Table Talk: Unveiling the Veg-Only Dining Controversy in H12, H13, and H14

Disclaimer: This topic has been discussed extensively both inside and outside the institute. Insight merely attempts to add to this discussion and present our views. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the IIT Bombay community.

Insight does not necessarily endorse the views of any student collective or organisation, nor any manner of protest through which they may express those views.

The Mess Councils of H12-13-14 recently announced that 6 tables (out of 129), would be “veg food only”, and anyone eating non-vegetarian food would not be allowed to sit at these tables. An email from the council stated that this decision was taken “to create a more inclusive environment”, keeping in mind “health issues”.

In presenting this article, it is essential to emphasise that our intention is to facilitate a thoughtful discussion on the recent changes in dining arrangements within H12, H13, and H14. We attempt to evaluate this decision, comment on its ramifications, and take a closer look at the history of dietary habits in our country.

Background

We were informed by students of Hostel 12 that there had been some “mutual understanding” about a seating arrangement based on food preferences for a long time in H12-13-14. Despite this not being an official rule, posters of “veg only table” were put up in the mess (Insight confirms their existence in September 2022 but has no official record before that). In July, some students posted photos of these posters online, leading to significant pushback from internal and external stakeholders, citing caste discrimination and calling for justifications from the Hostel Council. The events following this have been detailed below.

15th July: A mail was sent by the Hostel General Secretary to hostel residents stating that there are no designated spaces for vegetarian food eaters, and putting up posters demarcating spaces would lead to a penalty.

3rd August: A meeting was held between the student who raised the issue of “segregation in mess”, the ADean SA, Wardens and Associate Wardens of Hostels 12, 13 and 14. The  discussion was regarding separate plates and separate seating. The administration decided to focus on the posters since they had only received complaints about them. The student was instructed to schedule a meeting with the councils of H12,13,14 and the above stakeholders to follow up on the issue.

7th August: The aforementioned meeting was conducted and 25-30 people showed up. ADean SA asserted that individuals are free to make personal choices in their private spaces but cannot enforce discriminatory practices within the institute. The topic of separate plates was also brought up in the conversation. ADean SA mentioned that the students can file a formal request and that the administration will deliberate upon the issue. There was no definite conclusion at the end of this meeting.

After the meeting, there was no official rule, but the “mutual understanding” (mentioned above) which had been in place for years continued to exist. This led to disagreements among groups of students, with both sides seeking the administration’s intervention to resolve the issue. 

30th September: An official decision was taken by the hostel administration marking 6 tables in the mess as “vegetarian food only”. The hostel mess councils did not respond to Insight’s attempts to reach out to them for comments.

The email from the mess council announcing the decision read:

“There is no doubt that there are some people who can’t resist the view and smell of non-veg food during their dining, this may create health issue as well…Our primary goal is to ensure that every resident enjoys a comfortable and pleasant dining experience. To address this issue, and create a more inclusive environment it has been decided to designate only 6 tables exclusively for vegetarian food … By doing so we can create a more inclusive and peaceful dining experience for everyone in our mess.”

2nd October: A student who protested against the official decision by eating non-vegetarian food at the “veg only tables” was fined Rs. 10,000 by the mess council. This was imposed on account of violating established rules and his refusal to comply with council members when asked to leave the table. Per Dean SA’s email dated 5/10/2023,

“In addition, there were reports of some students deliberately spilling over non-veg food to cause discomfort to fellow students.”

Insight’s Opinion

The unfortunate ramifications of the decision can be summed up as follows: it is a case of people’s personal preferences infringing on other people’s choices in a public space. These personal preferences are against something completely legal and appropriate (according to the rules of the Institute) 

1. Why segregation is unacceptable

All the reasons stated for the decision rely entirely on people being “uncomfortable around non-vegetarian food”, which is a personal preference. To our best knowledge, medical professionals do not deem proximity to non-vegetarian food a health hazard. This is unlike the reasons stated in the mail sent by the Hostel 12 Mess Councillor announcing this decision. 

An analogy may help us understand the situation better:

“Due to my upbringing, I am uncomfortable with how certain people dress on campus, and looking at them makes me uneasy as this goes against my values. This takes my attention away from lectures. I would like to demand a separate section in every classroom where only people dressed “appropriately” are allowed to sit so that I can have a more fruitful experience in lectures and create an inclusive environment for everyone on campus. In no way does this place any restrictions on what those other people want to wear, and whenever they dress “appropriately”, they are free to sit in this section”.

How many of us would be in favour of such a decision to “segregate” people based on clothing simply because of personal beliefs? Some of you would’ve thought that this is not the same as food preferences. However, we invite you to think about how they rely on the same premises.

Food preferences against non-vegetarian food are widely normalised due to cultural and historical factors which led to non-vegetarian food being considered “impure” (Authors’ Note: Please read on, particularly the last section of this article and the references mentioned therewith, for further context on this). While being sympathetic to everyone’s problems and concerns is essential to creating a welcoming campus, this sympathy cannot be misplaced. It should not set dangerous precedents where personal choices lead to the creation of exclusive spaces for people, in the name of inclusivity.

2. Inclusivity in messes

Respecting other people’s personal space is extremely important. This includes their utensils and their personal choices with respect to food or anything else. For instance, while it is normal for some of us to use our spoons to take food from the plates of our friends, we need to understand that this may make other people uncomfortable and may even go against their dietary preferences. Respecting such simple boundaries and enforcing basic mess etiquette (not leaving behind eggshells/banana peels on mess tables, picking up used glasses and extra plates) will encourage a more inclusive environment for everyone, making it clear that everyone’s choices are respected. 

Reports of people deliberately spilling non-veg food (according to the Dean SA’s email) go completely against this fundamental principle. This is needlessly wasteful and provocative, and as students, we can find better ways to show discontent and disagreement with the decisions taken. We emphasise that any student breaking rules made by the institute, and in fact a democratically elected student council, must bear penalties. However, care must be taken to ensure these penalties are decided in advance. Deciding or changing the extent of the punishment after the rule has been broken is not a good practice as it doesn’t guarantee fairness and should be limited to only the most serious cases, if at all.

The mess system at IITB has been inclusive of people’s preferences in various ways. A good example of how we extend our support to people’s choices is the availability of Jain food in messes, the availability of food before sunrise during Ramadan and before sunset during Paryushan. These services are provided without restricting or infringing on the choices already available to all students. However, making provisions for one group of people is not enough to label our campus “inclusive” and remove our responsibility to be sensitive to the concerns of other groups. These are examples demonstrating that segregation need not be a means to foster inclusivity.

A case could be made for how creating separate spaces is not very different from any form of inclusive decision– after all, PwD washrooms in hostels also take up space which could be utilised for common washrooms. However, it’s important to remember the difference between a necessity and a preference. When certain people are unable to access basic necessities, such provisions should be made to make our campus more inclusive. However, that is not the case with vegetarian-only tables.

3. The issue of precedents

Finally, this decision also holds far-reaching implications for the institute. The precedent of allowing personal choice to influence decisions that hostel councils make about common spaces can be misused in various ways. This logic can be extended to demand for a change of room allocation on the basis of personal preferences. Such a decision can inadvertently lead to a wave of requests for segregated spaces and tailored services. Instead of addressing the underlying issue in a comprehensive manner, this decision risks creating a host of new problems moving forward.

It could also potentially compromise the integrity of hostel elections, as candidates may make promises of segregating common spaces based on personal preferences to garner votes from specific student communities, making student elections more polarised than ever. 

In order to protect the core principles of a campus for everyone, we should ensure that no authority (especially a student council) can infringe on the rights of students by introducing discriminatory rules.

Vegetarianism in India: Through the lens of caste

Trigger Warning: This article discusses sensitive topics related to caste issues, which may be distressing or triggering for some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

In the weeks after this decision was announced, the student community has been involved in discussions regarding the rationale and consequences of the decision. External media bodies have also taken note [5] – and several of these publications point to potential casteist implications. Here, we aim to inform and add our opinions to this discussion – however, we stress that these opinions are in no way exhaustive. There is no “correct” answer here, and we emphasise that other students, informal collectives, and organisations maintain the right to have their own opinions about this topic. Insight does not necessarily endorse the views of any student collective, nor any manner of protest through which they may express those views.

The personal opinions of people towards non-vegetarian food, namely, opinions of it being ‘impure’, and a health hazard, are largely legitimised in our society. There are certainly a lot of things in a residential space like a hostel, which are different from the way they were at home, and we all deal with this unfamiliarity in our own ways. While this is a testament to the fact that we need to support each other, this demand for segregation in the name of inclusivity (and worse, the acceptance of this demand) is unreasonable.

We would like to emphasise that the conversation around diet and its relation to caste is not a direct one. The plurality of cultures and dietary habits of our country makes it extremely nuanced, and no generalisation is possible. This has been made even more complex with increasing urbanisation and globalisation, which has shifted public opinion regarding the consumption of meat and has led to caste manifesting in even subtler ways.

However, understanding the history of food choices and their relation to caste and religion is important to understand why any decision taken regarding food in public spaces, like messes, should be viewed through this lens. 

Dietary choices have been linked to religion in our country for a long time. In certain parts of the country and during certain periods of time, dietary choices were also a way to determine someone’s caste. As per [1] and [2], a part of the lower caste population had to adapt to eating meat due to the adverse poverty and exploitation they were subjected to. This was not unique to our country either; such development of distinct food choices by the oppressed can be seen in other parts of the world as well (for instance, “soul food” in the US [6]), and has now been widely recognised as originating from the discrimination people had to face. 

A National Law School article [4] mentions how food was related to someone’s position in the caste hierarchy, even leading to names being assigned to castes based on their dietary habits. Food thus became a direct indicator of their caste and “social status”.

The decision taken by the H12-13-14 council implicitly tried to deny any influence of caste by stating “anyone eating veg food on that day is welcome to sit here, and there is no discrimination in this regard”. Saying that people will be permitted to sit if they do not adhere to the diet that is most natural and cultural for them is really not in the spirit of inclusivity – it is clearly stating that diets involving the consumption of meat and egg are not held in the same regard as vegetarian, which is a direct parallel to the discrimination shown to lower castes for their meat-based diet.

The authority of hostel councils to make decisions as far-reaching as these is also questionable. While they are, of course, elected representatives with the responsibility to make decisions for and on behalf of the student population, it does not guarantee that they are capable of recognising the potential caste-related implications of a serious decision like this, particularly if the council is not adequately represented in diverse cultural points of view. By no means do we intend to cast doubt on the capabilities of elected student representatives – we simply emphasise that the average person may not be an expert on caste-related matters and how they might manifest. More people should be consulted while making sensitive decisions, either via referendums which allow people to share their direct opinions about the issue or with experts who can comment on the implications or nuances of these actions. There are multiple discussions and debates about the issue prior to a referendum which informs residents about various aspects of the issue. Additionally, a higher threshold (e.g. 66% in favour of the decision, instead of 50%) for the decision to be passed would ensure overwhelming support before the decision is taken. 

We feel that this historical perspective on dietary choices – which was so embedded in our cultural fabric in the past – cannot be ignored while assessing the validity of such a far-reaching decision. A lack of awareness (or worse, a wilful ignorance from decision makers) of these matters cannot justify making a decision that could reinforce such archaic practices. The caste implication of the issue was raised by multiple students and discussed in popular media, which requires decision makers to educate themselves instead of ignoring it. It is advisable to look into student feedback and address such concerns in a public forum for sensitive issues.

We encourage people to educate themselves about the issue and have provided some articles we found helpful below – in them, you can also find references and more facts to support what has been stated above.

Note: We have not presented all possible opinions and do not claim to be experts on caste and history. We have tried our best to represent the sources well but encourage people to seek and read more information to form an opinion of their own.

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[1] https://www.wupr.org/2021/12/07/caste-class-and-vegetarianism-in-india/

[2]https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/untouchability-the-dead-cow-and-the-brahmin/217660

[3]https://www.thequint.com/news/india/caste-on-your-plate-a-tale-of-food-snobbery-in-india#read-more

[4]https://mpp.nls.ac.in/blog/digesting-caste-graded-inequality-in-food-habits/

[5]https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/new-in-toi/mess-y-education-segregating-students-by-food-creates-a-terrible-learning-environment-iit-b-must-do-better/
[6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_food

[7] https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/iit-bombay-vegetarianism-segregation-hierarchy-violence-8976874/

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