On the political use of disgust in Gujarat

Abstract

In the context of mobilization for Hindu nationalism, processes of stereotyping a familiar other, the neighbourhood Muslim, play a significant role in fomenting experiences that confirm stigmatizations. These experiences concern the figure of the Muslim that arouses a phantasmagoria of fear, disgust and anger. Fear surrounds the 'Muslim' as she invokes the possibility of terrorism and calls for heightened security measures. Disgust is the register of a radical identification with a new form of hyperbolic vegetarianism. Anger, however, is what allegedly fuels the violence of the masses. This article investigates enunciations and representations that relate directly to consumption and production of meat in concrete quotidian practices: vegetarianism and rejection of animal sacrifice. It argues that the affect of disgust for meat has become an important cultural relay in the vegetarian politics of the state. By insisting on an identity formulated in the language of non-violence, it simultaneously renders permissive identification with violence.In the context of mobilization for Hindu nationalism, processes of stereotyping of the familiar neighbourhood Muslim are significant in fomenting experiences that confirm stigmatizations. Stereotypes often include wide-ranging and contradictory tropes -from linking Muslim fertility and excessive consumption to puritanical piety and doctrinal rigidity; from naïve superstition and lack of proper education to arrogant theological sophistication and Islamic radicalism. Such representations are less important as descriptions of the particular social standing or predicament of those subjected to them than as evidence of important experiences of those wielding and ascribing stereotypes. As Herzfeld 1 has pointed out, stereotypes are always generative and creative, and, by rendering intimate the abstraction of otherness, they become an important signature of nationalist identification.This article examines the relation of Hindu stereotypes of Muslims to the consumption and production of meat in concrete quotidian practices and conceptions of diet and worship: meat-eating, vegetarianism and the rejection of animal sacrifice. It is a relation that carries the power to arouse the affect of disgust and can produce the most pronounced sentiments of moral indignation including even physical experiences of nausea and collapse. 2 Disgust for a substance and by extension for those associated with it, however, does not engender stable representations, but on the contrary collapses distinction culminating in intimate experiences and proximity to the subject of stigmatization. *

What’s India’s Beef with Meat? Hindu Orthopraxis and Food Transition in India Since the 1980s

“…With the cow being one of the few common symbols of Hindus, caste distinctions related to food seem to be less salient and religious polarization is more visible. Meat is indeed the container of “disgust” based on the stereotypical diets of Muslims by Hindus, which fuels their stigmatization (Muslims are portrayed as the ones slaughtering animals and are thus considered as cruel) and might become a justification for violence toward Muslims (Ghassem‐Fachandi ). But the Hindu discourse of animal nonviolence, unified by this “hyperbolic vegetarianism,” is based on the moral and cultural values of high castes.…”

“…Indeed, for Hindus, chicken was until the 1980s associated with Muslims and was devalued because of its own omnivorous diet, but possibly because of the more global health‐positive valuation of “white meat,” it is getting “deritualized” (Bruckert ). Meanwhile, the devaluation of mutton and goat meat as smelly, hence noticeable, and engendering “disgust,” associates it more evidently with a stigmatized Muslim diet, although not as much as beef (Ghassem‐Fachandi ). But mutton and goat meat remain a prestigious food item (Bruckert ), as emphasized by their relative price.…”

“…While Indian society is undergoing transformations of its social structure, with a relative upward mobility of lower castes (Vaid ) and increased power in the political realm since at least the 1990s (Jaffrelot ), the social status of middle and high castes can appear as threatened. The stigmatization of Muslims due to their food diets (Ghassem‐Fachandi ) constitutes a manifestation of the permanent struggle for the Hindu middle and high castes to claim a Hindu cohesive identity, while maintaining their high position in the social order (Weber ).…”

Saffron geographies of exclusion: The Disturbed Areas Act of Gujarat

“…But even ‘cosmopolitan’ housing is not open to Muslims. As Ghassem-Fachandi (2010) notes, meat production, cooking and eating are exclusively identified with Muslims in Gujarat. When I asked a couple living in South Bopal, a relatively new and ‘cosmopolitan’ suburb in the western reaches of Ahmedabad, whether they knew of any Muslims living in the area, one of them responded: ‘No, none in this society … People don’t like to live around Muslims, also because of non-veg[etarian food].…”

Mobility and the Region

“…This puzzle has been prominently on the research agenda in recent decades, especially after the 2002 pogrom-like violence against Muslims in the state, a dramatic episode marking a paradigm shift whereby the Gandhian 'land of non-violence' (Sud & Tambs-Lyche, 2011, pp. 320-321) became a 'laboratory' of the Hindu nation (Spodek, 2008), where the stereotyping of a familiar 'Other', the Muslim, is observed both in contemporary representations and quotidian practices (Ghassem-Fachandi, 2010). Many scholars have discussed the remaking of Gujarat into a 'Hindu' region and have tried to explain the changing cultural climate and communal violence in terms of underlying political and economic developments (Berenschot, 2009;Breman, 2002Breman, , 2004Dhattiwala & Biggs, 2012).…”