibowli, are home
to migrants from other parts of India, including many of my informants, who typ-
ically work in the IT or education fields. At the same time, Hyderabad is the site
of ongoing debates among higher-caste Hindus more widely, and to some extent,
local upper-caste groups, backed by the BJP, seeking to protect the holy cow
and enforce vegetarianism, even though meat is big business in Telangana and
nationally. Other currents and countercurrents include a localized Dalit move-
ment that is highly active within universities and elsewhere advocating, con-
versely, for the right to eat meat, and beef in particular, while emerging groups
of vegans are promoting animal rights, and an evolving organic movement is
apparent. Telangana/Hyderabad is the focus of my study, but this location may
also hold potential for future nationwide trends, and in Chapter 3 I shall compare
my findings to Delhi.

The Retail Revolution and a Changing Consumer Culture

Three themes run through this book. The first theme focuses on consumer land-
scapes in India and on questions of why and how they have significantly changed
since the early 1990s and the consequences of these developments for ways in
which veg and non-veg are understood and practised. The 1991 reforms com-
pletely altered the landscapes of consumer spaces and goods and of economic
policies (Maiorano 2015). These transformations also mirror wider societal
changes, most notably evidenced by increased affluence and better material status
as well as a large proportion of Indian middle-class women working outside the
home (as it is the case with the majority of my informants), while often remaining
responsible for grocery shopping and food preparation as in the case of many of
my female informants. Agro-food chains in India are being rapidly transformed
largely because of changes in income, consumption and work patterns propelled
by economic development. Agricultural marketing is being strengthened through
the gradual liberalization of the retail sector, coupled with an emphasis on invest-
ment and the rise of organized retail. Most importantly, scientific methods of
storage, including grain storage, refrigeration, grading and packaging, are being
promoted through increased investments. The entry of foreign players has led to
increased competition, greater professionalism and better service. Specifically,
these retailing giants are at a considerable advantage over traditional retail and
small and medium-sized enterprises in terms of the procurement of goods and ser-
vices, given the vast scales of their operations (Rao et al. 2016). Many of India’s
 Veg or Non-Veg? 17
13 million smaller retail stores are being supplanted by large malls, especially in
areas located along the outskirts of cities. Within the contemporary, Westernized
milieu of these malls, new stores need to project a strong cosmopolitan image.
Evidently, India’s urban markets, which are undergoing a process of transforma-
tion, offer a promising new landscape for qualitative studies, especially those that
employ observational methods (Dholakia and Sinha 2005).
A classic study of Indian food systems explores how everyday food prac-
tices are constrained by Indian institutions, values, cultures and sacred/secular
domains, as well as nutritional, economic, political and historical processes,
thereby situating many of the topics discussed in this section in an Indian context.
All of these dimensions collectively constitute the Indian food system and shape
the classification and categorization of veg and non-veg food (Khare 1966). In
India, the culture of Hinduism (and Buddhism) approaches food as an essence
and experience within personal and social life: food can possess cosmological,
moral, social and material qualities within an order of essence and experience.
While food is synonymous with life’s refining essence, Hindu food discourses
often critique the Hindu cosmic order/hierarchy and not least in connection with
vegetarianism idealized as superior, which seems to clash with meat-eating in the
Vedic (relating to the Vedas or holy texts of Hinduism) tradition. Thus, as will be
clear, vegetarianism challenges a simple or consistent caste rank correlation, and
it involves several rival historical forces and value paradoxes in Hindu cosmology
(Khare 1992).
Taking account of more recent developments and transformations, a number of
studies have advanced our understanding of standardized vegetarianism, including
those that have explored the complex relationship between social movements and
market adaptation, that is, cultural ideals of how food relates to specific places,
people and food systems (Johnston et al. 2009; Janeja 2010). Another important
study (Johnston et al. 2011) called for increased attention to how privileged con-
sumers think about food ethics when engaged in everyday shopping and the need
for such analyses to explore the ways in which class, ethnic and cultural orienta-
tions, as well as symbolic boundaries, are forged through food. My own research,
for example, revealed that SPAR was among the first chains to introduce the sale
of fresh meat within its hypermarkets in India. Nevertheless, butcher shops still
retain their importance within the Indian retail landscape. These transitions can be
conceptualized as a move from a ‘bazaar economy’ to a ‘standardized’ economy
(Fanselow 1990; Schwecke and Gandhi 2020). My analysis centres on the com-
plex and changing relationship between veg and non-veg food in particular, situ-
ated at the interface of the retail revolution and new forms of consumer culture,
that is, the broader extension of Indian consumer goods, markets and advertising.
In Chapter 3, I explore this extension within production, shops and restaurants.
The impacts of processes of standardization and the consumer culture are illus-
trated in the statements of the manager of an exclusive restaurant that serves both
veg and non-veg food. The manager revealed that in his former workplace in
Gujarat, there was only a veg menu, reflecting what he termed the ‘demographic
profile of the region.’ He made the following argument:
18 Veg or Non-Veg?
There is nothing like [a] veg or non-veg restaurant. It is veg-restaurant and
restaurant. It is so tough to cook both veg and non-veg foods in the same
restaurant; there are certain communities in India who don’t prefer [sic] their
food to be cooked in a non-veg kitchen. Not only vessels and utensils, they
don’t even like their food to be cooked on the same fire.

Thus, in the post-liberalization period, a pattern of ‘moral consumption’, discern-

ible among India’s emergent middle class, is producing a new configuration of
capitalism that makes recurrent reference to Hindu doctrine and practice and to
the formation of a Hindu subject capable of acting and competing within a neo-
liberal but still profoundly religiously inflected economic environment. Moral
consumption is constitutive of India’s contemporary ‘divine market’ in which
commodities are spiritualized, and spirituality conforms to a logic of commodi-
fication (Srivastava 2017). Similar trends are visible in Muslim Southeast Asia,
and I have called this Muslim Piety as Economy (2019). Moral consumption and
divine economies can be viewed as an extension of Swadeshi, that is, the pref-
erence for goods produced in India that began in 1905 and played a major role
in the country’s freedom struggle. It was also employed as a rhetorical device
to promote agricultural self-sufficiency as part of the import substitution strat-
egy pursued by the Indian state from 1950 to 1991 (Hansen 1996). The Hindu
nationalist resistance movement that opposed liberalization and the import of
foreign goods after 1991 also deployed the rhetoric of Swadeshi in which agrar-
ian-focused and community-based notions of self-governance were central. An
example is the closing down of a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Delhi by the
BJP government on the peculiar grounds that flies had been recovered inside its
kitchen premises. The ban on cow slaughter and the rigorous enforcement of
the green/brown regulation can be seen as a continuation of Swadeshi, entail-
ing the deepening of moral economies and divine markets on the one hand and
the disciplining of imported food products, in particular, on the other hand. The
reconfiguration of veg and non-veg food markets reflects India’s ‘aesthetics of
arrival’ (as we saw in Modi’s speech), namely the novelty, visibility and celebra-
tion of the post-reform landscape (Kaur and Hansen 2016). On the one hand,
vegetarianism is celebrated, promoted and certified by the BJP and the state, and
on the other hand, meat-eating (and its ‘brown’ regulation) is a sign of prosper-
ity, pluralized markets, reconfigured status/hierarchies, inclusion, social mobil-
ity, health and cosmopolitanism. Indeed, a wide range of meat products is now
available in relatively expensive hypermarkets as well as in traditional butcher’s
shops.
Capitalism in India is well diversified, spanning a wide range of industries
and communities. Especially in South India, intermediate castes have access to
modern education, which has contributed to the integration of the towns and
countryside and to the formation of a new middle class. This phenomenon helps
to explain why and how the middle-class universe in South India is changing.
Never before have class/caste identities in India been as fluid and dynamic as
they are today, and nowhere is this more visible than in Hyderabad. It is from the
 Veg or Non-Veg? 19
ranks of the socially heterogeneous middle class comprising both Brahmins and
non-Brahmins that a new group of socially mobile industrialists has emerged and
flourished in the context of Southern ‘democratization’ of capital and the inability
of traditional mercantile and banking communities to gain a stranglehold over
business. Moreover, caste has been less of an impediment to business in the South
compared with its influence on business in the North (Damodaran 2008, 314).
The globalization of food systems has led to their entanglement within com-
plex webs of political significance (Lien 2004); a phenomenon that is nowhere
more visible than in (sub)urban India. Today, India is a global superpower, and
multinational chains are promoting a vast and increasing range of every kind of
food, now available in the country, all carrying green or brown labels. I support
the argument for the necessity of applying an integrative approach that builds on
economic, political and environmental processes to develop a better understand-
ing of the challenges of food regulation, and these processes all condition the
relationship between the vegetarian and the non-vegetarian in contemporary India
(Pritchard et al. 2014). With intensified trade and importation of food as well as
the expansion of nutritional and scientific knowledge, food is becoming increas-
ingly less ‘natural’, ‘simple’ and ‘traditional’, and notions of nature and purity are
being challenged in relation to food cultivation (Wallace 1998, 3).
In India, the emergence of a new ontology of global consumption was con-
veyed most forcefully in advertising images that reflected the desires of individual
consumers and simultaneously presented the national community as an aesthetic
community distinguished by its taste-based preferences (veg or non-veg), which
are most pronounced among the emerging middle class (Mazzarella 2003). Indian
advertising and marketing professionals have succeeded in Indianizing brands
and have devised new sources of value for products. The veg/non-veg binary
plays an important role in this respect. Most importantly, perhaps, Hinduism has
been effectively mobilized as an antidote to globalizing consumerism.

‘Go Green or Go Down … Choice Is Yours’

A second theme addressed in this book is ‘green’ aesthetics and ideology in
modern India. The heading of this section is borrowed from a sign that I passed
daily during my commute while conducting fieldwork in Hyderabad (Figure 1.5).
Hyderabad is promoting itself as ‘green’ by planting millions of trees in the met-
ropolitan area. During the mid-1990s, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development
Authority implemented the Hyderabad Green Belt Project, aimed at regulating
developments around the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and imple-
menting extensive greening of wastelands, industrial estates and residential areas.
Not only are green labels and tree-planting projects now ubiquitous throughout
India and beyond, but there has been a proliferation of powerful green discourses
within the political, economic and cultural arenas. In India, the colour green can
symbolize new beginnings, harvests, happiness, nature and divinity. Conversely,
brown, which is the colour of dying leaves, may connote death and mourning in
addition to evoking the brown economy, that is, economic activities that have a
20 Veg or Non-Veg?

Figure 1.5 Greening India.

variety of negative environmental effects, notably the production of carbon emis-

sions through the burning of fossil fuels for generating energy as well as ineffi-
cient uses of energy (Svendsen 2013). The meat industry is widely considered to
be part of the brown economy.
In India, the use of new agronomic technology during the Green Revolution,
which began in the 1960s, contributed to modernizing the agricultural sector
(Death 2014). However, the state’s attempts to industrialize the agricultural sector
through the introduction of new technologies as well as fertilizers and pesticides
caused massive environmental problems, notably in the area of food security,
that have continued into the present. By contrast, green food security has been
conceptualized as a type of food security with a specific focus on ensuring access
to and availability of healthy/nutritious food on the one hand and environmental
sustainability on the other hand (Richardson 2010). State agencies play a critical
role in achieving green food security and environmental sustainability and require
local, national and global coordination (Duncan 1990).
More broadly, green economies are concerned with how social well-being
should be envisioned and practised. Green production, politics, regulation and
consumption all reflect the belief that there are limits to industrial growth (Dryzek
 Veg or Non-Veg? 21
2005; Brockington and Ponte 2015; Adams 2019). What I refer to as a ‘Second
Green Revolution’ signifies a preoccupation with all that is ‘green’, namely green
discourses, practices and commodities, including green labels, but also organic
production and veg(etari)anism. New national green economic strategies can
be conceived as being linked to the knowledges, politics, institutions and sub-
jectivities associated with the emergence of the environment as a domain that
requires regulation and protection (Agrawal 2005). These linkages are illustrated,
for example, by veganism, discussed in Chapter 5. What is evidently common
to all of these national strategies and articulations of the green economy is the
central role of the state (Death 2014). However, a key question relates to how
businesses think about and practice green/brown production and regulation and
consequences for consumers.
The green economy not only qualifies as a moral economy, how moral life
shapes economic decisions and relations, but it also strongly reflects an aesthetic
ideology of ‘the green’ that generally contrasts with everyday practice. In ancient
Greek, aisthitkos means ‘perceptive by feeling’. The modern notion of the aes-
thetic artefact is inseparable from the construction of the dominant ideological
forms of the modern class society. In his seminal work, Critique of Judgement,
Kant (2009 [1790]) argued that whatever an individual experiences sensorily is
aesthetic. For example, the green colour of a meadow is a sensation in that the
pleasurable aspect of the colour is a subjective impression. To think of something
as ‘good’ requires an understanding of the object, and ‘the good’ must have a
purpose. Ultimately, the manner in which the observing subject’s mind organizes
and structures the sensory world evokes the aesthetic. Specifically, an image’s
design and colours are indissociable from the way it is perceived or the locations
and modalities of its use (Harpham 1994). In the formation of a class society,
aesthetic concepts begin to play an intensive role in the constitution of a dominant
ideology. Aesthetics emerge as the discourse of the body, and each subject is
responsible for their own individual self-government when judging the aesthetic
(Eagleton 1990).
Thus, emancipation from a dominant green aesthetics – for example, through
meat-eating – provides the middle class with a model for their political aspirations,
transforming the relations between law on one side and desire, morality, knowl-
edge, social relations, custom, affection and sympathy on the other. Similarly,
bourgeois environmentalism, which reflects upper-class concerns around aesthet-
ics, leisure, safety and health, is an ideology and organizing force that significantly
shapes the landscapes and lives of millions of Indians and the disposition of urban
spaces in metropolises. For bourgeois environmentalists, urban spaces should be
reserved for white-collar production and commerce and for consumption activi-
ties. Commerce and leisure are fused together in the new shopping malls and
super/hypermarkets sprouting up across cities (Baviskar 2011).
More generally, the aesthetic can also be conceived as a mode of apprehend-
ing reality or as a mode of articulating and constituting the real (Viladesau 1999).
Theological aesthetics considers religion in relation to sensory knowledge, that
is, sensation, imagination and feeling. In my view, the veg/non-veg binary is
22 Veg or Non-Veg?
a good example of the interplay between aesthetics and the mundane world of
shopping, which is also informed by other concerns, such as convenience, thrift
and health. Green religion, or the greening of religion, that is, environmentally
friendly behaviour considered as a religious obligation and the notion that nature
is sacred and has intrinsic value, is constitutive of a form of modern environmen-
talism (Taylor 2010).
In his seminal work Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human
Nature, William James argued that the ‘æsthetic motive’ is endemic to religion
(2002 [1902], 355). This concept is central to James’ conceptualization of reli-
gion, wherein ‘the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it
draws its chief significance’ (2002 [1902], 375). For the Hindu middle-class, the
veg–non-veg binary is simultaneously a manifestation of the polarity between a
spiritual universe and the visible, mundane world of shopping. Food is employed
simultaneously within symbolic systems and ritual ceremonies as well as in eve-
ryday choices (Korsmeyer 1999). Subjects of modern dietary science are perme-
ated with ethical and ‘spiritual’ problems that arise through the government of
food (Coveney 2000). In the following chapters, I show how the veg/non-veg
dichotomy helps to shape both a moral and an aesthetic community among differ-
ent Hindu groups.
Hindu revivalist agendas, discourses and institutions penetrate everyday life
and reconfigure the public culture in India (Hansen 1999). For decades, promises
of modernity, national strength and development were the predominant rallying
calls of the Indian National Congress party within Indian politics. The agenda
of the current Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, focuses ‘on operationalis-
ing mega-development in India via globalization to position the country as an
emergent, modern world power, and, simultaneously, a well-defined Hindu state’
(Chatterji et al. 2019, 10). Balibar’s (1991, 95) conception of a fusion of national
and religious identities is a good fit with the topic of Indian veg/non-veg food that
was also evident in Modi’s speech delivered at the World Food India event, cited
earlier. According to Balibar, a national ideology entails ‘ideal signifiers’, such as
the name of the ‘fatherland’ onto which a sense of the sacred and the sentiments
of love, respect, sacrifice and fear that serve to cement religious communities
are infused. Moreover, ‘national identity, more or less completely integrating the
forms of religious identity, ends up tending to replace it, and forcing itself to
be ‘nationalized.’ At the core of the nationalization of Hinduism and Hinduness
is the question of what constitutes proper Hindu practice. Vegetarianism (cow
veneration, banning of cow slaughter and vegetarian regulation), in particular,
has become prominent as a signifier in the nationalization of Hinduism within
India. Even if statistics in India show that most Hindus are non-vegetarians, the
national ideology that India is, or should be, a vegetarian nation is widely upheld
and promoted. Ideology can explain why and how many scholars writing on veg-
etarianism have been seduced by a powerful vegetarian ideology. Differing from
these scholars, I show that a veg/non-veg dichotomy has been formative of both
a moral and an aesthetic Hindu community constituted by Hindu middle-class
groups. In other words, this dichotomy is inseparable from individual and group
 Veg or Non-Veg? 23
trajectories, and my multi-sited approaches for examining these trajectories have
provided a historical context for their exploration. The following extract from a
discussion with the SPAR store manager in Hyderabad illustrates the force of ‘the
green’ and simultaneous serves as a bridge to the next section which focuses on
the final theme of meat. The manager made the argument that green/brown marks
are essential because some 40% of Indian Hindus are vegetarians according to ‘a
global survey’. However, he also highlighted the issues of surveillance and pun-
ishment of infractions:

We follow the green and brown marking and keep products separate in the
store. The authorities may come to the store anytime, unannounced, to check
that the products are labelled appropriately. The authorities are very strict and
will impose fines in case they find inappropriate labelling or weights.

He further observed that among SPAR customers, veg is giving way to non-
veg, and more Hindu groups have started to eat more meat. Thus, vegetarians
are becoming non-vegetarian, but this trend is entirely based on the customers’
choices. Classifying and qualifying veg and non-veg items is prioritized by SPAR,
and green/brown marks are found on all packaged food products except for fresh
meat and vegetables. A second informant, Sanjay, who was in his 40s and worked
as a teacher in higher education, made the following remark regarding the intro-
duction of the green/brown marks. He stated that he first noticed the green/brown
marks about five years earlier when a friend drew his attention to their existence.
The shopping habits of vegetarians like Sanjay were transformed by these marks
‘because before these marks, I did not do shopping in supermarkets.’

Meat Modernity and Sustainability

A third and final theme running through this book is the relationship between veg/
non-veg food and modernity. Surely, the Second Green Revolution qualifies as a
modern response to environmental problems and as a modern aesthetic. However,
I explore modern paradoxes and contradictions by bringing in the growth of the
meat/non-veg economy and the potency of meat in contemporary India parallel
to the Second Green Revolution. Evidently, modernity, or modernities, is a topic
that is both extensive and diverse, but its application is constructive for explor-
ing modern middle-class universes in relation to India’s rise as a superpower.
Berman (1982, 15) defines modernity as a mode of ‘vital experience of space and
time, of the self and others, of life’s possibilities and perils.’ To be modern, ‘is
to find ourselves in an environment that promises adventure, power, joy, growth,
transformation of ourselves and the world – and, at the same time, that threat-
ens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.’ To
be(come) modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction while trying to
make the world our own, including fighting bureaucratic organizations, which is a
relevant point in India as the world’s largest democracy. In Chapter 4, I shall call
this middle-class projects, that is, a conceptual framework to capture the diversity
24 Veg or Non-Veg?
involved in the constitution of the Hindu middle class, with specific reference to
how the veg/non-veg binary is understood, practised and contested. I contend that
veg/non-veg culture and knowledge give shape to how an Indianized modernity is
experienced, made sense of and lived (Seth 2012).
Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries – of geogra-
phy and ethnicity, class and nationality, and religion and ideology. This conceptu-
alization of modernity as essentially ambivalent has also inspired anthropologists
(Miller 1994) in their explorations of the consequences of modernity in develop-
ing countries/economies. In his work on modernity in Trinidad, Miller argues that
juxtaposing descriptions of Trinidad and modernity could account for some of the
specific features and contradictions entailed in the characterization of both. The
rise of modernity is one in which the focus is first on its growing contradictions
and second on its association with the expansion of a more extensive material cul-
ture. A study that is empirically and historically grounded addresses all of those
elements of contingency and variability that characterize humanity. The advan-
tages of adopting an ethnographic approach to study modernity are derived from
a two-way process in which both descriptive ethnography and theoretical debates
on modernity may challenge each other as well as be interpreted in relation to
each other. Meat evokes multiple and ambivalent meanings: more than anything,
it conveys a modern taboo surrounded by law as culture.
The sacred cow concept gained impetus in light of the rivalry between
Muslims and Hindus at the time of India’s independence, and the ban on cow
slaughter was incorporated into the Constitution of India via Article 48, leading
to decades of legal controversy often involving Muslims. Lynchings of Muslims
accused of slaughtering, selling and eating cows have occurred frequently in India
(Jaffrelot 2017). Today, cow slaughter is banned in many Indian states, including
Telangana. Article 48 prohibits the slaughter of cows, and in 2005, the Supreme
Court of India upheld the constitutional validity of laws prohibiting cow slaughter
that were enacted by 20 out of 29 Indian states. Violators face six months in jail
and/or a fine of 1,000 rupees (approx. US$ 12). While the export of beef (from
cows, oxen and calves) is prohibited, the export of the meat of buffalos, goats,
sheep and birds is permitted.
India is home to the world’s largest concentration of water buffalos. It is
important to differentiate between water buffalo and cattle beef or zebu cows
(also known as indicine or humped cattle). Since the 2000s, India’s export of
water buffalo beef has expanded rapidly, with the country emerging as the world’s
largest beef exporter in 2014. This phenomenon can be attributed to rising con-
sumer demands for low-cost meat in the Global South, the large numbers of water
buffalos in India and the emergence of private sector and export-oriented Indian
meat processors. More specifically, the centralization of animal slaughter in abat-
toirs and meat processing/marketing are common in industrial societies. Abattoirs
are designed to avert the human gaze from the violence done to animals within
them and are established in response to public hygiene concerns, the dangers of
transmitting animal diseases to humans (a notable concern in the context of the
current COVID-19 pandemic) and in light of economies of scale and the sizeable
 Veg or Non-Veg? 25
units created by large businesses (Lee 2008). The geographies of ‘meatification’
(Jakobsen and Hansen 2020) of human diets reveal South-South connections such
as that of India-Southeast Asia. India is a large and growing meat (almost exclu-
sively ‘meat of bovine animals’) producer, and by far the largest are exports from
India to Vietnam, which at 1.9 billion USD annually is the fifth largest bilat-
eral meat trade flow measured in monetary value globally, and also Thailand,
Malaysia and Egypt. Meatification or meat modernity sits uneasily with India as
a Brand New Nation (Kaur 2020). On the one hand, India features prominently in
South-South meat connections/economies as a ‘brown’ market logic that recon-
figures the nation-state into a commercial-cultural zone and emerging market, and
on the other hand Hindu nationalist discourses that insist on the ‘green’ virtue of
vegetarianism and cow protection.
In India, abattoirs are quintessential examples illustrating the above-described
ambivalence. On the one hand, they follow the logic of meat modernity, entailing
the presence of a booming and sanitized meat economy, and on the other hand,
they are perceived by Hindu nationalists, and fastidious vegetarians and vegans in
particular, as sites of industrialized and impersonal mass killing (of cows) that are
abhorrent or improper in vegetarian India. This description fits both abattoirs and
the new outlets that for the first time are selling veg/non-veg products under one
roof. To provide a contextual background to my quantitative/qualitative study of
meat consumption presented in Chapter 4, here I shall review existing studies that
have explored these issues. There is a lack of studies that combine quantitative
insights with in-depth qualitative studies. Moreover, existing studies are not situ-
ated in the larger context of the retail revolution, changing consumer culture and
green/brown regulation. Meat production, export and consumption are increasing
in India, as is the case in much of the Global South, and this book examines why
and how this is happening. The emerging body of literature on animality in South
Asia (Dave 2014; Govindrajan 2018; Narayanan 2018) provides a more nuanced
picture in contrast to the predominant literature that mostly explores microso-
cial aspects, such as the everyday dietary habits of Hindu groups and, to a lesser
extent, vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism among the general population.
Moreover, not even the most fastidious vegetarians/vegans among my inform-
ants objected to shopping for food in a hypermarket in which both veg and non-
veg items are sold or to going to a Muslim/non-veg store/restaurant, now that
the green/brown FSSAI labels are legally mandated. Food and drink consump-
tion practices among Hindus of divergent classes and castes have always been
contentious in India, but now the country finds itself at the interface of ‘mod-
ern’ transformations that are fundamentally reshaping the complex relationship
between veg and non-veg foods. These transformations include the rise of Hindu
nationalism, the emergence of a new Hindu middle class of about 300 million
consumers – who are more flexible about food practices than previous generations
but also acutely aware of health issues in a context of environmental degradation
and constant food scandals in the wake of the Green Revolution and urbanization
– and liberalized and globalized markets in which abattoirs and super/hypermar-
kets play essential roles. The most important drivers of these transformations may
26 Veg or Non-Veg?
be ambivalent aesthetics, manifested in the clash between ‘green’ and ‘brown’
and associated ideologies, and forms of regulation at different levels of the social
scale. Middle-class consumers are clearly central to meat modernity, but an
exploration of their middle-class status is also essential in an investigation of how
well-educated food regulators and managers shape the market for vegetarians and
non-vegetarians.
The nationalization of modern ‘food science’ has entailed the production of a
hybrid form of knowledge that combines Western ideas about science/regulation
and local cultural and religious understandings with the cultural authority of sci-
ence serving as a legitimating signifier of rationality and progress (Prakash 1999).
Similarly, in India, agriculture, food production, modernity and nation building
are inseparable. Development, considered as a modern ‘reason of state’, enters
into relationships that institute new forms of governmental rationality. Thus, the
development of agriculture is an index of the health of the nation (Gupta 2013).
Since the mid-1990s, formal scientific risk management has been codified at all
levels of food safety governance in India. Central to this endeavour has been
the adoption of science-based governance models and strategies wherein local
stakeholders attach their own interests and agendas to science-based reforms pro-
ducing rational myths about the benefits of scientization. The FSSAI is illustra-
tive of these trends, with the establishment of strong politico–scientific networks
being part of a larger strategy of exercising power (Epstein 2014). However, food
scandals have appeared regularly in the media in articles with titles such as ‘How
the safety of India’s processed food was compromised by orders from the Prime
Minister’s Office: The Narendra Modi government has done away with scientific
scrutiny of how companies mix ingredients in many new processed food prod-
ucts’ (Scroll​.​in 9 January 2018). Paradoxically, while vegetarianism and non-veg-
etarianism have been subjected to green aesthetics/ideology, general food security
is conspicuously lacking. In sum, this theme focuses on the role of meat/non-veg
products in the contemporary world.
World meat production increased by 1% to 327 Mt in 2018 (OECD/FAO
2019). Within the Global South, increased production of beef, pork and poultry
meats has been observed in Argentina, India and Mexico. A ‘continued expan-
sion in [the] meat supply over the next decade’ is anticipated, and ‘global meat
production is projected to be 13% higher in 2028 (…) with developing countries
accounting for the vast majority of the total increase’ (OECD/FAO 2019, 169).
Almost half of the growth in direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is expected
to be attributable to the cattle industry, with another 15% attributed to the sheep
and goat industries. Geographically, most of the increase in direct GHG emissions
from the agricultural sector is projected to come from the Global South, with Asia
accounting for 45% of these emissions. The large contribution of the Global South
can be explained by higher agricultural production growth rates, and by extensive
pastoral livestock systems, which lead to relatively high GHG emissions per unit
of output (OECD/FAO 2019).
However, the reasons and trends underlying the increase in meat consumption
in the Global South are not well understood. The literature on meat consumption,
 Veg or Non-Veg? 27
including the observed increase in meat-eating in the Global South, calls for more
empirical evidence on the distribution of – and emerging preferences in – meat
consumption in specific geographical, economic and social contexts. For the new
middle classes, rising purchasing power offers increased choices, and the con-
sequences of this increased demand are compounded by the fact that even small
increases in the per capita consumption of meat will increase the quantities of
meat required and therefore the ecological impacts of this industry (Lange 2016).
The expanding consumer classes in the Global South, especially in emerging mar-
ket leaders, such as China and India, represent a substantial potential challenge
to global food and resource supplies (de Zoysa 2011). In particular, beef (includ-
ing meat from water buffalo) constitutes a non-sustainable nutritional option
(Dauvergne 2008).
The role played by trade reforms, as we saw it in the case of liberalization in
India from the 1990s onwards, in dietary transitions is not well researched. As we
shall see in Chapters 4 and 5, older informants recall how liberalization changed
(food) markets in India. Nonetheless, little is known about the linkage between
trade reforms and food tastes (Thow and Hawkes 2009). Increased meat produc-
tion and demand are expected to occur mainly in developing countries (Popkin
and Reardon 2018), and India is no exception to this projected trend.
Recent quantitative studies conclude that meat-eating and production in India
are much more widespread than is suggested by common claims and stereotypes.
Increasing meat production and meat-eating in India sit uneasily between (mal)
nutrition, social hierarchy and sustainability (Bruckert 2019b). From a broader
perspective, my study suggests that meat modernity may be just as widespread
in other urban areas in the Global South. Meat-eating is not only recommended
by doctors; it is often promoted as being healthy and nutritious in the numer-
ous hypermarkets that signify a form of meat modernity that evokes middle-class
lifestyles in the era of industrialized mass production. Together, the three themes,
described above, constitute the conceptual framework of the book.

A Note on Methodology and an Overview of the Chapters

I conducted the fieldwork for this study between June 2017 and January 2018.
Most of this time was spent in Telangana, with shorter stays in Delhi. The first
phase of my fieldwork was quantitative in scope. I administered a survey among
1,000 informants aged above 15 years in and around Hyderabad and mapped their
food habits with specific reference to their veg and non-veg food consumption hab-
its. The empirical component of the study entailed the use of a multi-sited ethnog-
raphy approach advocated by Marcus (1995) in his seminal article ‘Ethnography
in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography’. Applying
this approach, I followed ‘people’ (veg and non-veg consumers, whom I often
accompanied when they shopped for food, as well as bureaucrats, representa-
tives from vegan/vegetarian organizations, activists and company representa-
tives); ‘things’ (the circulation of veg/non-veg commodities/meat as the material
objects of study) and ‘the metaphor’ (the vegetarian/non-vegetarian binary
28 Veg or Non-Veg?
embedded within particular realms of discourse, modes of thought, and practices)
in Telangana. Urban India was the setting for a detailed, intensive and complex
analysis that encompassed diverse primary and secondary data. I conducted par-
ticipant observation, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and life
biographies with informants from the above groups. The names of informants
have been changed. Furthermore, I analyzed texts and images within the mass
media as well as political, policy and historical documents. Additionally, I used
photographs taken during my fieldwork as documentation to support participant
observation. This material also allowed me to explore broader perspectives sur-
rounding the complex and changing relationship between veg and non-veg food
in India.
Thus, this study is not an ethnography in the classic sense understood as fol-
lowing a relatively small number of informants over an extended period of time
in the intimacy of their homes. Rather, it was a multi-sited ethnography based on
observations and interviews conducted within the public sphere as well as within
the homes of Hindu middle-class informants, with a specific focus on who/what/
where/when/why questions relating to veg/non-veg shopping and consumption. It
would be constructive to expand on Marcus’ 1995 article by discussing some of
the more recent approaches to multi-sited ethnography (Coleman and Hellermann
2011). My study is inspired by the core argument in support of multi-sited eth-
nography. As observed by Marcus (2011), this approach can capture and accom-
modate the anthropology of globalization, contemporary (change) and public
anthropology while preserving the ‘“feel”, aesthetic, and distinction of ethnogra-
phy despite the considerable changes that multi-sited projects engender’ (Marcus
2011, 26). Another powerful argument in favour of multi-sited ethnography is its
crossing of zones of expert and common knowledge, moving beyond an analyti-
cal and descriptive case study. Thus, through its focus on ‘veg’ and ‘non-veg’,
encompassing food producers, regulators and middle-class Hindu consumers, as
well as Dalits, my study not only demonstrates the value of multi-sited ethnogra-
phy, but it also covers different levels of the social scale.
My understanding of scale here is inspired by Comaroff and Comaroff’s (2003)
exploration of ethnographic means that can, for example, inform an analysis of
material/moral conditions animating cultural/religious economies. The authors
argue for a radical expansion of the horizons of ethnographic methodology, even
if this means embarking on processes that unfold on an awkward scale. My multi-
sited, scalar ethnography enables me to explore Appadurai’s (1981, 1988) call
to focus on the heightened importance of institutional, large-scale, global, multi-
ethnic and public food production, and trade and consumption in modern India.
These transformations should be seen in the context of the commercialization of
agriculture, transport, marketing and credit that are enabling the expansion of
nationalized food systems.
Many of my informants were busy managers and civil servants who could
only be accessed, interviewed and observed as they went about their work in
offices, plants or shopping spaces and not within the spaces of their private lives.
Thus, during my fieldwork, I viewed and understood organizations (businesses
 Veg or Non-Veg? 29
and institutions) of different sizes as distinctive sociological laboratories with
their own histories, cultures, structures, hierarchies and values to be observed and
analyzed (Mitchell 1998). I argue that informants representing these sociological
laboratories are not only instrumental in promoting and patrolling the veg/non-
veg binary; they are also representative of ‘real’ middle-class people who embody
a seemingly increasingly ‘impersonal’ world of production, trade and regulation.
I selected Hindu middle-class informants (vegetarians and non-vegetarians) on
the basis of a survey. In addition, I conducted interviews and participant observa-
tion among vegans and Dalits. The design of the survey was primarily intended
to specify the ethnic composition of the households; develop and apply indica-
tors, such as family size, income and consumer behaviour; and introduce potential
participants to the theme of veg/non-veg consumption and to the general purpose
of project. At a subsequent stage, this information served a statistical function,
enabling me to expand the qualitative outlook of the project. However, during this
early stage of the fieldwork, the material from the questionnaires and impressions
gained from meeting informants enabled me to formulate qualitative interview
guides. The specific data obtained in the survey were thus translated into a more
qualitative format, and I was able to select key informants among these middle-
class groups. As to be expected, participant observation among these informants
and families varied in its nature and intensity. I therefore kept one detailed field-
work diary for each of the informants selected and a general one for recording
notes on the overall fieldwork. In sum, my informants within this complex setting
were selected to obtain a good representative spread.
Chapter 2, ‘Setting the Scene: The Publics and Politics of Green and Brown
Labels’, introduces and discusses the law surrounding the green/brown labels. In
this chapter, I reflect on the importance of Telangana as a fieldwork site, given
its unique historical, political and culinary features, and I subsequently discuss
green/brown labels in public space. The two concluding sections of the chapter
clarify how food regulators and politicians have understood and have applied the
green/brown regulation.
Chapter 3, ‘Markets: Manufacturing and Selling Veg and Non-veg
Commodities’, draws on and adds to the literature on morality and markets, stand-
ardization and audit cultures, as well as the burgeoning field of business anthro-
pology in India. Moreover, Chapter 3 is the core chapter presenting a multi-sited
ethnography of how veg and non-veg foods are understood, practised and con-
tested within manufacturing companies, shops (butcher shops, farmers’ markets
and super/hypermarkets) and restaurants.
Chapter 4, ‘Consuming Veg and Non-veg Food’, discusses ‘meat as medicine’
as part of an Indianized meat modernity. The chapter subsequently engages with
the literature on middle-class consumption and food and memory and presents the
findings of my survey of 1,000 consumers, which I situate in the context of other
surveys. Lastly, the chapter explores how vegetarianism and non-veg/meat-eating
have been formative of ‘middle-class projects’ and the development of local class
cultures among vegetarians and non-vegetarians in India (Liechty 2002). Chapter
4 ends with a glimpse into veg/non-veg in Delhi and thus offers a reflection on a
30 Veg or Non-Veg?
comparative perspective in North India; that is, I contextualize the findings from
Telangana by comparing them with those obtained during shorter periods of field-
work conducted in Delhi to bring out similarities and differences in the data.
Chapter 5 takes its cue from the literatures on youth, food activism and caste.
Its title, ‘The Good Life Clubs’, was inspired by a series of events organized by
philosophy students at the University of Hyderabad. The Good Life Clubs centre
on the anticipation of what the good middle-class life after graduation is or should
be. This chapter presents an ethnography of vegetarians and non-vegetarians
among four younger, well-educated, middle-class groups: students, Dalits and
vegans. As the chapter reveals, universities are important ‘clubs’ when it comes
to middle-class projects. I also explore organics, with a special focus on a popular
organic farm and shop in suburban Hyderabad. I discuss the topic of organics
because it highlights many of the central themes raised in the book – not just the
veg/non-veg issue but also health and sustainability that have entered national
agendas as a Second Green Revolution.
Chapter 6, ‘Conclusions and Broader Perspectives’, ties together the findings
of the book and reflects on why and how this interdisciplinary study on veg/non-
veg foods lends itself well to exploring how national and global issues are framed
and understood, applying the following steps. First, I summarize my findings.
Secondly, I theorize the role of vegetarianism/non-vegetarianism in middle-class
modernity between human values and markets. This book marks a continuation
of my research into the relationship between religion, human values and markets,
with a specific focus on kosher (a Hebrew term meaning ‘fit’ or ‘proper’), halal
and veg(etari)an products and services among middle-class groups. Key to this
theory is empirical data generated by applying mixed-methods and multi-sited
ethnography.
2 Setting the Scene
The Publics and Politics of Green
and Brown Labels

The FSSAI, which was established under the Food Safety and Standards
Regulations of 2011 legislated by the Congress-led government, introduced green/
vegetarian/veg and brown/non-vegetarian/non-veg labels on all packaged foods/
drinks in India. The Food Safety Standards Act 2006 allows food safety com-
missioners and authorities to take punitive actions against businesses that fail to
meet the required standards (Dey 2018). These regulations repealed and replaced
previous regulations, such as the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act of 1954. In
a notification issued by the FSSAI, non-vegetarian food is defined as follows: ‘an
article of food which contains whole or part of any animal including birds, fresh
water or marine animals or eggs or products of any animal origin, but excluding
milk or milk products, as an ingredient’ (FSSAI 2011, 29). ‘Vegetarian food’ is
‘any article of Food other than Non-Vegetarian Food as defined in regulation’
(FSSAI 2011, 30). The notification provides the following instructions:

Every package of ‘Non-Vegetarian’ food shall bear a declaration to this effect

made by a symbol and colour code as stipulated below to indicate that the
product is Non-Vegetarian Food. The symbol shall consist of a brown col-
our filled circle that must have a minimum specified diameter to be inside
a square with brown outline having sides double the diameter of the circle.

For vegetarian food, the following instructions are provided:

Every package of Vegetarian Food shall bear a declaration to this effect by a

symbol and colour code as stipulated below for this purpose to indicate that
the product is Vegetarian Food. The symbol shall consist of a green colour
filled circle that must have a minimum specified diameter to be inside the
square with green outline having size double the diameter of the circle.

The notification provides further detailed specifications stipulating that the

size of green/brown labels must match the overall surface of products in order
to be clearly visible (FSSAI 2011, 35). Thus, all packaged foods/drinks must
bear labels, and detailed specifications for packaging and labelling are provided
throughout the document. In addition to these labels, Agmark is a certification

DOI: 10.4324/9781003319825-2
32 Setting the Scene
label used on agricultural products in India. The term Agmark was coined by
joining ‘Ag’, denoting agriculture to ‘mark’, representing certification. This term
was introduced in the Agricultural Produce (Grading and Marking) Act of 1937 to
ensure that agricultural produce conforms to a set of recognized standards, and
to this day Agmark standards cover quality for hundreds of commodities. This
chapter explores the 2011 law as public culture, including politics and regulation,
with specific relevance to Telangana.

On Fieldwork and Food in Hyderabad, Telangana

In Hyderabad, I lived on the west bank of the Hussain Sagar Lake, which is
also the area where the SPAR Hypermarket, one of the first markets of its kind
in Hyderabad, was opened in 2007. Muslim butcher shops are predominantly
located in the bazaar area near Nampally Station, a couple of kilometres south
of the lake around Purana Shaher or the Old City. Hyderabad’s Old City is a
relatively poor district accommodating a Muslim majority and low-caste Hindus,
where social problems are exacerbated by inadequate infrastructure and political
neglect (McLaughlin 2017). Muslims make up just over 30% of the population
of the city of Hyderabad. The polarizing forces of Hindu nationalism and Muslim
communitarianism have resulted in the reification of notions of difference and
have been directed at mobilizing vote banks by espousing the language of caste,
religious and linguistic differences that have impacted many Indian Muslims in
post-independence state-making processes (Gayer and Jaffrelot 2012). As we
shall see, vegetarian politics plays an important role in polarizing Hindu nation-
alism and Muslim communitarianism (van der Veer 1994). Communal violence
is embedded within everyday social practices in Hyderabad and, more broadly,
in Telangana (Mangiarotti 2019), and food has often been at the centre of con-
flicts over divergent social practices among and within different groups. These
trends are indicative of social problems that also relate to meat production and
sales, which are traditionally associated with Muslims and lower-caste Hindus.
However, these tendencies are changing, and in contemporary India, vegetar-
ians are embracing meat, while non-vegetarians are turning to vegetarianism.
Moreover, neither of these groups necessarily defines itself according to caste
and faith. These trends are particularly conspicuous in Hyderabad, where they
are indicative of a new phenomenon of social mobility and changing aspirations
as well as a rising consumer culture against the historical backdrop of the fabled
Islamic empire (Giridharadas 2011).
In the bazaar, meat and vegetables are mostly sold separately, and there are few
open markets or wet markets where the two co-exist. Clearly, this situation differs
radically from hypermarkets such as Star Hyper and SPAR, where all types of
foods (except for beef and pork) are on sale. To purchase beef, it is necessary to go
to one of the beef shops in the bazaar, typically operated by Muslims, and for pork,
which is haram or ‘unlawful’ in Islam, there are shops run by Dalits, Christians
or other lower-caste groups as I discuss later in this chapter. There is a world of
difference between the Old City and the affluent suburbs of Jubilee and Banjara
Another random document with
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Anarchia van mindenütt, amikor felelősség nincs sehol.
 VI. RÉSZ.

A NÉPEK MAI KORMÁNYAI.

1. A demokratikus haladás.

A háborúnak lesz köszönhető, hogy az egyenlőség, amely eddig

csak a törvénykönyvekben létezett, kétségkívül behatol majd egy
kevéssé az erkölcsökbe és szokásokba is.
A mostani háború többet tett a demokratikus eszmék
megvalósításáért, mint az erőszakos forradalmak. Az egyazon
veszélyeknek alávetett emberek megismerték egymást és
megtanulták, hogy a különböző fajta képességek is lehetnek
egyenértékűek.
A háború bizonyára határköve lesz a világdemokrácia végleges
diadalának. Úgy az uralkodók, mint a diplomaták túlkevés éleslátást
tanusítottak, semhogy a népek a jövőben rászánnák magukat arra,
hogy sorsukat vakon az ő kezeikbe tegyék le. Lehet, hogy a háborúk
nem lesznek kevésbbé gyakoriak, de legalább azok fogják
megüzenni, akik a terhét viselik.
A háború az összes autokráciákat fenyegeti s mégis az volt az
eredménye, hogy a harcban álló országokban autokrata kormányok
jutottak hatalomra. Ezek néha hasznosak elhatározásaik gyorsasága
révén, azonban mégis olyan nagy hibákat halmoztak egybe, hogy
beállott annak a szüksége, hogy ügyvitelüket illetékes bizottságokkal
ellenőriztessék.
Az új idők kifejlődésével nem lesz abszolut hatalom, amely arra
képes lenne, hogy összeegyeztesse és egymás mellé rendelje a
különböző társadalmi csoportok sokfajta és gyakran ellentmondó
érdekeit, abból a célból, hogy a közérdekhez alkalmaztassa.
A világháború eredményeképpen az autokratikus formák
tekintélye erősen megingott, minek következtében csak azok a
monarchiák fognak fennmaradni, ahol az uralkodó nem kormányoz
és merőben csak jelképe a nemzeti egységnek.
Az egyéni autokráciáról a kollektiv autokráciára való áttérés sok
népnél a világháború egyenes következményének látszik.
Ha a kereslet és kínálat viszonyáról szóló régi törvény tovább is
uralkodik a világon, bizonyos, hogy a háború után a munkások
helyzetük roppant emelkedését fogják tapasztalni, mivelhogy a
munkáskéz ritka lesz az ipar új szükségleteihez viszonyítva.
Egy kis rend és a korcsmák bezárása révén a munkásosztály
hamarosan új burzsoáziát fog képezni. Ellenben a régi burzsoázia
középső rétege: tisztviselők, hivatalnokok, tanárok és tanítók stb.
abban a veszélyben forognak, hogy bizony nemsokára a
proletáriátus egyik kategóriája belőlük kerül ki, amely talán kitölti a
szocialista hadsereg az által támadt hézagait, hogy a kielégített és
sorsukkal megelégedett munkások elhagyták ezt a hadsereget.
Nagy haladás valósul meg, ha a demokratikus országok választói
képviselőikül ügyvédek vagy könyvmolyemberek helyett az élet
realitásával ismerős iparosokat, gazdákat, kereskedőket
választanak.
Az igazi demokratikus haladás nem az, hogy az élitet a tömeg
szintjére sülyesszük, hanem az, hogy a tömegeket az elitehez
fölemeljük.
 2. A német étatizmus és a francia étatizmus.

Az étatizmus (állami beavatkozás) és végső alakja, a

kollektivizmus a háború előtt azt az irányzatot követték, hogy a
latinfajú népek nemzeti vallásává váljanak. Mint az isten
kegyelméből való királyi hatalom örököse, az Állam szemökben
valamely misztikus lényeg volt, amelyet a polgárok folyton kritizáltak,
de amelyhez viszont szüntelenül fohászkodtak s elsősorban tőle
kívánták személyes igényeik kielégítését.
A minden véleményre tekintettel lévő liberalizmus és a maga
véleményén kívül mást el nem ismerő étatizmus egyre kevésbbé
látszik összeegyeztethetőnek. Az étatizmus továbbfejlése eltüntetné
a szabadságnak még a nyomát is az írások, cselekedetek és
gondolatok fölött gyakorolt állandó cenzura berendezésével.
Franciaország politikai története harminc év óta az
államszocializmus hódításainak története. A számbeli túlsúly híjján
megvolt a merészsége, már pedig a szám mindig hátrál a
merészséggel szemben. Demagógikus túllicitálásai és
fenyegetőzései az országot a mélység szélére vitték, s az a háború
nélkül, bizonyosan bele is zuhant volna a mélységbe.
Az étatizmusnak különböző eredményei Franciaországban és
Németországban nemcsak azt mutatják, hogy az intézmények
hatásai az őket elsajátító népek lelki világától függenek, hanem azt
is, hogy ugyanazok a kifejezések egyik országban mást
jelenthetnek, mint a másikban.
A német étatizmus elsősorban katonai jellegű. Csak kevéssé lép
ki köréből s az iparosoknak meghagyja cselekvési szabadságukat.
Ellenben a latin étatizmus azzal az igénnyel lép föl, hogy mindent ő
intéz és irányít. Ha nem is nyeli el teljesen az ipari vállalatokat,
ellenségekként bánik velük s túlhalmozza őket vexatórius
rendszabályokkal, amelyek lenyügözik lendületüket.
 A német étatizmus az ország roppant gazdasági haladásának
egyik tényezője, míg a latin étatizmus egyik legbizonyosabb oka volt
ipari hanyatlásunknak.
Ha valamely állam mindent maga akar irányítani és mindent el
akar nyelni, csakhamar ki nem egyeztethető kollektiv érdekekkel
találja magát szemben, amelyek működésének határt szabnak.
Tehetetlensége ilyenkor anarchiába fúl.
Az országokban, ahol a latin étatizmus uralkodik, az ügyek
felsőfokú intézése csak látszólag van a miniszterek kezében.
Tényleg pedig egész légiója a felelőtlen hivatalnokoknak tartja azt
hatalmában. A miniszterek, akikre rátermettségük hiánya,
ügyködésük rövid tartama és az általános fegyelmezetlenség miatt
alig hallgatnak, csak illuzórius tekintélyt gyakorolnak.
Minden, olyan közdologban munkálkodó egyén, aki annak
sikerében nincs érdekelve, csak gyenge szolgáltatást teljesít. E
lélektani alapelvből – amelyet a szocialisták annyira nem ismernek –
következik, hogy az állam által kezelt közüzemek sokba kerülnek és
keveset hoznak.
Az amerikai ipar egyik ereje, hogy távol tudja magától tartani az
állami beavatkozást. A mi iparunk gyengesége viszont az állami
béklyók következménye. Ha az eddigi fölfogás nem változik meg,
iparunk össze fog roskadni a törvények és szabályzatok súlya alatt.
Ha a polgárok nem tudnak megegyezni ügyeik elintézésében,
akkor természetes, hogy az állam nehézkes és költséges gépezete
kell, hogy közbelépjen.
Az állam és a magánipar igazgatása közt az az alapvető
különbség, hogy az előbbi többet foglalkozik a formával, mint a
lényeggel, míg a második megveti a formát s csak a hasznos
realitásokhoz ragaszkodik.
A gazdaság törvényeinek megvetése, a háborús árszabások és
rekviziciók rendszertelensége, minden kezdeményezésnek
megbénítása a zsarnoki és szakavatatlan hivatalok által: mindezek
ízelítőjéül szolgálhatnak annak, mily anarchiába sülyedne egy
ország, amelyet végkép leigázna az államszocializmus uralma.
A háborús árszabások következményeképp föllépő drágulás csak
régi tapasztalatokat erősít meg. Már a Convent kénytelen volt
belátni, hogy semmisem tudja helyettesíteni a
magánkezdeményezést, a munka szabadságát és a csereforgalom
kölcsönös játékát.
Az, hogy visszariasztották a földmívest a gabonatermeléstől
olyan adókkal, amelyek termésének az önköltségi árnál is olcsóbban
való eladására kényszerítették, úgy hogy abban is hagyta ezt a
mívelést, – azután meg az, hogy megpróbálták újra felélénkíteni a
közigazgatási önkényre bízott szubvenciókkal: két emlékezetes
példája az állami beavatkozás kárhozatos befolyásának.
Ha a háború után az ipari, mezőgazdasági és kereskedelmi
kezdeményezéseket megbénítják majd az állami beavatkozásból
folyó vexatórius szabályzatok: az ennek az uralomnak alávetett
népek dekadenciája bizonyossá válik. Nincs haladás egyéni
kezdeményezések nélkül; e kezdeményezések viszont lehetetlenek,
mihelyt az állam azzal az igénnyel lép föl, hogy az ipar és
kereskedelem bonyolult szervezetét irányítsa.
A pacifista szocializmus, amely tanaival azt okozta, hogy a
háború elején nem voltunk eléggé harckészek s ezzel oly sokban
hozzájárult első vereségeinkhez, elvesztett befolyását újra
visszanyerte két okból: 1. azért, mert a háborús szükségletek
következtében egyetemesen kifejlődött egy állami autokrácia, amely
igen közel volt a szocialisták által álmodott igához, 2. azért, mert azt
erősítgette – s ez a népképzeletet nagyon befolyásolta – hogy el
lehet érni a békét egy nemzetközi szocialista-kongresszus révén.
A latin étatizmus a kormányzat alacsonyabbrendű formája,
amelynek – mint egykor a hűbéruralomnak – a maga idején megvolt
a maga haszna, amelynek azonban manapság már nincs meg ez a
haszna. Ha tartóssá válnék, végeredményében a szolgaságban való
egyenlőségre, s azután a dekadenciára vezetne.
 A német állam-elmélet az abszolut szuverénitásról, amely csak a
maga akaratát ismeri el törvénynek, szükségképpen magában
foglalja az erőnek a jog fölött való túlsúlyát. S éppen az a cél, hogy
ezt a túlsúlyt igazolják, vezette a német bölcselőket arra, hogy
istenítvén az államot, azonosítsák az erőt és a jogot, s hogy az
enyheséget és az emberiességet a tehetetlenség jelének tekintsék.
A német állameszme, amely szerint az államot nem kötheti
semmiféle szerződés, sokkal ázsiaibb, mint római, sokkal ókoribb,
mint jelenkori. Igazi visszaesést jelent, amely ellen az egész világ
síkraszállott.
Amikor Hegel és követői az államot szuverén istenséggé tették,
csak filozófiiai formulát adtak minden porosz király katonai
eszményének.
Az étatizmus és a szocializmus Németországban annyira
szomszédosak, hogy ott a szocialisták többsége kormánypártot
alkot.
Elvitázhatatlan tény, hogy Németországnak néhány év alatt
sikerült az ipar élére állania. De nagyon csalódnék, aki ezt a sikert
az állami beavatkozás hatásainak tudná be. Huszonöt év alatt
megvalósított haladásának ugyanis ezek voltak az okai:
felsőbbrendű technikai oktatás, szigorú fegyelem, a különböző
iparágak szolidaritása, nagyképességű egyének a nagy vállalatok
élén, s különösen: gazdag szénbányák birtoka.
A németországi étatizmus szervezete, amily becses szolgálatot
tesz a közepes szellemek erőfeszítésének egymásmellé
rendezésében, nem tudná kedvezésben részesíteni a fontos
kutatásokat, amelyek az elite-emberek kizárólagos művei.
Németország, elveszítvén egyéniségét, elvesztette nagy tudósait,
nagy íróit, nagy gondolkozóit.
Az állami beavatkozás pillanatnyilag ugyan lehet oka a
leggyöngébb népek haladásának, de kikerülhetetlenül maga után
vonja a dekadenciát. Ha csak az állam az, amely gondolkozik és
cselekszik a polgárok helyett, ezek képtelenekké válnak a
gondolkozásra és cselekvésre. A felsőbbrendű egyének
belemerülnek az általános középszerűségbe s eltünnek.
Az étatizmus kiirthatatlan párthívei a háború után fölötte
veszélyesekké fognak válni. Miután azt látták, hogy a háború alatt
állami mindenhatóság nehezedett minden népre, ebből azt
következtetik, hogy az étatizmus a békében is üdvös lesz.
Mindazonáltal nyilvánvaló, hogy annak az uralomnak, amelyet
rendkívüli helyzethez szabtak, csak erre a helyzetre nézve van
értéke.
Ha a háborúban megteremtett katonai étatizmus a békében is
folytatódnék, azt kérdhetné az ember, mily határok közt tűrik meg
majd a gondolatszabadságot és az egyéni függetlenséget. A
civilizáció jövője fordul meg ennek a kérdésnek megoldásán.
A modern individualizmus ellen két félelmetes ellenség ütötte föl
a fejét: a szocializmus és a germánság. Ha az emberiség
végeredményében inkább választja a kollektiv szolgaságot, mint a
szabadságot, a végleges visszafejlődés korába esik vissza.
Megszabni az individualizmus és az étatizmus kölcsönös
határait: ez lesz a jövendő egyik legbajosabb föladata.

3. A szocialista hitvallás.

A hitek szerepe nem kevésbbé fontos manapság, mint volt a

multban. Sok ember azt hiszi magáról, hogy levetett minden vallást,
holott mindenkor uralja a misztikus szellemet. A szocialista hit is
egyik nyilvánulása ennek a szellemnek, ugyanúgy, amint az a
buddhizmus és az izlám.
A különböző politikai felekezetek, mint nihilisták,
szabadkőművesek, szocialisták stb. vallásos lények, akik
elvesztették régi hitüket, de mégsem tudnak meglenni valamelyes hit
nélkül, amely gondolataiknak irányt szabjon.
 Amidőn az egyetemes testvériséget és az ember
gyámoltalanságát tanította, a kereszténység a rómaiaknál lerontotta
a haza fogalmát és megsemmisítette az antik művelődést. A
szocialista eszmény diadala ugyancsak szétbontaná a haza
kultuszát s az osztályharc által polgárháborúkat idézne föl, amely
minden hazát önmaga lerombolására hajtana.
A vallásos formájú hitek, mint a szocializmus, megingathatlanok,
mert az érvek hatástalanoknak bizonyulnak a misztikus
meggyőződéssel szemben. A hivő hisz és nem okoskodik.
Minden dogma, s különösen minden politikai dogma, rendesen
az általa fölkeltett reményekkel igázza le az embereket, nem pedig
okoskodásaival.
Egyedül az észtől vezéreltetve, a pacifisták alapos okok alapján
nyilvánították a háborút lehetetlennek. Csupán azt az egyet
felejtették el, hogy a népeket olyan erők irányítják, amelyekre az
értelemnek nincs befolyása.
A történetírók csodálkozva fogják megállapítani, hogy a német
szocialista káté csak azután kezdte el pusztításait a francia
munkások közt, miután azt a kátét Németországban a gyakorlatban
már rég elhagyták.
Bármennyire eltérnek is az alapelvekben, a kollektivista
szocializmus és a militarizmus pontosan ugyanarra az eredményre
vezetnek: a szolgaságra.
Sok gondolkozó vitatja, hogy a szocializmus diadala a
barbárságba való teljes visszatérésre vezethet. Oroszország példája
legalább azt mutatja, hogy a szocialista hit igájában lévő nép
hamarosan az anarchia állapotába esik, amelyben áldozatává válik
olyan szomszédjainak, akik bizony édes-keveset törődnek az ilyen
következményeket szülő hittel.
Csak képzelt rokonság fűzi össze a latin szocializmust az
amerikaival és a némettel. Ez utóbbiak ugyanis főképpen a
vagyonosság termelésével foglalkoznak s ezt a termelést mozdítják
elő, jól tudván, hogy ezzel egyszersmind a munkás is jól jár.
Ellenben a francia szocialisták egyedül a vagyon elosztásával
foglalkoznak előszeretettel s ezért ők és törvényhozóik szüntelenül
üldözték a tőkét, ezzel eltérítették a nemzeti vállalatoktól s
kényszerítették, hogy külföldi piacokra vándoroljon ki. Ilyképpen
siettették gazdasági hanyatlásunkat.
Az osztályharc – amelyet a francia szocialisták fölkaptak, miután
német elvtársaik már elhagyták – még sokkal gyilkosabb és sokkal
költségesebb lenne, mint a népek háborúja. Ez utóbbiak ugyanis
csak átmeneti pusztulást okoznak, az előbbi azonban végleges
romlást idézne elő.
Az ember csak akkor adja le teljes munkaképességét, ha
közvetlenül érdekelve van a vállalt munka jó eredményében. Ebből a
lélektani alapelvből folyik, hogy a munkás, aki nem kapja meg a
fáradozásával arányos munkabért és a megszabott fizetésű állami
alkalmazott mindenkor csak közepes munkát fognak teljesíteni.
Ha a szocializmus csak abban állana, hogy javítani akarja a
tömegek sorsát, az egész világ szocialista volna, de az elméletnek
két alapvető pontja: az osztályharc és a tőke elnyomása, maguk
után vonnák a társadalmak szétbomlását és romlását.
A tőke fontos szerepe még sohasem bontakozott ki olyan élesen,
mint a világháborúban. Gazdagságából nemcsak az ország
hatalmas gazdasági terjeszkedése következik, hanem különösen
védekező ereje s ennek nyomában: függetlensége. Nagy tehát
annak a jelentősége, hogy ne gátolják fejlődését, amint ezt a
szocialista befolyások uralma alatt álló törvényhozók minduntalan
megteszik.
Az államok, ahol a szocialisták megszerzik a hatalmat, a tőkének
– nem lerombolására, mert ez lehetetlen, – de kivándoroltatására,
rohamos hanyatlásra vannak itélve.
Ha a tőke már a jelenlegi háborúban is elsőrangú szerepet
játszott, még döntőbbet fog játszani a jövendő háborúkban. A 75-ös
ágyú gránátlövése 60 frankba, a 305-ösé 2500 frankba kerül. Egy 4
kilométerre lévő ellenséges ágyú szétrombolására több mint 1000
lövedéket kell felhasználni a 155-ös tipussal. Egy 10,000 frankot érő
ellenséges ágyú szétrombolása több mint 300,000 frankba kerül a
155-össel, és még sokkal, de sokkal többe magasabb kaliberű
ágyúkkal. A szakemberek, akik ezeket a számításokat végezték, 25
milliárdra teszik a háború kezdete óta2) csak a tüzérségre költött
kiadásokat.
A tőkenélküli ország védelemnélküli ország.
A szocialista illuziók csodálatos makacssága élesen kibontakozik
egy tudós író következő soraiból:
«A kemény próba, amelytől három év óta az egész világ
szenved, semmi tanulságul nem szolgált a szocialistáknak.
Makacsul ugyanazon formulák körül forgolódnak, amelyekkel egykor
a legveszedelmesebb illuziókat megteremtették. Az egész
háborúban csak azt látják, hogy érvül hozhatják föl a társadalmi
osztályharc érdekében, amely tanításuk alaptétele.»
A szocialistáknak, akik a gazdasági törvényektől független, elvont
elméletek világában élnek, könnyű megigérniök a tömegeknek a
mohón szomjúhozott paradicsomot, míg a szocializmus ellenesei,
akik hajthatatlan gazdasági szükségszerűségek határai közé vannak
szorítva, nem tehetik ugyanezeket az igéreteket és így nem is lehet
ugyanaz a tekintélyük és hatásuk.
A szocialista tévedések közt a legveszélyesebb annak meg nem
értése, hogy az osztályharc árt a termelésnek, amelyből a munkás is
mindig hasznot húz. A német szocialisták, akik ezt a harcot tovább
tanítják könyveikben, gyakorlatilag már régen lemondtak róla.
Az ész, a tőke és a munka: ez a háromság teszi ki a jelenkori
ipari fejlődés lényeges tényezőit. Míg olyan országokban, ahol a
szocialista illuziók uralkodnak, ezek a tényezők még harcban
állanak, addig más népeknél a három elem társulássá alakult ki,
amely haladásuk főkútforrása lett.
Lehetetlen megmondani, vajjon a tőke eltünik-e majd a jövőben?
Manapság nem lehet tagadni, hogy miután nem egészen egy
évszázad alatt átalakította a világot, elengedhetetlen tényezője
marad az új haladásnak.
Hogy bizonyos szocialista ábrándok szívósságát megértsük,
emlékezzünk arra, hogy egy dogma abszurditása sohasem árt a
terjedésének.
Fölfoghatjuk a szocialista hitvallás hatalmát, ha megállapítjuk,
hogy a helyrehozhatatlan balszerencse ellenére is, amelyet okoznia
kellett, hívei mitsem vesztettek hitükből s még ma is azzal az
igénnyel lépnek föl, hogy a társadalmon délibábjaikkal uralkodjanak.
A szocialista hitvallás sok lélekben olyan hódítást tett, hogy
egyéni szabadságról, kezdeményezésről, az állam jogai
korlátozásáról beszélni előtte annyi, mint valamely letünt kor nyelvén
beszélni.
A szocialista tanok szemszögéből a világháború két, látszólag
ellentmondó jelenséget mutat. Egyrészt szétrombolta a
nemzetköziségi elméleteket, bebizonyítván, hogy a faj teremtette
kötelékek sokkal erősebbek, mint a foglalkozás érdekei. Másrészt a
szolgaságig menő állami beavatkozás kifejlődése pillanatnyilag
megvalósította a legkápráztatóbb szocialista álmot.
A szocialista hitvallás terjedése igazolja a történelemnek azt a
törvényét, hogy ha a népek néha meg is változtatják isteneik neveit,
nem tudnak szabadulni a nagy fantómoktól, amelyek hivatva vannak
életüket irányítani.

4. A kormányok szükséges lelki tulajdonságai.

Az államfő manapság akaratok összetétele, amely az akaratokat

irányozhatja, de ha nem tudja irányozni, azok uralkodnak őrajta.
Valamint a természet erőit ismerő orvos ura a jelenségeknek, úgy
az államférfiú, aki tudná kezelni a lelki erőket, kénye-kedve szerint
irányozhatná az emberek érzelmeit és akaratát.
 Az ügyes államférfi fel tudja használni az ábrándokat, amelyektől
sok lélek nem tud szabadulni. Ellenben a tapasztalatlan államférfiú
üldözi azokat és mégis ő az áldozatuk.
A népek lélektanának nemismerése mindenkor végzetes politikai
hibák kútforrása volt.
Kizárólag a könyvek közt élni, ez meggátolja azt, hogy valaki
megértse a realitásokat. Ezért oly veszedelmes az országokra az
elméleti emberektől gyakorolt kormányzás.
Mentől bajosabb egy politikai probléma, annál több ember
találkozik, aki azt hiszi magáról, hogy meg tudja oldani.
A tisztánlátás hiánya és a határozatlanság a politikusok réndes
hibái. Minthogy irányítani nem tudják az eseményeket, engedik,
hogy azok uralkodjanak őrajtuk s alávetik magukat minden
vakesetnek.
A politikusok közt, akik a népek sorsának gyeplőit tartják, nagyon
sok szimplista szellem találkozik, aki megvan arról győződve, hogy a
természet törvényeit is megmásíthatják az ő rendeleteik. Ellenben
ritka a megfigyelő szellem, akinek megvan az érzéke a lehetőségek
iránt s aki arra szorítkozik, hogy igazodjék a dolgok folyásához, s
nem lép föl azzal az igénnyel, hogy más mederbe terelje azt.
A tömegek hajlandók azt képzelni, hogy kormányzóik valami
magasabbrendű, csalhatatlan lények. Ezért olyan nagy a dühök, ha
a balsiker leleplezi az embert a bálvány mögött.
A miniszter értéke nagyban függ a környezetétől. Ámde az
embereket kiválasztani még sokkal nehezebb művészet, mint a
kormányzás.
Ennek az embernek, akiből miniszter lett, jobb lett volna
kocsisnak lennie, ez meg, aki kocsis maradt, megérdemelte volna,
hogy miniszterré legyen – mondá Napoleon. Ez szent igaz, de
hogyan kell megtenni a különbséget és fölfedezni az igazi
tehetségeket?
 A legrosszabb zsarnokok nem olyan veszedelmesek, mint a
határozatlan kormányzók. A határozatlanság mindig katasztrófákat
szült.
Ha annyi államférfiú árul el határozatlanságot a cselekedeteiben,
ez azért van, mert nincsenek tisztában azzal, mit akarnak és mit
bírnak.
Az az ember, aki nem bír uralkodni idegein, méltatlan arra, hogy
a politikai hatalomnak akárcsak legalsó fokát is elfoglalja. Az 1870-iki
háború azért vált kikerülhetetlenné, mert olyan miniszter vezette az
ügyeket, akinek nem volt elég nyugalma ahhoz, hogy cselekvés előtt
megállapítsa, vajjon igazak és szabatosak-e azok az adatok, amiket
a viszály kitörését okozó hamisított távirat tartalmazott. Egy
ellenséges diplomata finom psychologiájának sikerült faji
ingerlékenységünket kihasználnia s bennünket a katasztrófák egész
sorába dönteni.
Az állam vezetőinek tudniok kell ahhoz, mint válasszák meg az
indító okokat, amelyek a különböző lelkivilágú emberekre hathatnak.
A német diplomaták például képtelenek voltak erre a
megkülönböztetésre s nem fogták föl, hogy a terror, amely olyan
hatást gyakorolt a balkáni népekre, semmi hatással nincs más
fajokra.
Az átlagpolitikusok egyik legveszélyesebb szokása, hogy
megigérik azt, amiről biztosan tudják, hogy nem bírják megtartani.
A politikában az intézmények nem olyan fontosak, mint az
erkölcsök.
A parlamenti gyülekezetek eléggé megfelelő politikai uralmat
képviselnének, ha távol lehetne őket tartani a félelem, féltékenység,
a gyűlölködés nagy fantómjainak lidércnyomásától. De ezek voltak
huszonöt év óta az ipart, a pénzügyeket, a hadsereget szétbontó
törvényeknek s a politikai üldözéseknek sugalmazói.
A pártszellem és a választóktól való félelem a törvényhozóknak
vajmi kevés szabadságot adnak a helyes itéletre.
 Az Egyesült Államokban, ahol az állam jogai nem számosak, a
politikai befolyások is hatástalanok maradnak. A politikus szerepe
csak olyan országokban válik végzetessé, ahol az állam a
tevékenység egész körét magának foglalja le.
A népekre mindig veszélyes, ha olyan férfiak vezetik, akik inkább
nézik azt, hogy intézkedéseik milyen hatást gyakorolnak valamely
pártra, mint azt, hogy mit érnek azok általában s a közérdekre való
tekintettel.
A politikai tapasztalatlanság rendesen abban nyilvánul, hogy
egyre-másra halmozzák a megszorító rendszabályokat. Minthogy
jobbadán vaktára kapkodják elő, rendesen ellentétbe kerülnek a
gazdaság minden törvényével és csakhamar vissza kell vonni
azokat.
A kormányok, amelyek nem tudták megteremteni a
közvéleményt, sokszor csak akkor ismerik meg azt, amikor már az
fölborítja őket.
A jellemnélküli államférfiak hiába próbálják egyéni
gyöngeségüket a kollektiv gyöngeséggel alátámasztani.
Semmit sem lehet várni a politikusoktól, akiknek a világ csak
olyan tükör, amely csupán vágyaikat, ábrándjaikat és rémeiket vetíti
vissza.
Míg a tudós kutatja az igazságot, anélkül, hogy félne a
következményeitől, a középszerű politikus nagyon bizalmatlan iránta
és ellenségének tekinti. Cenzurázza a kifejezését, abban a kába
reményben, hogy ezzel megsemmisítheti magát az igazságot.
A legveszedelmesebb politikai hibák közé tartozik az, ha ragyogó
szónokokra bízzák a közügyek intézését. Már Napoleon
megjegyezte, hogy a nagy szónokok, akik alkalmasak gyülekezetek
hangulatának kormányzására, alkalmatlanoknak bizonyulnának a
legszerényebb ügy intézésére is.
A nagy szónokok ritkán nagy gondolkozók. A szónok művészete
elsősorban abban áll, hogy ügyesen kezeli a csalóka formulákat,
amelyek hatást tudnak gyakorolni a tömegekre.
A politikus, aki tevékenységét beszédbe fekteti, ritkán fekteti azt
cselekedetekbe.
A diplomaták csak úgy, mint a nők, a legtöbbször hallgatással
adják meg a legvilágosabb nyilatkozatot.
Az igazi államférfiú néha hajthatatlannak mutatkozik szavaiban,
de sohasem tetteiben. A modern népek életén uralkodó
szükségszerűségeket nem lehet összeegyeztetni a
hajthatatlansággal.
Kormányozni annyi, mint paktálni, paktálni nem annyi, mint
engedni.
A bölcs kormányzónak nem szabad elfelejtenie, hogy a multak
befolyása szab határt az ember jelenben lehetséges cselekvésének.
Az élők tömegét mindig a holtak kerete fogja körül.
A kormányzók számára hasznosabb ismerni, milyen a felfogásuk
az embereknek bizonyos dolgokról, mint ismerni a dolgok való
értékét.
Életre ébreszteni, növelni vagy eltüntetni az érzelmeket és hiteket
a népek lelkében: ez a kormányzás művészetének egyik lényeges
eleme.
Aki a nép érzelmeit kezelni tudja, az akaratát is tudja irányítani.
Aki pedig tudja ezeket az érzelmeket állandókká tenni, az újjá is
tudja teremteni a nép lelkét.

5. A kormányoknak a háborúban leleplezett

tökéletlenségei.
 Az éleslátás hiánya volt az államférfiak általános jellemvonása a
háború előtt és alatt. Olyan kormányférfiak, akik az eseményeket
csak néhány hóval megelőzőleg is előrelátnák, már csak kivételesen
akadnak.
Az előrelátásra való képtelenség és a határozatlanság mindig
megboszulják magukat. A németek borzalommal gondolnak arra,
mily romlás fenyegette volna hajórajukat, ha annak idején egy angol
miniszter rövidlátása át nem engedte volna nekik Helgoland szigetét.
A szövetségesek csak keserűséggel tudnak visszaemlékezni, milyen
más lett volna a háború lefolyása, ha, a hadjárat elején, az egyik
miniszter kellő határozottsággal s előrelátással elrendelte volna,
hogy néhány páncélos kövesse nyomon a német hajókat
Konstantinápoly felé irányult útjokban.
Egy világosan látó császár megértette volna, hogy
Németországnak minden más birodalomnál jobban érdekében állott
a béke fenntartása. Fölfogta volna Bismarck mélyértelmű tanácsát,
hogy sohase vesszenek össze Oroszországgal.
Az előre nem látás következményei alig hozhatók helyre. A
szövetségesek százezernél több embert vesztettek el haszontalanul
abban a hiú igyekezetben, hogy előzőleg elkövetett
vigyázatlanságuk és habozásuk csorbáit kiküszöböljék.
A népek urai folyton csak értéküket vesztett eszmékből élnek
most is. A tények által legjobban bebizonyított igazságok egyike,
hogy egy ország sem nyer azzal, hogyha idegen népeket akaratuk
ellenére szándékozik magához csatolni. Ezt tapasztalta Ausztria
egykoron Velenczével, Németország Elzászszal, amely ötven év óta
a zavarok és nagy költségek kútforrása számára.
Ez a szó, hogy «túlkéső» mondá egy angol miniszter, sok
balszerencse magyarázata.
Míg egykoron semmiféle befolyással nem volt a történelem
folyására, a népek akarata egyik döntő tényezője lett a modern
politikának.
 Ha a nagyhatalmakat olyan rosszul értesítik külföldi ügyvivőik, ez
azért van, mert ezek – csak hogy főnökeik megbecsüljék őket –
egyebet sem tesznek, minthogy visszhangozzák az ő nézeteiket.
Illuzióink a bulgárokra és görögökre vonatkozólag, a háború
kezdetén, aligha fakadtak más forrásból.
A lélektani erők kezelésében elkövetett hibák könnyen
megsemmisíthetik a fegyverzet fölényét. Németország is tapasztalta
ezt: diplomatáinak pszihologiai vaksága újabb és újabb ellenséget
szólított ellene sorompóba.
A gyönge kormányok, épúgy, mint a jellemtelen egyének,
kevéssé félelmetesek az ellenségeik, ellenben veszélyesek barátaik
számára. Oroszország ennek a példának az illusztrációja a háború
alatt.
A «diktátor» csak fikció. Az ő hatalma a valóságban szétoszlik
számos névtelen és felelőtlen aldiktátorra, akiknek zsarnoksága és
korrupciója csakhamar elviselhetetlenné válik.
Minden felelősségnélküli hatalom gyorsan. zsarnoksággá
változik.
Fogalmat alkothatunk borkereskedőink roppant hatalmáról s arról
a félelemről, melyek törvényhozóinkat eltöltik, ha megállapítjuk, hogy
legkiválóbb hadügyminiszterünk megbukott, mert a katona
egészségének védelmére hivatkozva, megpróbálta megakadályozni
az ő üzletüket.
Sok szempontból lehet a mi parlamentünk értékét vitássá tenni,
de el kell ismerni, hogy a kebeléből kiküldött nagybizottságok nélkül
nem lett volna sem municiónk, sem elég ágyúnk a védelemre. Nem
tudta volna ezt megszerezni egy kormány sem, még ha abszolut
hatalommal rendelkezett is, de bürokrata illuziók rabja volt volna.
A politikában olyan általános túllicitálás mindig veszedelmes
módszer volt. Lehet, hogy pillanatnyilag hasznos a pártnak, de
sohasem az a kormányzottaknak.
 Ha a napi hasznosságokat előnyben részesítjük a tartós
igazságokkal szemben s ha a pillanatnyi vélemények szerint
kormányoznak, ezzel gyógyíthatatlan helyzeteket teremtünk a
jövendő számára.

6. A háború politikai tanulságai.

Sohasem volt a kormányzás bajosabb mesterség, mint aminő

lesz a háború után. Egyik legnagyobb nehézség lesz talán az,
miképen szakítsanak az egyetemes beavatkozás szokásával,
amelyet a háború tett szükségessé.
Biztos kézzel játszani az embereket mozgató érzelmek
hanglétráján: ezt a művészetet nem lehet sem könyvből, sem
iskolában megtanulni. Tapasztalati ismeret maradt az, amelyet csak
a gyakorlatból lehet elsajátítani. Persze, ez az elsajátítás nem
könnyű: erről tanuskodik a sok-sok lélektani hiba, amiket a háború
alatt elkövettek.
A népek viselkedésének nagy motorai: a hitek és az érdekek.
Minthogy a hiteket nem lehet eloszlatni sem észokokkal, sem
erőszakkal: a kormányzóknak csak arra kellene szorítkozniok, hogy
az érdekeket kiegyenlítsék. Az üldözés és a véres háborúk sok
évszázadának kellett lefolynia, hogy ennek a lélektani alapelvnek
igazsága bebizonyosodjék.
Az események irányítására legalkalmasabb férfiak is csak
bizonyos határig, amelyet nem tudnak előrelátni, bírják irányítani
azokat, azontúl ellenben már az események ragadják magukkal
őket.
A politika eredményei nem egyszer nagyon különböznek kitüzött
céljaitól. Németország bizonyosan nem is sejtette, mily szolgálatot
tesz Angliának azzal, hogy belekényszerítette a háborúba. A jelen
szempontjából: kikerültette vele az irlandi polgárháborút s roppant
birodalma laza elemeit egy homogén tömeggé tömörítette. A jövő
szempontjából: jelentékeny módon nőtteti gazdasági és ipari
hatalmát, miután megérttette vele a germán beszivárgás veszélyeit.
Ipara haladása révén Németország béke esetén mihamar elérte
volna hegemónia-álma megvalósulását. Így pedig fölforgatta a
világegyetemet olyan eredményért, amely szöges ellentétben áll
azzal, amit elérni törekedett.
Laplace a valószínűségekről írt könyvében bizonyítgatja, hogy a
«jóhiszeműség mily előnyökkel jár a kormányok számára, amelyek
azt eljárásaik alapjává tették. Ellenben nézzétek – teszi hozzá – a
balsors mily mélységeibe taszítja gyakran a népeket vezetőik
nagyravágyása és hitszegése. Valahányszor egy hódításvágytól ittas
nagyhatalom egyetemes uralomra tör, a függetlenség érzelme a
fenyegetett nemzetek közt szövetséget hoz létre, amelynek az az
ország csaknem minden esetben áldozatul esik.» Több, mint száz év
előtt iratott ez a lap; a benne foglalt igazságok örökéletűek lesznek,
ámbár nincs sok kilátásuk arra, hogy a gyakorlati életbe is
átmenjenek.
Az alapelvekért vívott háborúk mindig igen sokáig húzódnak.
Ilyenek voltak az ó-korban a perzsa háborúk, az új-korban a
vallásháborúk, a harmincéves háború, a nagy francia forradalom
háborúi. Ha az Egyesült-Államok függetlenségi harca csak öt évig
tartott, ez azért volt így, mert a hadviselő felek egyikének pénzügyi
összeroppanása lehetetlenné tette a háború folytatását.
A nemzetek számára mindig veszélyes, ha túlsok
viszálykodással terhelt multjok van.
Bármily hatalomra tesz is szert valamely nemzet, bármily nagyok
is hódításai, bármily fölényes is a hadi fölszerelése: hatalma nem
tarthat tovább, ha egyszer már állandó veszedelmévé vált a többi
népnek. A multban már nem egy hódítónak kellett ezt tapasztalnia; s
manapság a németek ismétlik meg ezt a saját rovásukra.
Már II. Frigyes állitotta föl a tételt, – később utódai gyakorlatilag
alkalmazták – hogy a háború olyan ügy, amelyben a legkisebb
aggályoskodás mindent tönkretehet. Szerinte nem lehetne háborút