Veg only tiffins in schools: Bigotry in disguise?

A recent circular by the Delhi Public School Gautam Buddh Nagar (DPS GBN) in Noida’s Sector 132 in Delhi’s National Capital Region (NCR) to parents, “requesting” them to send only vegetarian food in their children’s lunchboxes, has created quite the stir.

According to the administration of DPS, this circular issued the day before yesterday, August 7, was allegedly in response to parents complaining that their children had fallen sick after sharing food. As explained in the circular, the rationale behind this move was that meat cooked in the morning could pose serious health problems if not stored properly. 

While a few parents supported this policy, this move was largely unpopular among parents in Gautam Buddh Nagar, which prompted the school administration to reiterate that the circular was “just a request”. 

However, this begs the questions — should schools issue such diktats on food, and control what children eat? Are such restrictions on food, particularly on meat and “non-veg” food, rooted in children's best interests?

According to some nutritionists and parents’ associations, the answer is a resounding NO. 

Motivated by irrationality and bigotry

Many agree that preventing students from bringing meat for their lunch is neither scientifically sound nor even logical to begin with. 

Speaking about the DPS incident specifically, Anubha Srivastava Sahai, Supreme Court Advocate & President of India Wide Parents’ Association, says, “I don’t know how many parents were consulted by the school’s administration before it took the decision to issue the circular — or if parents were consulted at all.” 

She further disagrees with the assumption that it is only meat that could go bad in a lunchbox. “Even vegetarian food could go bad. Anything could go bad in a lunchbox if it isn’t cooked properly. Just singling out meat doesn’t make sense,” she says. 

Moreover, this vegetarianism is also based on bigoted and supremacist beliefs, argues Dr Sylvia Karpagam, a public health doctor and researcher. “In India, society is organised not on the lines of equality, but supremacy. The oppressor castes have always rationalised these feelings of superiority and worthiness to power by demonising the lowered castes, who are mostly meat eaters, based on their eating habits. This line of thinking has been carried forward from generation to generation,” she explains. 

As the boards of private schools and other positions of power are comprised mostly of a narrow pool of people from the oppressor castes, this bigoted worldview makes its way into policies and the administration of various organisations, Dr Karpagam adds. 

Echoing this, Dr Veena Shatrugna, a nutritionist says, “Today, we are seeing this very upper caste Hindu view on food being imposed in every education institution.” 

She adds that in her home state of Karnataka, children in government schools were not served eggs, which is a wholesome source of nutrition in their midday meals until recently. 

The Government of Karnataka outsources the production and supply of midday meals to Akshaya Patra, a non-government organisation affiliated with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness or ISKCON. 

The organisation is infamous for avoiding meat, and even onion and garlic, as it considers them to be “lower modes of nature which inhibit spiritual advancement”, as reported by Scroll in 2018. 

More recently, states like Telangana and the Union Territory (UT) of Goa also partnered with ISKCON to provide meals to schools. 

According to Ashok Agarwal, Supreme Court lawyer and President of the All India Parents’ Association, such policies, which have their origin in bigotry, also reproduce bigotry in schools and classrooms. 

“Today, it is being told that those who consume meat are not Hindus. Do we want such divisions in our classrooms? Such policies only drive walls between the students, which goes against the idea of India as a diverse and tolerant nation”, he says. 

He also adds that it is unbecoming of an education institution to introduce such “narrowness” into its pedagogy and that it violates Article 51 A(h) of the Constitution, which enshrines the development and promotion of scientific temperament as a fundamental duty. 

“It seems as if school administrations are trying to filter out the kinds of students they want to have on ideological and parochial lines. But what kind of ideology do mere children have?” asks Agarwal. 

Detrimental effects on child development

The most concerning effect policies like this have on students, according to nutritionists, are the adverse impacts on the nutritional, physical, and mental well-being of children. 

Both Dr Karpagam and Dr Shatrugna maintain that the best sources of many nutrients, such as protein, calcium and many vitamins are derived from animal products like meat and milk. However, they add that children are being denied these nutritious foods because of the bigotry and lack of scientific temperament of policymakers. 

“India has a massive child malnutrition problem, and instead of allowing children to consume meat, which is dense in nutrients, emphasis is being laid on inferior food like dal in the name of promoting vegetarianism,” says Dr Shatrugna. 

This denial of access, according to the nutritionist, has massive ramifications on the physical development of children. She says, “Today, over 30 per cent of India’s children are stunted — meaning that they have not grown taller with age, and are shorter compared to children from the rest of the world.”

These statistics are confirmed by the latest National Family Health Survey from 2019-2021 (NFHS-5), which also reports that 19.3 per cent of children weigh less than the average for their height, and 32.1 per cent of children are underweight. 

“Stunting leads to several problems. For instance, the children would not reach their full physical and cognitive functioning and become susceptible to non-communicable diseases as adults. Malnutrition is the biggest cause of stunting,” explains Dr Karpagam. 

Beyond its impacts on child development physically, veg-only meal policies also impact students’ relationship with their food, says Dr Shatrugna. 

“Imagine, a child who has grown up eating meat all their life before school will now start to resent when his mother cooks meat for their school lunch because it is now considered taboo. This could strain the relationship between the child and their mother. Or worse, they feel guilty for consuming meat,” she explains. 

On the flip side, these policies could also lead to students believing from a young age that eating meat is bad and that all those who eat meat are immoral. “This is how future cow vigilantes are born,” she says. 

Dr Karpagam says that such feelings of guilt and moral superiority are further enforced by school administrations. 

“I have had students confide in me that their teachers would tell them that their tongues would thicken because they ate meat, and that is why they were inferior in their studies compared to their oppressor caste counterparts. How would young children, who do not yet understand concepts like caste privilege and generational wealth, feel when their food habits are ridiculed like that?” she asks. 

Therefore, in the spirit of scientific temperament and being against discrimination, Dr Karpagam hopes that DPS GBN takes back the circular, and issues an apology to the parents of the students. 

Ashok Agarwal also suggests that the government introduce a law which prevents schools from introducing such diktats.