INTERVIEW WITH DR. SYLVIA KARPAGAM: DIETARY PROPAGANDA IN INDIA
HILDA LABRADA GORE: In India, just one-fifth of the population identifies as vegetarian, but anti-meat propaganda and harassment of meat eaters is on the rise. Dr. Sylvia Karpagam, a public health doctor and researcher, shares insights about the societal, governmental and corporate forces at play. The efforts even include banning eggs and meat from school lunches. Dr. Karpagam also covers the current state of nutrition and well-being in India, how and why some are promoting a nutrient-poor, cereal-heavy diet to those most in need of nutrient-rich foods, and the part played by the traditional caste system in the biases against meat. Sylvia, let’s start with your story of a young man whose teacher told him something would happen if he ate meat.
SYLVIA KARPAGAM: Yes, that story is very symbolic for me partly because of the enormity of the problem, but also in terms of how important it is for people to keep talking about these issues. I give a lot of talks at universities and colleges. After I finished one public talk and was getting off the stage, this boy who was hardly fifteen or sixteen years old came forward to speak with me. He’s from a marginalized community called the Dalits, traditionally seen as impure or polluted for eating meats and all animal-sourced foods other than milk and dairy. Apparently the boy’s teacher, who is from a dominant caste group, kept repeatedly telling the students, “If you eat meat, your tongue will get thick. Your brain will not develop. All you will get is muscles. You will be aggressive and violent.” The teacher also said that his performance in school would be poor because of eating meat. He said that he listened to one of my talks in the regional language and challenged the teacher. He was so happy. He said, “It made a difference to me.”
For me, that was very affirming because it can be quite toxic for students to constantly hear this. We repeatedly hear parents and students telling us the way they’re criminalized or looked down upon under the pretext that it’s more “scientific” not to eat meat and eggs. Platforms like Wise Traditions that bring tradition and science together are very important.
HG: We’re so grateful to join hands with people like you who are helping people see that the traditions are grounded in science. As Sally Fallon Morell puts it, “Modern science is catching up with traditional wisdom.” Before we get into some of that science, please give us an overview of the caste system in India. You said there are marginalized communities, and even communities that are criminalized or denigrated. Can you describe the caste system for us and who these marginalized communities are?
SK: I’m not an expert on the historical aspects. There are many different points of view, but as a public health person, I have definitely seen how caste affects nutrition in two ways. The caste structure itself is composed of those who belong within the caste system and those outside of it. For those who belong within the caste system, there are four categories: the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas and the Shudras. The Brahmins, believed to be the intellectuals, are said to have been created from the head of the Hindu god Brahma. They are meant to be leaders, thinkers, teachers, academicians, and doctors. After the Brahmins, there are the Kshatriyas, who are supposed to be the warriors who came from the arms of a god. They are lower in the hierarchy. Then you have the Vaishyas, the traders, who came from the thighs of a god, and finally, from the god’s feet, you have the Shudras, who do the “cleaner” forms of labor.
Outside this caste system, you have the people who don’t belong to the castes and who are called the “untouchables.” They fall outside the castes. The government identifies them as the “Scheduled Castes” and “Scheduled Tribes,” but a lot of the community also self-identifies as Dalit. This community is supposed to take the responsibility of doing “unclean” labor. They handle blood, carcasses, excreta and garbage.
All the academic spaces are supposed to be populated by the Brahmins. This is evident in how they treat people who come in from other caste groups. Although we have a policy in the government of affirmative action, the people who come into these spaces from the Dalit communities face a lot of bullying and harassment. Many people take their own lives because of the extreme amount of institutionalized casteism.
The entire system is geared to keep people within the same occupations. There is a lot of justification and rationalization even among people who are educated and people who live in the West who migrated from India several generations ago. They continue to reinforce this whole caste structure and say that it promotes a stable state. If I am born into a family that is meant to clean toilets, then I should be happy doing it because if I try to aspire to something else, then I’m destabilizing the system. I’m also going to be blessed because I’m doing my job happily. It’s so ingrained. Each group has different practices, different eating patterns and different cultures. They’re very subtly used to identify themselves. The surnames will give you out. People say, “I don’t practice caste because it’s against our constitution and the law to practice untouchability,” but people practice it in different forms.
HG: Help us understand how the casteist roots in society play out in terms of food policy.
SK: I don’t call it “policy” because it’s not exactly evidence-based. It’s based on a whole bunch of other things like caste, religion, misconceptions or propaganda. I call them the decision-makers, people who are influential in society. You have doctors, researchers and even people who identify as nutritionists or the non-governmental sector who are technically vegetarian and self-identify as vegetarian. They constitute about 20 percent of the population. Because of their access to resources and power, they make most of the decisions in the country, specifically on nutrition policy. Their constant projection of India is that it’s a vegetarian country, but technically, only 20 percent of Indians self-identify as vegetarian.
HG: Only 20 percent of Indians identify as vegetarian? The world has the impression that the whole country is vegetarian.
SK: The PR machinery is very good. Most of the others would eat meat occasionally, although quite a few of them would have some days when they don’t eat meat or certain meats. Beef is taboo for many, but it’s important to know that almost one hundred million people in India consume beef. This is a source of livelihood and nutrition for a lot of people. It’s one of the cheapest meats available in India. A lot of the Dalits, the tribal communities, other backward communities, Muslims and Christians eat beef.
The Jains [the smallest of India’s six major religious groups] don’t eat anything that grows under the ground. They don’t eat roots like onions or garlic. They don’t eat any meats, but interestingly, a lot of vegetarians consume dairy. Milk, yogurt, paneer, ghee and butter are very important parts of their diet. They say they’re vegetarian, but technically, they’re not. They get their animal-sourced food, but then they create barriers for other groups to access the other foods. In India, other than milk and dairy, which go into the realm of the “pure,” all the other foods are classified as tamasic or “impure.” If you consume them, you’re going to be lustful, violent and aggressive. You’re going to have criminal tendencies. That’s how the policy gets affected in India. A lot of laws are brought in, especially targeting beef. Different states in India have brought in cattle slaughter bans. Some of them are more stringent than others.
What that translates to is lynch mobs— groups of people, “cow vigilantes,” who call themselves the “cow protectors.” Even a suspicion that someone has beef in his house is considered enough reason to mob and lynch those people.
HG: I thought you were talking hypothetically, but you are saying they will literally murder people who are suspected of having beef?
SK: If you do an Internet search and put in the term “lynch mobs in India,” you will see the number of cases, especially in the last few years. The worst thing is that the vigilantes film it and put it out in public. Often, the response is, “People deserve it. They deserve to die if there is a suspicion that they have beef.” That’s the terrible outcome of this whole targeting of people.
HG: John Harvey Kellogg, the man behind the breakfast cereal push in the U.S., was of the opinion that eating meat would make people more passionate or lustful. He wanted them to eat cereal to lower those impulses. So, the idea that eating meat will make you rebellious, aggressive or lustful is based on the idea that eating meat makes you strong, makes your hormones function properly and makes you a leader. People in India seem to have a similar opinion.
SK: Of late, it’s not just beef; there’s a wider targeting of meat eaters. There are a lot of colleges and universities, which are supposed to be progressive spaces, which are trying to make these spaces vegetarian, preventing students from eating any form of meat on the premises. Eggs are being targeted. We have a very large school feeding program in India, the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, which is a legal entitlement of the children. The majority of the children who go to these schools are some of the poorest children, with a lot of malnutrition. Most of them are traditionally used to eating meat and eggs at home, but the policy around nutrition is such that there’s a large-scale resistance to eggs. Many schools refuse to give eggs.
Contracts have been given to organizations that are openly casteist. They have a very strong presence internationally, even in the U.S. They’re called the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. They do a lot of fundraising in the name of these children, saying they are feeding these children, but their whole premise is sattvic food. Similar to what Kellogg was saying, they say that the hunger the children feel is not real hunger. Children are not able to concentrate, they say, because they’re eating all these “bad” foods. “We will give them these sattvic foods, which are good for their brain development.” They refuse to give eggs. They say eggs are the menstrual discharge of the chickens. They say no to it.
They have been given contracts to a huge number of schools in the country because they have huge social capital. Those of us who oppose them are called “anti-Hindu.” They say we are against them because of their religion. Especially those of us who are not Hindus are often targeted for calling out these organizations.
HG: This happens all around the world. If you have a dissenting opinion, you are slandered. What are the consequences of eggs and meats being removed from the school lunches?
SK: We have two large national surveys in India on nutrition. They have pretty horrible nutrition indicators for most of the country. Some states that independently decide their nutritional policies do quite well, and some do very badly, but on average, if you, for example, take children ages six to twenty-three months, only 42 percent of children were fed the minimum number of times per day. Only 21 percent of children had a diverse diet that had at least four food groups. Children who had both adequate diversity and frequency were around 6 percent.
HG: That’s so low!
SK: We have only 9 percent of children who have received iron-rich foods.
We have high levels of vitamin A deficiency, vitamin B12 deficiency and zinc deficiency. These are documented; I’m not just throwing around statistics. We have almost 35 to 40 percent of children who are stunted; they have lower height for their age. We have almost 38 percent of children who are underweight. Anemia is 57 to 59 percent, even among children.
If you look at all of these indicators, they don’t happen in isolation. It’s unlikely that a child who is stunted is not going to have the other deficiencies. Children usually have multiple deficiencies. That contributes to the infant mortality rates and to higher rates of infection among these children. Girls who have early pregnancies can have more maternal mortality. India is considered a diabetic capital because even though people are physically thin, they have a lot of chronic diseases.
HG: What about the naysayer who says, “Indians are genetically predisposed to have slight builds and be shorter in stature”?
SK: We have a lot of those. We have people who want to reduce the standards. They don’t want to go with the World Health Organization (WHO) standards. They say, “Hemoglobin should have lower cutoffs. The heights should have lower cutoffs.” However, what we see in those populations that have no constraints to good nutrition is that over two or three generations, their heights are comparable to the WHO standards. We have evidence that when, over two or three generations, you have no social, economic or nutritional constraints, heights increase. The secular trends have shown a consistent increase in heights.
HG: Sometimes health organizations will move the goalpost. Is that what you’re saying about the standards for hemoglobin cutoffs for anemia and the standards for height?
SK: The people who wanted to reduce the hemoglobin and height cutoffs used this survey from which I quoted those statistics—a study population with high levels of stunting and deficiencies. They used that population, but after some juggling of numbers—excluding some and including others—they said, “We got this healthy population.” They picked up a largely unhealthy vegetarian rural population and said, “Magically, we have picked out this healthy population, and the average is much less. Therefore, India’s average should be much less.” It’s not even good research. It’s not good science.
HG: When did you say to yourself, “We are under-nourishing and hurting ourselves, our future and our children’s future”?
SK: There was a huge demolition that happened quite close to my house, where almost sixteen hundred families were forcibly evicted. I went there as a medical doctor. I saw a very healthy and productive population become sick within one to two weeks. The children were having more diarrhea and losing weight. Mothers were having urinary tract infections, respiratory infections and skin infections. Men were having other issues. I got interested in this idea of the social determinants of health—the importance of water, sanitation, nutrition and shelter. The health care model is also important, and we do a lot of work on that, but so are these social determinants.
You realize that certain communities, for example the Dalit communities, are very specifically burdened by all of these social determinants. They have poorer livelihoods and incomes. They have less access to social security schemes. They’re more vulnerable to migration and living in deprived urban areas. There’s more exploitation. They’re more likely to have occupational hazards. What I’ve seen is that some of them have very good traditional eating practices, but they’re not recognized. Instead, they’re criminalized. I would never blame the communities and say, “You have poor nutrition.” Poor nutrition is very structural. It takes away what they already know in terms of their indigenous knowledge.
HG: Can you tell us more about the indigenous knowledge of some of the tribal groups? What was traditionally a part of their diet? Were they hunters or pastoralists?
SK: Most of them have been pushed into what are called “unclean” occupations, but if you look at their eating practices, a lot of the community eats meat and beef. Interestingly, they also eat organ meats. If you go to a meat shop, you have a range of costs. You will have the boneless pieces, which are very expensive, and then you have the more fleshy pieces, but the organ meats are much cheaper. Therefore, a lot of mothers, grandmothers or men, even if they don’t have a lot of money, would buy organ meats. They also eat a lot of dried fish and dried meats.
I’m not an expert, because in India, we have a wide range of foods eaten by different communities, but the communities are very resourceful. We have spoken to mothers. There’s a knowledge about what foods are good. We have also worked with traditional birth attendants and women from the Dalit community who support women during labor. They give them a lot of these foods because they believe proteins are important. Animal food soups and broths are important for the woman to recover and also for the breastfeeding period.
HG: It is encouraging to hear that these foods and traditions are still being kept. I imagine that it is an uphill battle, though, if they have to go against all of this propaganda, programming and policies that are pushing in the opposite direction.
SK: If a woman has anemia, the doctor will say, “You have anemia. Eat fruits and vegetables.” Some of them even say, “Stop eating meat.” I used to work in an HIV center. HIV is a muscle-wasting disease, but I could hear the doctor next to me telling the patients, “Stop eating meat. Eat fruits and vegetables. Why do you want to eat meat?” People with tuberculosis who need these foods are often denied them because of the caste location of the doctors.
Similarly, you have the vegetarian policymakers. Interestingly, because vegetarians come from a higher social class, they are able to access a lot of pulses, nuts and dairy products, but if you look at the actual food that is being given in the social security schemes to children in the government schools, or what we call the public distribution system, it’s always very cereal-heavy. Most of the rations that they get are cereals. You might have very little pulses and hardly anything else. There are not even oils, other legumes or even dairy. There’s a cheap vegetarianism that is being pushed on the poor. To add to that, there’s this constant messaging that meat is bad. “You should stop eating meat. It’s not healthy for you.” The West has contributed. We have this whole EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health. [Note: The EAT-Lancet Commission Planetary Health Diet “emphasizes a plant-forward diet where whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes comprise a greater proportion of foods consumed.”] We have people who say eggs have cholesterol. They have damaged the way food is being pushed in India.
HG: What conclusions have you come to on your own, based on your research of nutrients and their impact on health in India? Is there any hope?
SK: There is hope because a lot of communities are reclaiming their traditional foods in what they call “food sovereignty.” There has been a declaration by diverse groups of people—the farmers, the pastoralist community and the other people who traditionally own livestock. They put up a statement that talks about the interdependence between forests, water, crops, animals and humans. It’s the idea of the commons, which has to be protected from the industrialized system that is taking over our food systems. They see this whole coexistence. That’s very positive. They have been speaking at international forums. There’s also pushback from communities organizing beef and food festivals, pushing for more diversity, not just in terms of food, but also in terms of representation in decision-making. Those are all pretty positive changes.
HG: I want to join a beef festival! Now I would like to ask, if people could do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do first?
SK: If your food doesn’t have an ingredient list, then it’s good food. Try to procure foods closer to your homes because this whole vegan thing involves shipping foods from across other countries. Try to have local foods and a lot of diversity, at least four food groups with each meal. Respect cultures. Don’t get into these fads where you’re worried about “climate change,” but you’re not worried about all the consequences of pushing for it—because sometimes it’s the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalized who are paying the price for all these decisions. Be conscious and cognizant of how your actions can have an impact on people who may be very far away from you.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2024
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