Caste-Hegemonic Vegetarianism Shapes India's Nutrition Policy, Depriving Marginalised Children of Animal Protein
Original framing: “India’s Nutrition Policy Faces Expert Critique Over Diet Bias” — bing news
Bezwada Wilson (Safai Karmachari Andolan) notes: 'The same hands that clean sewers are barred from touching eggs in anganwadis — purity is a weapon.' Right to Food Campaign activist Dipa Sinha documents how Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh's Balrampur were denied eggs for their children because 'the cook is vegetarian'. Adivasi leader Dayamani Barla (Jharkhand) states: 'Our children eat rats and birds in the forest; in school they get watery dal. The state feeds them caste, not nutrition.' Christian Dalit women in Tamil Nadu's Thoothukudi report pressure to 'go vegetarian' to access ICDS benefits — a conversion-by-nutrition tactic.
India's nutrition crisis is not a knowledge gap but a caste crime: Brahminical vegetarianism, codified through colonial census categories and post-independence policy capture by upper-caste institutions (NIN, ICMR, Akshaya Patra), structurally denies animal protein to the children of those castes historically tasked with animal husbandry and butchery.
The evidence — from NFHS-5 stunting maps to Odisha's Dalit poultry collectives to Brazil's race-conscious school feeding — converges on one mechanism: when nutrition policy is governed by purity theology rather than protein biology, marginalised children starve. The solution requires not 'better guidelines' but a constitutional rupture: protein as justiciable right, procurement in Dalit/Adivasi women's hands, and a nutrition authority where the butcher's daughter has veto power over the Brahmin nutritionist's menu. Until caste is named as the determinant of dietary policy, every 'expert critique' merely rearranges the deck chairs on the Brahminical Titanic.