To my knowledge, the term “non-vegetarian” is used only in India. It serves both as adjective (“I am non-vegetarian”) and as noun (“Today we ate non-vegetarian”). It is usually shortened to “non-veg”.The prefix “non” says that vegetarianism is the norm, the “correct” practice, and that flesh eaters are dietary deviants. It is not so anywhere else in the world. I have friends from countries of South, Southeast and East Asia, Africa and Europe, from some countries of Latin America, and even one from Polynesia. In all these places, vegetarianism is what is taken to be out of the ordinary, something strange and faddish.Homo sapiens have always eaten meat. Peoples across the world are called “hunter-gatherers”, and a major phase of societal evolution is so described. In human habitations across the planet, archaeologists have found animal bones the marks on which show they had been subjected to the heat of fire.The documented history of ancient India is replete with references to meat eating. Rulers would have animals slaughtered on ritually important occasions and a part of the meat would be gifted to Brahmins. The meat would include beef, for the reason that the animals available included cattle.In the present, the People of India project of the Anthropological Survey of India found that only about 20 per cent of the communities in the country were vegetarian. It is entirely possible that vegetarian individuals number more than 20 per cent. Indeed, I have known many families in which the men ate meat but the women did not. Since, however, there were no disputes over the matter, we must grant that some 80 per cent of India’s communities practise or accept the eating of meat. So when did “Hindus” (the original Farsi word had little or nothing to do with religion) turn vegetarian, as some of them claim always to have been? Historians are generally agreed that vegetarianism is associated with Vaishnavism and Jainism. The notion of ahimsa is central to both. The very word, ahimsa, is not to be found in the Vedas. It is seen first in the Upanishads, from where the Vaishnavas presumably got it. The Jainas are believed to have got it from the same source, although they deny this.Over time, diverse groups which held often radically different religious beliefs were merged into the unitary “Hinduism” spoken of today. In reality it is far from unitary, but a defining characteristic of all its streams is the division into hierarchies of castes. The “higher” castes, being ritually the most “pure”, are most in need of markers of this status. They deny the evolution of the species when they say they have always been herbivores.Holy cows? Possible, but the lives of Billy Goats can be more.
