Comments on: Your moment of Zen.

By: Kelly G.

Kelly G. — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:45:01 +0000

Waldo, I didn’t allude to any stereotypical images of vegetarianism in India – “of its reverence for cows, of a devout, pinched people living off rice and pulses” – I simply noted that a large minority of Indians are vegetarians.

Frankly, I’m not sure where to find the most reliable statistics, but Wiki’s entry on vegetarianism in India backs up the first article I linked to:

According to the 2006 Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey, 31% of Indians are vegetarians, while another 9% consumes eggs. Among the various communities, vegetarianism was most common among Jains, Brahmins at 55%, and less frequent among Muslims (3%) and residents of coastal states respectively. Other surveys cited by FAO [2], and USDA [3][4] estimate 20%-42% of the Indian population as being vegetarian. These surveys indicate that even Indians who do eat meat, do so infrequently, with less than 30% consuming it regularly; although the reasons are partially economical.

India has devised a system of marking edible products made from only vegetarian ingredients, with a green dot in a green square. A mark of a brown dot in a brown square conveys that some animal based ingredients were used [5]. Even medicines are similarly marked: a well-known Omega-3 capsule made from flax seeds is marked with a red dot as the capsule uses non-vegetarian ingredients.[citation needed]

Recent growth in India’s organized retail has also been hit by some controversy. Strict vegetarians are demanding meatless supermarkets [6]

Take from the anecdote what you will. Personally, I find it odd that Colbert would endorse a vegetarian candidate by saying that he’ll put animal meat in your pot.

And I think Tharoor the younger’s response to Colbert’s endorsement directly contradicts your statement that “even Tharoor agrees that “a chicken in every pot” is a promise that would serve his father well.”

*shrug*

By: Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:28:39 +0000

Indeed, “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage” was popularized by Hoover. It’s a figure of speech, now, used to refer to a candidate making promises to voters. Colbert’s joke was replacing “pot” with “tandoor.” There was no carninormative assumption. It was just a twist on a figure of speech, a type of joke that Cobert employs frequently. In fact, Tharoor himself disagrees with your depiction of vegetarianism in India, writing in February:

One of the abiding stereotypes of India is of the country’s traditional vegetarianism, of its reverence for cows, of a devout, pinched people living off rice and pulses. Such images may litter the global imagination of India, but they are at best exaggerations of a very different reality and history. A small percentage of Hindus (and an even smaller percentage of Indians) are vegetarian. Pork and beef have long been consumed in the subcontinent – the Buddha’s last meal was pork; Brahmins ate beef at least as far back as the Vedic age three and half thousand years ago. Even today, the apparent vegetarianism of many Indians stems more from poverty and scarcity than adherence to atavistic belief.

Though mentioned by visitors in their accounts of the land in previous centuries, the image of India’s “vegetarianism” owes its currency to the period of British rule when it fed into racialised notions of Indian peoples. Diet, or perceptions of diet, played a particularly poisonous and unfortunate role in separating Hindus from Muslims. The dark divisions bequeathed by the colonial era even extend into public understandings of food.

It seems that even Tharoor agrees that “a chicken in every pot” is a promise that would serve his father well.

By: Kelly G.

Kelly G. — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:29:44 +0000

Yes, but Colbert spun the original phrase to make it more relevant to Indian politics/food: a chicken in every tandoor. Given India’s high rates of vegetarianism, he could have spun it further, but didn’t, which is my point.

By: Toby

Toby — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:59:46 +0000

‘A chicken in every pot’ is a political slogan that dates back to Henry IV of France, who is said to have wished that all peasants should be able to have a chicken in their pot every Sunday; it migrated to the US in the early 20th century with political advertising for the Republicans – it’s often attributed to Hoover. It’s thus a slogan symbolising basic prosperity and a decent standard of living for all, more than it is a literal idea of everyone eating chicken. So the flub was possibly Tharoor’s, for not recognising the phrase…