Barely days after HRD Minister Smriti Irani, acting upon the plea of a Madhya Pradesh based swayamsevak,sought an action report on the so-called 'tamasic' (read non-vegetarian) food being served up at IIT campuses across the country, come reports that the Maharashtra Navanirman Sena has taken up cudgels against discrimination by housing societies in Mumbai towards non-vegetarians.

The MNS headed by Raj Thackeray has reportedly shot off a letter to the BMC, Mumbai's civic authority, asking it to ensure that flats are sold irrespective of buyers' food preferences. The party is only echoing the chants of Congress leader Nitesh Rane who complained earlier this month when he went on a tirade against the Gujarati community of Mumbai, that the city's Maharashtrians weren't getting housing of their choice because of their dietary preference for meat.

"No Indian needs to be reminded that the caste system is kept firmly in place on the basis of two historically reproduced principles of what you eat and whom you marry" wrote G Arunima, a historian who teaches at the Centre for Women's Studies in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, in a piece for the Economic & Political Weekly a few months ago.

The irony of the day however is that vegetarianism isn't a dietary convention among more than 80% of India's citizens, a majority of whom happen to be Hindu. Its institutionalization say historians, has largely been an upper caste attempt to perpetuate Brahmin hegemony over food practices.

Read more:
On The Menu: Culinary Politics