The invention of vegetarian India: Marathi dietary politics, 1900–1960

If you do an internet search for ‘Indian diet’, you will be presented with pages of vegetarian recipes even though most Indians eat meat. Many Indian nutritionists claim vegetarian food is the nation’s ‘natural’ cuisine. Why and how did India emerge as the home to vegetarianism over the course of the first decades of the 20th century? 

I will analyse the early 20th century popular western Indian (Marathi) nutrition literature on meat, milk, fasting and a balanced diet. I will explore the complex interrelationships that historically connect foods with social orders in India. I will situate India’s history of dietetics within the broader context of global debates on nutrition that raged across these decades. I will also interpret food and science as political and not ‘merely' cultural subjects.