Are Hindus inherently vegetarian? Prof Ashwani Kumar explains food, faith and politics | Exclusive

Professor Ashwani said Hinduism has no single prescribed food habit, pointing to historical evidence of meat-eating and arguing that vegetarianism has increasingly become a political and social issue in India.

New Delhi: Professor Ashwani Kumar, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) on Monday spoke to News9 Managing Editor Kartikeya Sharma on whether Hindus are inherently vegetarian and discussed the historical, cultural and political dimensions of food habits in India.

Kumar said Hindus are not inherently vegetarian and argued that there is no single religious text prescribing a particular food habit for Hindus. He said India’s diverse cultural and historical traditions include both vegetarian and non-vegetarian practices, with references to meat consumption also found in ancient Hindu texts.

“It’s not a theological question because there is no book that would tell us what is the right food habit for the Hindus,” Kumar said, describing the issue as largely a cultural and political question.

He pointed to references in Vedic texts, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana while discussing the historical presence of meat-eating in Hindu traditions.

“In the Vedic texts, there is a clear evidence of not only eating meat, but also eating beef,” Kumar........

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