Status symbol! Modi's state banquet is not fishy, and the people often fall into a moral dilemma when ordering food

Source: Global Times

Recently, some media said that there is a strange phenomenon in Indian society, some people obviously eat meat in private, but pretend to be vegetarians in front of people. Although this has elements of "performative environmentalism", it is also deeply related to India's cultural traditions. Judging from india's religious and socio-cultural traditions, Indians have a strong respect for vegetarians and vegetarians, and people will even judge a person's status by whether they are vegetarian or not.

The state banquet is all vegetarian

Although it is not true that all vegetarians are necessarily high in India, people with high status are often vegetarians. Correspondingly, the lower the status of vegetarians, the lower the proportion of vegetarians, and the phrase "meat eaters despise" has practical social significance in India. Indian state banquets are basically vegetarian. When President Xi Jinping visited Modi's hometown of Gujarat in 2014, Modi prepared more than 100 local delicacies for the welcome, all vegetarian. The same is true when Trump visited India in early 2020, according to Indian media reports, on the first day of Trump's arrival in India, he almost didn't eat much at the state dinner against the table full of vegetarian dishes.

"Global Times" reporter in India to participate in the international conference is basically eat buffet, found that the buffet is not as cold, hot or dishes, staple foods in other places to divide the area, but often divided into vegetarian areas, non-vegetarian areas to place, vegetarian areas more Indians, non-vegetarian areas more foreigners. Once, when the Global Times reporter visited the president of the Indian Institute of Technology and had lunch with the Indian side, all of them were vegetarian dishes cooked with fresh vegetables and other seasonal ingredients at the time, which can be described as fresh and delicious, and not as heavy as the taste of ordinary restaurants in India, this meal can be said to completely subvert the reporter's stereotype that Indian food is full of spicy and salty vegetable paste.

Another time the reporter participated in a dinner organized at a Chinese restaurant, one of the small guests was an Indian child, looking at the name he should be high caste, the result was faced with a table of Chinese delicacies, the children finally ate only a raw cucumber. In India, the level of status and the level of caste are not exactly the same, but they can also be said to be closely related. It is generally inconvenient to ask about the caste of others in daily life in India, but people can judge each other's caste by name, skin color, vegetarian diet, etc. There is a plot in the Indian movie "Little Lori's Monkey God Uncle" that can explain how Indians judge caste through diet, the protagonist at first thought that the beautiful and cute little girl was a high caste, and later found that she loved to eat chicken legs and decided that she should be a low caste...

Vegetarian and non-vegetarian can be found everywhere

India's meat is not called meat but non-vegetarian, which shows that vegetarian food is the mainstream, meat is non-mainstream, and the difference in its status can be seen from the name. In India, the difference between vegetarian and non-vegetarian can be seen everywhere, and all packaged foods are mandatorily marked with vegetarian or non-vegetarian ingredients, and the logo of vegetarian food is green dots and the logo of non-vegetarian food is brown dots. In addition to food, some imported items, such as toothpaste, must also be labeled as vegetarian. Some food additives or excipients used in food processing must also be clearly marked. Indian law is very strict in this regard, and if there is a situation of "accidental eating" due to incorrect or unclear marking, it may lead to a lawsuit at worst or a religious conflict.

The Indian division of vegetarian and non-vegetarian is different from our general understanding, which does not mean that non-meat is vegetarian. For example, are eggs and milk vegetarian or non-vegetarian? The Indian answer is that milk is vegetarian and eggs are non-vegetarian. India's criteria for judging vegetarian and non-vegetarian can be traced back to the ancient Vedic period of "non-violence" in religions such as Brahmanism, Jainism and Buddhism. Indians believe that cows are happy to give milk to humans after meeting the feeding needs of calves, so milk can be classified as vegetarian. Hens, on the other hand, are reluctant to donate eggs to humans as food, so eggs should be considered non-vegetarian.

When flying on Indian flights, flight attendants ask passengers if they want vegetarian or non-vegetarian food when distributing meals, and many foreign passengers who take Indian flights for the first time do not know what it means. In this case, some passengers in India will also have internal struggles, and some people, even if they eat meat at home, will resolutely answer in front of everyone for the sake of face and for a higher sense of social identity: Please give me vegetarian food. This moral dilemma in the face of food may be unique to India. In the discussion on the topic of vegetarian population on the Indian Internet forum, some Indian netizens left a message that if two polls were conducted on the proportion of The vegetarian population in India, one by registered vote and one by secret ballot, the results may be very different.

Vegetarian food out of the taste of meat

The Global Times reporter has visited some holy cities in India, such as Varanasi, Rishikesh, etc., in these religious shrines it is difficult to find meat, and it is good luck to find a restaurant that serves egg fried rice. I remember when I first went to Ahmedabad, the reporter found a McDonald's with difficulty, and when he rushed in to order food, he found that only vegetarian burgers were served. But the reporter also found that in the environment where you can only eat Indian food, you will not particularly yearn for meat, which is related to the cooking characteristics of Indian food, and many vegetarian foods in Indian food are not inferior to our meat from cooking methods to nutrition. Some Indian vegetarian food can even be said to be high in oil, salt and sugar, which is completely different from our impression of a light Chinese vegetarian diet.

When it comes to Indian food, the first thing that most people think of is definitely curry. And many people must have taken it for granted that curry is a condiment, just like the Chinese pepper noodles, just like the pepper noodles in Chinese food, before the dish comes out of the pot. In fact, curry powder (usually called "Masala" in India) needs to be cooked with oil. We can learn from the soul of Indian cuisine, the process of making sauce, how a vegetable can be turned into a high-oil, high-salt vegetable paste. First, relax the oil in the Indian pressure cooker, add chopped ginger, garlic, minced onion and chili, add salt and simmer for a few minutes, then add curry powder and chopped tomatoes (or spinach), add yogurt, add salt, stir-fry and simmer in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes. This sauce (or vegetable paste) can be left for a long time without spoiling, and can be stored in the refrigerator for several months, perfect for the hot weather of India. Boiling vegetables in water and pairing them with this sauce and adding some salt will make a pure Indian flavor of the vegetable paste.

There is also a common vegetarian food called Gulabojamu in Indian cuisine, which is made of sugar water and noodles rolled into small balls and fried in oil, then boiled in sugar water, and then drizzled with some syrup when served. So many vegetarians in India are fat.