Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian. James Staples
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in and through which meanings are conveyed, shaped, or negotiated, as in the work of Harris, Goody, Mintz, and the “new materialists.” For followers of the structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1963)—whose theory drew heavily on structural linguistics—it was mostly the relationship between symbols, rather than their materiality, that gave them their particular meaning. As is the case for language, the relationship between the symbol and the thing it represents is often arbitrary. Some of the material symbols in the following chapters might well be thought of in much the same way. The dusty china tea cups that make an appearance in chapter 2, for example, were significant not because they were intrinsically more valuable than the glass or stainless-steel beakers but because of the contrast between the two kinds of drinking vessel. My hosts often had only one china cup (sometimes only a plastic replica of a china cup) but several metal or glass ones; serving a guest with a cup that was different from the others signified difference and more importance. In a similar way, the very chewiness of meat, usually encountered only weekly, if that, contrasted against the softness of more regularly consumed vegetable and dal dishes, was a key part of what marked it as special and celebratory (or conversely, as taboo). The contrast, or the relationship between the meat and vegetables, was, one might argue, more significant than the things themselves, even if that contrast was manifest through material differences.
In many other instances, however, there are very specific relationships between the things I describe and what they have come to represent. Bovine animals and their products—each with their own distinctive smells, sounds, textures, and tastes—are central here. From the warmth of a cow’s breath and the mouth-feel of her milk, to dead or dying bodies under the knives of the “cutting men” or the wafts of a beef curry from a pot bubbling on the stove, what cows and buffaloes come to mean at different times is intrinsically bound up in their viscerality. But plenty of other materials come under the spotlight too. Caste and class identities, for example, play out in very concrete ways, not just through the different kinds of food people eat—whether they eat or do not eat meat, for example—but through an array of much more subtle changes in how those foods are prepared and eaten. The subtlety with which dishes are spiced, whether those spices are finely or coarsely ground, and how they are served and eaten all convey messages about those who prepare and eat them, and can also be manipulated, in some cases, to affect social mobility. The locations and paraphernalia that accompany the serving of food are likewise communicative. Everything from cups, plates, and bowls—and the very materials they are made from—to the tables, chairs, tablecloths, and floor mats on which meals are served, consciously or otherwise, convey and shape meaning.
The capacity for things to take on particular meanings is constrained or extended by the wider contexts within which they come to exist. If the capacity of particular objects to convey honor relies on their rarity, for example, that capacity becomes diminished if and when those objects became more commonplace. At times, however, material changes might in themselves be utilized to articulate the more abstract consequences of change. Evoking the simplicity of earlier cuisine in relation to the complexities of modern eating, for example, was one of the most powerful ways my interlocutors expressed their thoughts and feelings about the confusions and contradictions of life in the contemporary moment.
TWO RECURRING ISSUES
One conundrum I encountered when developing this book was the issue of writing about meat as a non–meat eater, particularly in a context where vegetarianism is so politically charged. The other was the problematic distinction, and blurring, between cows and buffaloes, the two animals from which beef comes. Dealing with them here is not meant to imply that they are no longer problematic; rather, it is to provide some useful background.
Vegetarian Dilemmas
Vegetarianism, for me, was a personal choice, one which arose, in part, out of my realization during those first visits to India in the mid-1980s that a nonmeat diet was even plausible. Had I not been a vegetarian (and, for some years, a pescatarian), my interest in what it meant to different people to eat meat in India would not have been piqued, as the earlier retelling of my dinner with Victoria-Rani suggests. Ironically—given the affinities I developed with my beef-eating interlocutors—it was also through conducting this research that I eventually switched, in late 2017, to a vegan diet. My constant internet searches for cattle- and beef-related information and academic papers had, presumably thanks to the search engines’ algorithms, also exposed me to numerous videos depicting the alleged cruelties of the dairy industry, which, in turn, alerted me to stories about the treatment of other animals. Although I never interrogated these sources with the same voracity that I would have applied to materials for an academic publication, they were enough to convince me—having already become inured to watching cattle being slaughtered in real life—that killing an animal was not necessarily the cruelest act one could perpetrate against it. Indeed, having seen at close quarters animals being killed in a village setting, I might have almost, had I still desired it, been convinced to eat their meat, at least in particular circumstances. Although this did not (yet) happen, it still felt incongruous not to eat meat while continuing to eat animals’ other products, and that is why I also stopped eating them after my return to the UK in September 2017.
Nevertheless, while culinary choices were inextricably intertwined with my research trajectory, not eating beef while working with beef eaters undeniably presented certain difficulties. Das, my research assistant and a Brahmin by birth, despite being a convert to Christianity who was married to a beef-eating Madiga woman, had always remained strictly vegetarian. There was a moment in December 2017 when, sitting in the corner of a cramped beef shop in Hyderabad, we were both struck by the apparent absurdity of our situation. The shop owner, as he answered my questions, continued to chop up the large hunk of meat on his block, his cleaver sweeping dramatically through the air and flecking us, as it did so, with fragments of bone and droplets of bovine blood. Das glanced toward me at one point and caught my eye. “How did we come to be doing this?” he asked sardonically, before shaking his head with slightly amused resignation. In truth, however, by then we were used to it. Whatever visceral reactions the sight and smell of raw meat might once have evoked for either of us, they had ceased to be a problem.
Our vegetarianism did, however, present other concerns.35 First, it created a certain distance between us and some of our interlocutors. Another of the Hyderabad butchers we knew, for example, had, at one point, expressed an interest in inviting us to dine with him at his family home, a sure breakthrough in establishing lasting rapport. After Das told him we did not eat meat, however, the invitation was diplomatically and, it turned out, permanently, put on hold. It was not, I am fairly sure, given his subsequent manner, that he was offended. He had, after all, been very pleased to have the opportunity to offer his take on meat eating and cattle slaughter, and he continued to take pleasure in joining us to drink tea on the bench outside his shop and talk about his work. Rather, coming from a Muslim family of meat sellers who ate meat every day, my assumption was that he was now uncertain what he could feed us that would, at the same time, be appropriate food with which to honor his guests.
My second concern was that, having not knowingly eaten beef in India since the mid-1980s, I had little memory of its taste or its mouth-feel, nor had I felt its impact on my stomach or on my digestion. When people told me about the differences in flavor and texture between cow and buffalo meat; tried to explain their preference (or otherwise) for beef over chicken, goat or, fish; or described its succulent, sweet flavor and prized chewiness, I had to rely on their descriptions and my own imagination. I had no direct, material experience to help me contextualize their words. I could see and smell it, in all its forms, and I even felt it between my fingertips, but I never ingested it.
In the end, the pros and cons of my position as a vegetarian among the meat eaters, as it were, were fairly evenly balanced. Being a vegetarian was a useful provocation: it teased out other viewpoints as much as it suppressed them, in the same way that being outside a situation more generally can help an anthropologist to capture perspectives insiders cannot. It was also an occasional hindrance. The personal discomfort in navigating the tensions my position sometimes created was also productive, forcing