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 nonvegetarian/ 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.

In the 1600s European travellers discovered Indian vegetarianism. Western Culture was changed forever...

"Enquires into the ways in which food and its production and consumption are enmeshed in aspects of human existence and society, taking India and its interaction with food as its focal point"--

Vegetarianism is gaining popularity and a mainstream following in the Western world like never before. Historically only practiced among certain Hindu castes in India for religious reasons, vegetarianism is now being advocated as a means to improve personal health, show compassion towards animals, and reduce carbon emissions. It is being promoted by the political left, animal rights groups like PETA, environmentalists, Hindu religious sects, New Age groups, and Hollywood celebrities. Although mainstream academia and media continue to highlight all the positives of maintaining a vegetarian diet, none of the arguments opposed to Vegetarianism are properly or thoroughly presented. Some in academia, government, and the media have even proposed that laws and taxes should be enforced to limit people's freedom and ability to eat meat. Sonny Desai debunks many of the myths and believes associated with the virtues of Vegetarianism, and proposes the idea that a vegetarian diet may not be as healthy and ethical as people are led to believe. In "The Vegetarian Agenda: The Real Reason behind the Promotion and Popularization of the Meatless Diet", Desai describes in detail many facts about vegetarianism which have been hidden from the public. He explains how vegetarianism's practice among its majority Hindu population may have contributed to India's continual subjugation by foreign rulers, and how vegetarianism may have contributed to the creation of the brutal Hindu caste system. He describes how the Indian Hindu immigrants in the West, and their academic and economic success, may be attributed to their vegetarian diet, and why religion is being used to enforce it upon them. Desai also explains the psychological and physiological effects vegetarian diets have on the human mind and body, and how by understanding it people can freely choose what to eat and not eat. Most importantly, he describes how vegetarianism is being used as a means of mind control by social engineers who would like to recreate humanity to be able to easily adapt to the new science based technological society.

Authoritarian Populism and Bovine Political Economy in Modi’s India analyses how the twin forces of Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism unfold in India’s bovine economy, revealing their often-devastating material and economic impact on the country’s poor. This book is a rare, in-depth study of India’s bovine economy under Narendra Modi’s authoritarian populism. This is an economy that throws up a central paradox: On the one hand, an entrenched and aggressive Hindu nationalist politics is engaged in violently protecting the cow, disciplining those who do not sufficiently respect and revere it; on the other hand, India houses and continuously promotes one of the world’s largest corporate-controlled beef export economies that depends on the slaughter of millions of bovines every year. The book offers an original analysis of this scenario to show how Modi’s authoritarian populist regime has worked to reconcile the two by simultaneously promoting a virulent Hindu nationalism that seeks to turn India into a Hindu state, while also pushing neoliberal economic policies favouring corporate capital and elite class interests within and beyond the bovine economy. The book brings out the adverse impacts of these political-economic processes on the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor Indians in countryside and city. In addition, it identifies emerging weaknesses in Modi’s authoritarian populism, highlighting the potential for progressive counter-mobilisation. It will be of interest to scholars in the fields of development studies, South Asia studies, critical agrarian studies, as well as scholars with a general interest in political economy, contemporary authoritarian populism, and social movements.

In nineteenth-century Europe and North America, an organized vegetarian movement began warning of the health risks and ethical problems of meat eating. Presenting a vegetarian diet as a cure for the social ills brought on by industrialization and urbanization, this movement idealized South Asia as a model. In colonial India, where diets were far more varied than Western admirers realized, new motives for avoiding meat also took hold. Hindu nationalists claimed that vegetarianism would cleanse the body for anticolonial resistance, and an increasingly militant cow protection movement mobilized against meat eaters, particularly Muslims. Unearthing the connections among these developments and many others, Julia Hauser explores the global history of vegetarianism from the mid-nineteenth century to the early Cold War. She traces personal networks and exchanges of knowledge spanning Europe, the United States, and South Asia, highlighting mutual influence as well as the disconnects of cross-cultural encounters. Hauser argues that vegetarianism in this period was motivated by expansive visions of moral, physical, and even racial purification. Adherents were convinced that society could be changed by transforming the body of the individual. Hauser demonstrates that vegetarians in India and the West shared notions of purity, which drew some toward not only internationalism and anticolonialism but also racism, nationalism, and violence. Finding preoccupations with race and masculinity as well as links to colonialism and eugenics, she reveals the implication of vegetarian movements in exclusionary, hierarchical projects. Deeply researched and compellingly argued, A Taste for Purity rewrites the history of vegetarianism on a global scale.