"Indian vegetarians do not eat vegetables"

FROM A RACE OF TALL, GRACILE PEOPLE WITH GOOD HEALTH AND LONG LIVES, INDIANS HAVE NOW BECOME OBESE AND UNHEALTHY. FOOD HISTORIAN AND PHYSICIAN MANOSHI BHATTACHARYA TELLS ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY THAT THE PROBLEM LIES IN THE WAY OUR DIETS HAVE CHANGED OVER THE CENTURIES.

- ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY

You have studied 2,000 years of Indian diets. Do you see intense political or public focus on food in the past?

Our ancestors largely followed the Mesolithic (8000-2700 BCE) concept of frugal meals, which included vegetables and meat. In India, the overall food intake was limited, with days of fasting interspersed. The demands on the plant and animal worlds were low. There were some aberrations though.

In 500 BCE when Jainism emerged, its followers became vegetarian. It was a choice of the rich and the elite who could eat frugally, while maintaining a plant diet. It was not popular. Today, the Jains are a minority community, despite the fact that most of them are recent converts to the faith. Buddhism, too, saw something similar. The Buddha used to eat meat. Buddhists all over the world eat meat even today. But when Hiuen Tsang (a Chinese Buddhist monk and scholar) visited India in 630 CE, he was shocked to find that Indian Buddhists had turned vegetarian. They would eat lavishly in monasteries several times a day and drink rice starch throughout the day. In 600 BCE, emperor Harshavardhana, who was ruling Haryana, tried to impose vegetarianism. He did not succeed. In the same period, Meghavahana, king of Gandhara (now Afghanistan), who ruled over Kashmir, also unsuccessfully tried to introduce vegetarianism.

How have trade and migration changed our dietary habits?

Wherever humans travel, they carry their food with them. They also eat new kinds of food, which over time gets assimilated into their diet. For example, some 80,000 years ago, people from Africa migrated and settled in India, and this had an influence on our cuisine.