A tikka tangle: All-veg menus at Indian state banquets raise hackles

NEW DELHI – “Atithi Devo Bhava” is a Sanskrit phrase that gets trotted out often by the Indian government, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to highlight India’s famed tradition of hospitality. It means the guest is equivalent to God and, therefore, should be treated as such.

But many in India are wondering if India has failed to live up to this ideal, given recent all-vegetarian state banquets held in honour of visiting heads of state who enjoy eating meat.

On May 6, Vietnam President To Lam was welcomed at Rashtrapati Bhavan, India’s presidential palace, with a fully vegetarian menu that many Indians would, frankly, think thrice before ordering from at a restaurant.

Stuffed broccoli, sauteed baby potatoes and rice cooked with green peas... The insipid all-veg menu was skewered online, engendering an appetising feast of jokes and memes. “If I were offered such food at an acquaintance’s place, I would assume I am not welcome,” read one comment.

Sure, President To Lam did not come to India expecting to be served a gold leaf-coated steak – something he enjoyed at a restaurant when he visited London in 2021. But neither did he possibly expect to return home without sampling a meat dish in a country whose best-known culinary exports include the tandoori chicken and where, more importantly, more than two-thirds of its citizens are non-vegetarians.

Yet, increasingly, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP) Indian government is choosing to feed its state guests solely vegetarian food, as if India has only vegetarian fare worth putting on the high table. And as if meat were something radioactive that Indians would rather not even touch with a bargepole.

Similarly, when Seychelles President Patrick Herminie came visiting in February, a lavish spread showcasing the diversity of India’s coastal cuisines was laid out, with one glaring omission. Guess what? There was no fish on the all-veg menu.

Can one even imagine a coastal spread that excludes fish from these regions? And is it appropriate to serve an all-veg menu on an occasion when India’s culinary diversity should be showcased as fairly as possible, especially when it is paid for with taxpayers’ money?

Forget fair culinary representation – it is just bad diplomacy to lay on a vegetarian meal at state banquets and risk sending India’s foreign guests back to their hotel rooms with an unsatiated stomach and, worse, in a foul mood!

Opposition MP Mahua Moitra claimed that French President Emmanuel Macron allegedly returned to his suite after one such veg-only state banquet in 2023 to order “bread, cheese, and cold cuts” because “he couldn’t eat anything at dinner”.

This also comes at a time of another all-veg controversy. Uttar Pradesh, a state also governed by the BJP, curated a list of local cuisines from each of its 75 districts and released it in May. It is a list that includes over 200 dishes, but, again, not a single one of them is meat-based.

What makes this ludicrous is that more than half of the state’s population (53.6 per cent), according to a government survey, confirmed eating fish, chicken or other kinds of meat. It is also a state celebrated for its meat-based cuisines, particularly its capital, Lucknow, whose kebabs are legendary.

One such delight is the Galouti kebab, famed for its melt-in-the-mouth tenderness. It was apparently invented in the 17th- or 18th-century royal kitchens of Lucknow for an ageing, toothless nawab who needed a delectable meat dish that did not require him to chew. Hence, the Galouti was born, kebabs made from finely minced meat, usually mutton or buffalo meat, that is tenderised with raw papaya and livened with spices.

This kebab even found specific praise from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), when it added Lucknow to its “Cities of Gastronomy” list in 2025. But when Minister of Culture and Tourism Gajendra Singh Shekhawat feted this decision on social media, he disingenuously used a poster of food items that were – no surprise here – entirely vegetarian.

This abhorrence goes beyond mere squeamishness to meat. The BJP has maintained a public distance from meat and eggs in certain parts of the country, even espousing a militant form of vegetarianism in regions with large Hindu and Jain vegetarian populations, segments that are key parts of its political constituency.

This includes vast swathes of north, west and central India. Many state governments run by the BJP here have stubbornly desisted from giving children eggs at school lunches, despite experts recommending them for better nutrition in a country where stunting and wasting in children is a major problem.

Let’s be clear – no one is talking about forcing eggs on any child. The problem is that children who would like to eat eggs are deprived of having them. Back in 2019, a BJP minister from Madhya Pradesh even suggested incredulously that if children were to eat eggs, they would turn into cannibals.

Dr Pushpesh Pant, an Indian academic and food historian, tells me that vegetarianism, which was previously more optional in nature, has increasingly been forced on people under the BJP’s rule.

“This is what I call the revenge of the vegetarian,” he said, referring to increasing instances of meat being banned by BJP governments from the vicinity of Hindu religious places and its sale also being prohibited on certain occasions such as Hindu festivals.

“It is also a thinly disguised persecution of Muslims, many of whom are perceived to be butchers and vendors of meat and who supposedly are the beef-eaters,” he added.

A wider political goal is at play, Dr Pant noted – to homogenise India’s diverse culinary and other traditions in favour of one single uniform identity that suits the BJP’s interests.

But, he said, people continue to “vote with their mouth”, relishing kebabs and other non-vegetarian dishes despite these repeated attacks that seek to efface certain cultures and their cuisines.

Meat consumption continues to grow in India, no matter what the BJP’s stand is on the issue. Year after year, guess what dish tops the list of most ordered items on Indian food delivery apps? Chicken biryani!