The Narendra Modi government’s decision to serve an all-vegetarian menu at a state banquet for visiting BRICS leaders has revived a larger debate over food, identity and state power in India. The menu was reportedly elaborate, but it offered no non-vegetarian options. No one can object to vegetarian food being served at official events, but the question is whether the government is using official hospitality and public institutions to project one socially dominant, Brahminical Hindu-coded food preference as the national norm, while sidelining the dietary cultures of a majority of Indians who eat meat, fish or eggs. The menu at the BRICS leaders’ dinner, hosted by India in New Delhi on September 12.The central principle such food policing violates is simple: the state must protect a vegetarian’s right not to eat meat without treating a non-vegetarian Indian – or a non-vegetarian foreign guest – as less worthy of consideration. This raises important questions.Why is an all-vegetarian state banquet by the Modi government a matter of concern?India has some of the world’s richest vegetarian culinary traditions, across Gujarati, Rajasthani, Tamil, Jain, Marathi, Punjabi, Telugu and many other cuisines. Thus, vegetarian food is not un-Indian but the concern is about what the state chooses to represent. A banquet for foreign leaders is not a private meal hosted according to Modi’s personal dietary practices. It is an official event, the table is paid for by the public exchequer and presented as a window into India. Host nations customarily accommodate the dietary preferences of visiting dignitaries. Replacing international norms of hospitality-where menus offer diverse choices catering to guest preferences-with a single mandated preference prioritises domestic ideological messaging over diplomatic courtesy. India should be confident enough to showcase its food diversity rather than reduce it. Foreign leaders do not require a Western-style menu, but a state banquet should reflect both hospitality and plurality. A carefully designed menu could offer vegetarian, vegan, halal, fish, poultry and regional options, while celebrating cuisines from across India. At the diplomatic level, state banquets serve as soft-power showcases. When the menu excludes meat, fish, seafood and eggs altogether, it suggests that only one particular vegetarian – ‘upper’-caste Brahminical and Hindutva-coded – food culture is representative of India. Rather than demonstrating India’s actual diversity, it projects an artificially homogenised image of the nation. It transforms diplomatic hospitality into an arena for domestic political propaganda. That is the criticism raised against the Modi government after it again served an all-vegetarian dinner for visiting BRICS leaders and delegates.A crab thali in Odisha. Photo: By Jit.roy.chowdhury – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40937438Is India not a vegetarian country?No. India is hardly vegetarian; in fact, the NFHS-5 survey shows that 80% of Indians aged 15–49 consume some form of animal protein. The survey notes that 83.4% of men and 70.6% of women eat non-vegetarian food. Large sections of Hindus consume meat, beef, fish or eggs, as do many Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, tribal communities, Dalits, Adivasis, Other Backward Class groups and people across eastern, northeastern, coastal and southern India. A government that claims to represent India cannot erase this diversity. It can serve a vegetarian spread while also providing fish, poultry, meat and egg options. Such an approach respects vegetarian guests without making non-vegetarian guests invisible. The fundamental issue is whether the Modi government treats vegetarianism as one legitimate dietary choice among many, or as a morally superior de facto national norm. The latter is a political choice being imposed upon a majority of Indians, and it cannot be allowed to be projected as a core feature of Indian culture.Moreover, the moral framework deployed by the Hindutva ideologues frames vegetarianism as intrinsically non-violent and spiritually superior. But the same regime presides over cattle-trade crackdowns and mob violence linked to Hindutva vigilante groups.Does food have caste and religious implications?Yes. Food has long been tied to caste hierarchy in India. In India, ‘pure veg’ is not a neutral lifestyle choice, but it is tied to caste hierarchies and ritual concepts of purity, self-control and social status, while treating meat eating as inferior, impure and a low-caste characteristic. Historically, ‘upper’ castes used food segregation to enforce untouchability and social distance. By presenting Brahminical North and Western Indian vegetarian food as the representative standard of Indian cuisine, the regime erases the lived realities of Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi, Muslim, Christian, and regional populations from the North East, Bengal, and coastal southern states whose diets prominently feature meat, fish and poultry. This imposition reinforces internal social prejudice, validating segregation over housing, workplace discrimination and vigilante violence centred around food policing.A man arranges trays of eggs at a wholesale shop in Thane. Photo: PTIThe issue is when these selective social attitudes, reflected in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideology, shape government policy. Restrictions on meat sales, slaughterhouses, eggs in school meals or the serving of non-vegetarian food near religious occasions do not affect all groups equally. They disproportionately burden communities whose food cultures and livelihoods depend on meat, fish, poultry, eggs or livestock. The impact is especially significant for Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, Christians, fishers, pastoral communities, meat traders, poultry workers and small vendors.The wider concern is that vegetarianism can be used as a proxy for defining who is culturally respectable, patriotic or properly Indian. The public elevation of vegetarian diets can reinforce caste and religious boundaries when non-vegetarian food is stigmatised in public institutions and political discourse.Are there economic and diplomatic costs of imposing vegetarianism?Food policing has direct economic consequences as meat, poultry, fisheries, egg and livestock sectors support farmers, fishers, traders, transporters, small vendors and daily-wage workers. Strict regulations, bans on cattle trade, and informal vigilante enforcement have disrupted the leather, dairy, and meat industries, impacting millions of rural households, small-scale butchers and exporters. They hurt small enterprises which have little financial capacity to absorb lost business. The large consumers can simply change their meals for a day, but a street vendor, poultry seller, butcher or fisher can lose income immediately. When such curbs recur, they create uncertainty for small businesses and poor workers. The erasure of India’s meat-based culinary heritage harms tourism and national culinary exports by reducing the global image of Indian food to a very restricted subset.There is also a nutrition question. The policy stance leaks into welfare programmes in BJP-ruled states, such as attempts to remove eggs from midday meal schemes in schools, depriving undernourished children of affordable protein based on ideological preference. Eggs, fish and meat are important sources of protein, iron, vitamin B12 and other nutrients for most households. Public nutrition policy must account for cost, local availability, nutritional need and community choice, and cannot exclude foods because they conflict with an ideological preference of the Sangh Parivar.Children eat their meal at a school in India. Photo: Flickr/Harvest Plus (CC BY-NC 2.0).Does an official vegetarian-only menu also raise constitutional concerns?It does, particularly when viewed alongside state restrictions and public pressure around food choices under the various BJP governments. The Constitution does not require government to serve meat, but it also does not endorse a state-sponsored hierarchy in which vegetarian food is treated as morally or culturally superior. State banquets are paid for by public exchequer funds contributed by a population that is predominantly non-vegetarian.Several constitutional principles come into play here. Article 29 guarantees the protection of distinct cultures and traditions, which includes regional culinary practices. Article 21 guarantees personal liberty and privacy, extended by the Supreme Court to cover personal choices such as food consumption. When the state systematically replaces diverse culinary traditions with an exclusive vegetarian menu at official multilateral gatherings, it weaponises executive power to project a singular socio-religious identity. The state can regulate food for legitimate reasons of food safety, public health, animal welfare and commercial standards. But restrictions based mainly on religious sentiment, political symbolism or a preference for one community’s dietary code raise tough constitutional questions. In a secular republic, the government cannot turn one faith-linked or caste-associated definition of dietary purity into a de facto public standard. Its role should be to protect choice, safety and equal access, instead of prescribing moral status through food.