fratsarerats [none/use name]
That is important because it is considered vegetarian elsewhere but not exactly so in India so if you want to accurate in your research and not just provide clickbait headlines for the BBC, you will have to look into stuff and see what people actually mean when they say they are vegetarian or not.
As I said, research like this is hard and you can choose to not trust the government if you wish, but then going by some US anthropologist quoted by the fucking BBC is completely bonkers.
There was also an Indian economist in that study for what it’s worth, which is why I thought it was at least somewhat credible. And like I said, based on other sources I’ve seen (you can find the references here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country#Estimates_and_Statistics) it’s still below 50%, like I said. I was just curious.
Yeah but this is one of those sticky subjects because of cultural issues and the basically nonstop history of human cuisine being intertwined with meat eating. As far as I know, no society has ever been vegan. There have been pockets of vegetarianism but nothing all the way vegan. The only solution I see is some kind of lab grown meat/milk/eggs. Then maybe in the future people can go vegetarian or vegan if they choose.
Most of India has been vegetarian for thousands of years. If meat was “essential”, they’d be dead.
I don’t know about “thousands of years” as in Vedic India meat was definitely consumed and animal sacrifices were performed for religious ceremonies:
In the time of the oldest Hindu sacred text, the Rig Veda (c. 1500 B.C.), cow meat was consumed. Like most cattle-breeding cultures, the Vedic Indians generally ate the castrated steers, but they would eat the female of the species during rituals or when welcoming a guest or a person of high status.
Ancient ritual texts known as Brahmanas (c. 900 B.C.) and other texts that taught religious duty (dharma), from the third century B.C., say that a bull or cow should be killed to be eaten when a guest arrives.
Even in modern day India the number of pure vegetarians doesn’t constitute the majority:
If you go by three large-scale government surveys, 23%-37% of Indians are estimated to be vegetarian. By itself this is nothing remarkably revelatory.
But new research by US-based anthropologist Balmurli Natrajan and India-based economist Suraj Jacob, points to a heap of evidence that even these are inflated estimations because of “cultural and political pressures”. So people under-report eating meat - particularly beef - and over-report eating vegetarian food.
Taking all this into account, say the researchers, only about 20% of Indians are actually vegetarian - much lower than common claims and stereotypes suggest.
“Just be confident bro!” “Don’t worry just be yourself bro!”
It’s frustrating, because when someone tries to point out that men need dating advice, you’re hit with “oh that’s not a thing just be normal.” Seeing this in a leftist space (of all places) is super discouraging.
