Like many of his compatriots, Fernandez preferred to ridicule pagan follies such as vegetarianism in the hope of undermining the Hindus' attachment to them - or even to convert Hindus forcibly by military conquest.! So while de Nobili crouched on the floor in the corner eating a flesh less meal served by exclusively Brahmin servants, Fernandez continued to sit nonchalantly at table cutting up plates of meat with a knife and fork.
These two figures symbolise the two radically divergent ways in which Europeans in India responded to the strange and novel culture around them. Riven by these alternatives, the Christian mission split down the middle and continued in tumult for more than two centuries. The pattern carried over into the domain of mercantile colonialism with the disagreement between de Nobili and Fernandez being replayed time and time again by East India Company servants. By the end of the eighteenth century, the stereotypical European 'nabob' in India would don Indian clothes, eat Indian food, and enjoy sexual relations - even marriage - with Indian women. Some really did bring Fernandez's warnings to pass by losing their grip on Christianity and adopting not just the vegetarian practice of the Indians but their principles too.
As well as enjoying exotic forays into an experience of 'the Other', this trend for 'Indianisation' allowed the British to step seamlessly into the shoes of the indigenous ruling classes. It was only during the nineteenth century, after the Wellesleys had made their mark and especially after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, that stringent racial boundaries were erected by bigoted scientists and administrators and Europeans were officially and effectively instructed to resist such temptations and like Fernandez to assert their European superiority by wearing impractical woollen broadcloth and importing food - at great expense - from back home. Fernandez took de Nobili's refusal to eat with him as a slap in the face, and he was appalled that his new partner had apparently gone native. Nobili behaves in everything as a man of another religion', complained Fernandez to the missionary inspector from Rome in 1610. 'The dress of the Father is that worn by the pagan Sanyassins he wrote. ' The serving and the food are according to Brahmin usage, which is everything except meat fish and eggs.' As far as Fernandez was concerned de Nobili had been swallowed up by the dark continent. Indian vegetarianism was the ultimate sign of pagan superstition and animal worship; it put man on a level with animals and denied his unique place in the universe. It literally turned the world upside down. By giving way to Indian customs, de Nobili seemed to undermine the superiority of European culture and the very purpose of the Christian mission itself. De Nobili - who read Sanskrit scriptures a century and a half before the famed English Orientalists - did respect ancient Indian culture and believed that it contained distant revelations of divine truth. Following detailed discussions with Hindu teachers, he wrote one of the most profound comparative studies of Hindu metempsychosis.
He was happy to see the similarities between their culture and his own, and pointed out that his vegetarianism was just like Christian asceticism. Even those who disapproved of de Nobili's methods acknowledged that 'no Carthusian monastery is more strict .. . no anchoret or hermit of Thebais more abstemious'.But in 1613 de Nobili's provincial superior in India, Father Pero Francisco, ordered him and his followers to let up on vegetarianism for the sake of their health: 'The abstinence from meat and fish etc., must not be observed so strictly and rigorously that, even in case of necessity, sickness, disgust or natural weakness, they do not touch meat, for experience has shown that on such occasion it is absolutely necessary to yield to nature and help it by eating meat, and this must be done.'
The dispute reached Rome, and before he knew it de Nobili was spearheading a doctrinal dispute. He explained in his vehement defence that his behaviour was in line with the Apostles: St Timothy circumcised himself to adapt to the Jews and thus convert them; even St Augustine of Canterbury had allowed the Brits to continue sacrificing oxen; as St Paul had said, be 'all things to all men'. The founding father of the Asian mission, St Francis Xavier (1506-52), as well as de Nobili's immediate predecessor, the educated Neapolitan aristocrat Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606), had fully developed this into the technique of 'accommodation' which was now widely used all over the East.
In Japan, Valignano had controversially ordered the Jesuits to dress like Buddhist monks and learn how to eat with chopsticks squatting at low Japanese dining tables. In order to win converts, Valignano had said, it was imperative that missionaries overcome their 'initial repugnance' and follow the Japanese diet of 'salted raw fish, limes, sea snails and such bitter or salty things', for the Buddhists had an equally 'great revulsion from eating any kind of meat'.
De Nobili won a resounding success when, in 1623, Pope Gregory XV issued a bull endorsing almost all his points. But the dispute raged on and spilled over into the 'Malabar rites' controversy about whether converts could keep their native customs. Despite the claim that de Nobili's techniques had won tens of thousands of converts, in 1704 the apostolic delegate for India overruled the papal allowances and insisted that Christianity in India should be practised just as it was in Rome - beef, pork and all.
But he could not squash the practice. There were obvious advantages to acquiring high caste status - and it was clearly impossible to demolish the local culture of vegetarianism. If Europeans were to take on the mantle of teachers or even rulers, they would have to make some concessions to local customs. In 1710, when Joseph Constantius Beschi joined the mission founded by de Nobili in Madura, he took to wearing the luxurious purple gown and pearl earrings of an acarya, a Saivite or Vaishnavite raja-guru. Members of the vegetarian Tamil Pillai castes flocked to him, and later in the century the convert A. Muttusami Pillai eulogised the fact that 'From the time of his arrival in this country, he abstained from the use of flesh, fish, etc.' Eating anything else, many realised, was literally a recipe for disaster.
The seventeenth-century Venetian freebooter Niccolao Manucci claimed that there was a riot when locals discovered that the Portuguese Jesuits at Tanjor were not 'Roman Brahmins' as they claimed, but beef-eating feringhis (foreigners) and the Christians had been persecuted ever since. One Jesuit was caught cooking up a beef stew by another member of the mission who flung it outside in fear, exclaiming that 'the Jesuit fathers were not pariahs and low caste; they did not eat cow's flesh .'
In Protestant missions also, Hindus stuck to their vegetarian customs after converting to Christianity. 'If you tell them of the christian liberty in victuals and drinks,' reported the Protestant missionary Philippus Baldaeus in 1672, 'they reply, that they are not ignorant of it, but as the essence of christianity does not consist in eating and drinking, so they did not think themselves obliged to feed upon such things as are contrary to their nature and education, being from their infancy used to much tender food, which agrees best with their constitution, and makes them generally live to great age.'
Baldaeus' report gives an exceptional insight into the contribution the Indians themselves were making to the debate, and he was evidently impressed, for he concluded that these Christian Brahmins 'are for the most part men of great morality, sober, clean, industrious, civil, obliging, and very moderate in eating and drinking'. He made their diet more palatable by reconceiving it as an expression of the Christian ethic of temperance. The tradition of dietary accommodation was by no means unique to European visitors. Indeed, it seems to have been a widespread - even common-sense - response. Europeans were intrigued to find that the Syrian Christian community, established in Kerala and Cochin from at least the sixth century, used many Hindu rites and accommodated itself to the Nayar Brahmins by 'abstaining from animal foods.
In 1630 Henry Lord noted that the Zoroastrian Parsis - who fled from Persia to India as early as the eighth century AD - abstained from beef 'because they will not give offence to the Banians', and another traveller reported that they were granted asylum on the condition that they did not 'Kill any beasts or living creatures'.
Indeed, these diplomatic agreements bear much resemblance to the ancient Indian practice by which non-vegetarian Hindu castes adopted vegetarianism in order to ingratiate themselves with, and even attain the status of, higher castes. Ruling Rajputs and Jats often relinquished their traditional meat-eating warrior customs to legitimise themselves in the eyes of the Brahmin priesthood. lo This was an indigenous model which the early Mughal emperors adopted, and pre-imperialist Europeans probably took a pragmatic cue from these predecessors.
When the Afghan Muslim leader Muhammad bin Ghur invaded northern India in the twelfth century he was characterised in Hindu texts as a beef-eating mleccha, or barbarian. Punning on his name (Ghur), the word for foreigner (Gori), and cow (go-), a Kashmiri poet called the invader 'the evil Gori - him who was given to eating foul foods, the enemy [ari] of cows [go-], from whence he got his very name'. II The culture clash continued to pose serious problems for Muslim - Hindu integration, and the Mughals soon realised the benefits of deploying dietary diplomacy.
The Emperor Akbar the Great (r. 1556-1605) went further than merely being polite about local mores. He took Hindu wives and was immensely impressed by Jainism, especially the doctrine of ahimsa. Throughout his reign he issued numerous farmans (imperial orders) forbidding the killing of animals and fish and discouraging meat-eating for up to six months in the year. Such far-reaching legislation against animal-killing had hardly been seen in India since the Buddhist King Ashoka issued his rock edicts in the third century b.C. Akbar's Jain subjects expressed their gratitude in abundance.
His official chronicler Abu'l-Fazl 'Allami (himself friends with high-standing Jains) made an astonishing announcement in the Ain-e Akbari, which reveals that Indian vegetarianism produced a powerful impression on the Mughals, just as it did on Europeans: His majesty has a great disinclination for flesh: and he frequently says, 'Providence has prepared a variety of food for man, but, thro' ignorance and gluttony, none seems to have an eye for the beauty inherent in the prevention of cruelty, he destroys living creatures, and makes his body a tomb for beasts. If I were not a king, I would leave off eating flesh at once, and now it is my intention to quit it by degrees.'
Akbar's articulation of the case for vegetarianism is particularly remarkable for its similarity to ancient European arguments familiar from Plutarch and Ovid. He also adapted Indian vegetarianism to make it compatible with the Semitic proscription of blood-eating, just as Sir Thomas Roe did after visiting the Mughal court: 'Blood is the principal of life,' said Akbar, 'To avoid eating thereofis to honour life.' According to Akbar's favourite Jain courtier, the revered monk Shantichandra, Akbar adopted these arguments for vegetarianism after Shantichandra requested permission to leave court the day before the Muslim festival of 'Eid because so many animals were going to be slaughtered; he explained to Akbar, on the basis of Islamic doctrine as well as Jain, that ' ahimsa is the only way to God'.
Akbar horrified his fellow Muslims by fusing Indian religions and Sufism into his own eclectic sunworshipping cult Din-i-Ilahi, in which he stipulated that beef should be forbidden (while pork, blasphemously, was allowed). ls Akbar's son and successor Jahangir (r. 1605-27), born of a Hindu mother, eulogised his father for confining himself to vegetarian 'Sufi food' for nine months of the year. Jahangir issued his own Jain influenced jarmans and in 1618 made a shocking break with court tradition by vowing (in penitence for having murdered Abu'l-Fazl) to forbear his passion for hunting and 'injure no living thing with my own hand'. In his Memoirs, he claimed that wild beasts had become so tame during his reign that they wandered harmlessly amongst people.When Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58) came to power, he rejected Jahangir's receptiveness to local religions and strove to purify Islam in India.
But even he broke the Islamic rule against representing human and animal figures in art by having his throne in the Red Fort in Delhi embellished with inlaid semi-precious stones depicting Orpheus charming animals with his music. Shah Jahan was almost certainly evoking the figure of King Solomon who extended his fabled power over the animals, like Kayumarth the first king of mankind in the Golden Age. As the art historian Ebba Koch has illustrated, these images were frequently used to express part of the Mughal imperial ideology.
They were also closely linked to the numerous depictions of the fictional character, Majnun, in the desert with the animals, and even the Christian icon of the wolf lying down with the lamb which had been popular in Mughal art since the time of Akbar. It is also possible that the Orpheus image was chosen to appeal to Shah Jahan's Hindu and Jain subjects who had comparable artistic traditions, including the depiction of musicians charming wild animals. The artists who prepared Shah Jahan's throne may have been unaware of Orpheus' standing as Greek antiquity's pre-eminent vegetarian cult-leader, though the idea that his follower, Pythagoras, had taught the Indians their philosophy was widely disseminated by Muslim Neoplatonists.
At the very least. the appearance of Orpheus on the throne of an Islamic Indian ruler remains a striking irony and a testimony to the fusion of Eastern and Western traditions. Later Indian artists came to see the Orphic musician as a bridge between European and Indian ideas. A school of late seventeenth century artists from the Deccan produced a number of paintings showing figures in European dress charming animals and placed them alongside traditional Indian paintings of women surrounded by animals. Perhaps unintentionally, these remarkable paintings represent the European encounter with, and assimilation into, the Indian practice of kindness to animals.
Even Shah Jahan's son Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707) - renowned for his orthodox Islamic practice and distaste of his forebears' openness to local religions - signified his penance for murdering his brothers by eating (to the astonishment of European onlookers) 'nothing which as enjoyed life. As he lives upon vegetables and sweetmeats only.' The last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II (r. 1837 -58) was eulogised for taking after Akbar in his treatment of his Hindu subjects. Born of a Rajput mother in 1775, Bahadur Shah sometimes dressed as a Brahmin, visited Hindu temples, wore the sacred thread and a hallowed mark on his forehead. He abstained from beef as a concession to both Hinduism and Sufism, and banned cow-slaughter in 1857 in an attempt to cement Hindu - Muslim concord during the Indian Mutiny.
This royal dynasty of vegetarian advocates provides a fascinating insight into the attitude of Mughals to the culture they conquered. The Ain-e Akbari was one of the first Indian texts to be translated by the English Orientalists and it gave useful tips for the new phase of European colonialism.Several Englishmen followed Akbar's example and gave up eating meat, but there were many more who ignored such accommodating efforts. Indeed, as meat was much cheaper in India than in Britain, colonists took the opportunity of gorging themselves in a manner impossible at home. Some administrators did intermittently ban cow slaughter but, with beef as the British national dish, and bigotry now ingrained in the empire-building exercise, disregard for local traditions gradually prevailed.
The result of British insouciance about native food taboos was cataclysmic. In 1857 it transpired that Indian sepoys were being supplied by their colonial masters with a new sort of rifle cartridge which had been greased with beef and pork fat. As cartridges needed to be bitten before use, it was impossible for the sepoys to do so without defiling themselves. It was even whispered in camp that the British were adulterating flour rations with bone-dust. No Indian - Hindu or Muslim - was safe, for such religious defilement was believed to be a preparation for forcible mass-conversion, an idea some missionaries did espouse and express (and for which the missions in general were later severely blamed). Grievances against the British colonial power had been building up for years.
This new development was used to fan the flames of rebellion. When the army predictably started punishing anyone who resisted, resentment flared: the sepoys killed their officers and triggered the greatest ever Indian rebellion against British power - the Sepoys' Revolt, or Indian Mutiny - which almost toppled the Raj and convulsed the region in over a year of bloodshed. Well into the twentieth century riots were sparked by British attempts to legalise cow slaughter, and sharing meals with Hindus remained a tortuous minefield of misunderstanding.
As many commentators pointed out at the time, such misadventures could have been avoided if the British had learned to be more sensitive to local dietary taboos. The revered Jesuit missionary Abbe Jean-Antoine Dubois (1765-1848) had anticipated the trouble to come in his authoritative Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies, in which he recommended extending the missionaries' use of 'accommodation' into a wider approach to diplomatic relations. When the Liberal Governor-General of Bengal Lord William Bentinck (1774-1839) received a copy, he immediately recognised its potential as handbook for Europeans in India and announced that it 'might be of the greatest benefit in aiding the servants of the Government in conducting themselves more in unison with the customs and prejudices of the natives'.
Dubois sarcastically observed that 'the Europeans do not seem disposed to adopt the same rules of abstinence as are followed by the people among whom they live, and that, without paying any attention to the disgust which they cause, they continue to eat beef openly. It is certain that this conduct estranges them from all the better classes of Hindus, who, consequently, in this respect place them far below the Pariahs.' Europeans should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the apparent passivity with which Hindus allowed these slaughters to continue, he warned prophetically, for insurrection was bubbling beneath the surface. Such was the Hindu abhorrence, he said, that 'to offer meat at a meal with a guest with whom one is not intimate, would be the height of rudeness'.
Taking after de Nobili, Dubois had adopted the white turban, Indian robe and bamboo staff of a Hindu pilgrim the moment he arrived in India. He preached under the name Doddhaswa-miayavaru (Great Lord), 'Embracing: as he put it, 'in many respects, the prejudices of the natives; living like them, and becoming all but a Hindu myself'. Even eating meat in secret, he cautioned, was not advisable, for 'People who abstain entirely from animal food acquire such an acute sense of smell that they can perceive in a moment from a person's breath, or from the exudation of the skin, whether that person has eaten meat or not.'
Dubois' text illustrates the continuities between the theology of accommodation from the time of its nurture by the Renaissance humanists, de Nobili and Valignano, through to the early colonial practice of Indianisation. But Dubois was not just a diplomatic master of strange table manners. His theoretical apparatus for the interpretation of Hinduism actually led him to identify within it a concealed kernel of truth.
Demolishing the persistent myth that Hindu vegetarianism was based on the belief in reincarnation, Dubois insisted that when Pythagoras came and learned about vegetarianism and metempsychosis from the Indians he had muddled or deliberately exaggerated their principles.
'As a matter of fact: announced Dubois, 'everything induces us to believe that the Hindus, though foolish enough in many respects, are not so foolish as to believe, when they show repugnance to feeding on anything which has had life, that they might be swallowing the limbs of their ancestors.' The religious doctrines used by the priests to enforce vegetarianism were not reincarnation, he explained, but the deity of the cow, the 'fear of pollution', the horror 'of feeding on the remains of a dead body' and 'the horror of murder'. Dubois thus rightfully reinstated the doctrine of ahimsa at the heart of Indian vegetarian philosophy.
Just like previous Europeans, however, Dubois refused to see the legitimacy of ahimsa, portraying it as a cowardly and effeminate doctrine. But he went on to explain that the real historical origin (as opposed to the more recent religious rationale) for vegetarianism and cow protection was that cattle were essential for local agriculture, doubt,' he conduded, 'that it was for the sake of health and deanliness, in the first instance, that Hindu lawgivers inculcated these principles of defilement and purification.' Dubois' immediate inspiration for this influential utilitarian interpretation (which anthropologists still partially maintain) was Montesquieu's notorious De l'Esprit des Lois (1748), but both authors were ultimately drawing from Bernier's use of an ancient empirical method.
The idea that vegetarianism had really been imposed because of the hot Indian dimate meant that it had little validity as a universal moral stricture; nevertheless, Europeans in India were encouraged to learn from local example. In direct agreement with the original sanitary intentions of the 'Hindu lawgivers', Dubois dedared that 'I have known many Europeans who entirely left off eating meat for this reason, because they found that they could not eat it without suffering afterwards from indigestion.' The implication for the European reader was dear: if you don't give up meat for the sake of your host, then give it up for your health.
Dubois' suggestion was endorsed by a widespread tradition of European tropical medicine. From at least the seventeenth century European medics had been warning that meat was a 'heating' food and was therefore particularly dangerous when consumed in a hot dimate. God, they pointed out, had benevolently ensured that humans everywhere were supplied with just the right sort of food: and in the tropics this was dearly indicated in the lavish quantities of cooling fruit.
Other Europeans, by contrast, persisted in believing that consuming meat and liquor while in India was essential if one was to avoid melting into the feeble 'effeminacy' of the natives. Several medics pointed out that it was because of such ignorant prejudices that thousands of Europeans - especially 'ignorant' sailors and soldiers - perished soon after arriving in India. In 1680 John Fryer noted that while the debauched English died in Bombay like exotic plants transplanted from their native soil, 'the country people and naturalised Portugais live to a good Old Age, supposed to be the reward of their temperance; indulging themselves neither in strong drinks, nor devouring flesh as we do.'
Vegetarians like Thomas Tryon, who had personal experience of living in the tropics, built these medical prescriptions into their critiques, arguing that only 'idle sottish People that understood Nature no more than Swine' failed to realise that the fruitarian 'Natives of most hot countrys might be our examples'.
Taking their cue from the travellers who noted just how healthy and long-lived the Hindus were, by the end of the eighteenth century it had become standard advice that Europeans should give up or severely limit their flesh intake on arrival in India. As the medical historian Mark Harrison has observed, learning how to survive in the tropics was important to a people who aimed to colonise the world.
In the authoritative Influence of Tropical Climates, more Especially the Climate of India, on European Constitutions (1813), the naval surgeon James Johnson exported European dietary medicine to the Indian context. He was perfectly aware of how his ideas merged with the ethics of Pythagoreanism, and he interspersed his medical advice with poetic renditions of George Cheyne's principles and playful allusions to Erasmus Darwin's Pythagorean edict that man 'Should eye with tenderness all living forms,/ His brother-emmets, and his sister-worms'. Johnson was a follower of William Cullen and he frequently warned that many disorders suffered in Europe, especially in England, were caused by the 'irritating', over-stimulating qualities of meat. In India's warm climate in particular, he advised that 'vegetable food, generally speaking, is better', although having acclimatised he allowed that Europeans could safely transfer from 'the Hindoo model' to 'adopt the Mahomedan manners'. He was no fan of Hinduism, but he acknowledged that Hindu vegetarianism contained sound medical knowledge and (like Montesquieu) that it helped to 'diffuse a more humane disposition among the people'.
Finally, in his Economy of eclared that 'although Brahma and Pythagoras greatly overrated the salutary influence of their dietic systems on health, they were not totally in error' Living on the 'slender and unirritating food of the Hindoo', he admitted, could be healthier for Europeans not just in India but even at home. Observations on the healthiness of Indian vegetarians reaffirmed the tradition of medical vegetarianism in India; but now it seems that medical vegetarianism in turn allowed Europeans to see Hinduism in a new and more positive light. European records were full of reports about how much Hindus were revolted by meat-eating Europeans. Well-worn yarns circulated about Indians pulling down their own houses if a European so much as stepped on their porch. Europeans had an incentive to exaggerate as they often wished to portray Hindus as irrational fanatics. But finding records written by Hindus expressing this abhorrence for early European settlers is a much harder task.
One such rare source is the twelve-volume personal diary written in Tamil between 1736 and 1761 by Ananda Ranga Pillai, the chief dub ash (a personal assistant dealing with 'native' affairs) of the most powerful Frenchman ever to have ruled in India, the Governor of Pondicherry, Joseph Fran~ois Dupleix. Stuffed with fascinating detail about historical and social events, religious practice and day-to-day life in this crucial period, this diary provides one of the best insights into early European colonialism written by an Indian.
As chief dubash, Ananda Ranga was locally known as the 'head of the Tamils' and he wielded exceptional powers.It was Ananda Ranga who helped to reverse the Jesuit influence that had dominated earlier in the century. He was so successful that a Jesuit priest - vainly trying to convert him - complained that, thanks to his patronage, Hindus thrived while Christian converts were ailing. Ananda Ranga was highlycensorious of European misdemeanours, taking the rank-and-file to task for 'feeling the breasts of, and otherwise shaming and molesting women', raping them and killing their men. He furnished Dupleix with horoscopes prepared by Brahmin astrologers, and was honoured with being the only native allowed to wear shoes in front of the governor. But there remained, nonetheless, a significant point of friction which both he and his European friends spent a great deal of energy trying to overcome - their dietary differences. As Ananda Ranga makes clear, it was a diplomatic impasse.
Being a Pillai - a subset of the south Indian Vellala/Idaiyan caste - Ananda Ranga was a staunch vegetarian, and like most of his compatriots he could not eat at table with his European or Muslim colleagues. He watched others consume sumptuous feasts of mutton, pork and fowl, but he himself could not partake. Instead, each day at lunchtime, he would retire to a specially made go down - or to his home when he had time - bathe himself according to Hindu ritual, and eat his home-cooked rice, dhal and ghee alone. He noted that even prisoners had to be permitted to do so. On a few special occasions he entertained Europeans, counting among his guests the Comte de Montmorency, a director of the East India Company. In such situations he would usually offer rice, dhal, fruit, sweets, milk or coffee, but at least once he arranged for others to supply his guests lavishly with goat, deer, hare, partridge, poultry and fish.
The implication was that they could eat what they wished - as long as his personal purity was not impugned.
Europeans were extremely solicitous that Ananda Ranga should return their visits, and took the extraordinary measure of having 'their food prepared by a Brahman that I might partake of it'. With so much focus on Ananda Ranga's need to avoid being defiled by Europeans, these experiments in reciprocal hospitality had mixed results.
After cumulative tensions such as these, the governor Dupleix finally lost his temper and subjected Ananda Ranga - with whom he was usually very cordial - to a lengthy tirade of insults. As Ananda Ranga himself recalled, Dupleix shouted: Tamil food is not worth eating. They eat animal fodder. What else is their vegetables and curry stuffs? It is not food fit for men. Now a Muhammadan pilau is something; but there is nothing like our food in the world, either for cooking or ingredients; and it is served at a well-laid table, where wives, husbands, relations and friends all sit round and eat at their leisure in social enjoyment. The Muhammadans and Tamils always want our food but we don't want theirs. We don't like their vegetable food ... Tamils have long lived with us, still they say it is against their custom, and speak ill of us, comparing us, in their brutal ignorance, to Pariahs. Ananda Ranga recorded these comments in his usual careful manner, merely stating with a measure of cool diffidence that Dupleix 'thus depreciated our food, dwelling on its defects'. But he made no rejoinder to Dupleix, even in private, and nowhere does he explicitly criticise the European diet. Ananda Ranga was not shy of criticising European behaviour when he did feel appalled; for example he was triumphant when Dupleix had an officer fined and imprisoned for committing the 'outrage' of shooting and eating a stray bullock.While Ananda Ranga was vociferous in his censure of Christian blasphemy against Hinduism, his highest praises were reserved for the British Governor of Madras, Thomas Saunders, who in contrast to Dupleix 'used to eat Tamil food - rice, dhall, ghee, pepper, pepper water, pachadi, etc - and now he never comes to table', preferring to eat alone like a Hindu. It is ironic that Ananda Ranga's Hindu perspective on European behaviour in India does not endorse the commonly held view in contemporaneous English and French circles that Indians found the feringhi diet inherently abhorrent. Nevertheless it does illustrate a range of problems that Hindus experienced in their relations to Europeans, which played a significant part in the diplomacy of empire-building. What happened when people tried to pick their way through this diplomatic minefield the other way round - when a vegetarian Hindu came to the land of roast beef? The first official visit from a high-caste Hindu to Britain appears to have taken place in 1781 when Humund Rao, a vegetarian Brahmin, came uninvited to England on behalf of Ragunath Rao, the deposed Peshwa (sovereign) of Maratha, to ask George III for military assistance. Accompanied by an English-speaking Parsi, Manuar Ratanji and his son Cursetji Manuar, Humund Rao was at first unceremoniously ignored by the East India Company. Rao and his cortege were sent to reside outside the city of London in Islington until they were asked to leave Britain without even being informed of the Company's decision.
By this time, the Whig politician Edmund Burke - self-appointed champion of victims of British colonialism who brought Warren Hastings to trial for corruption and despotism in Bengal - had caught wind of the situation. He was outraged: the Maratha Peshwa was one of Britain's most important allies, responsible for ceding to the East India Company highly valuable territories, and the fight to restore him was at a critical stage. Having failed to force the Company to treat them decently, Burke insisted, against entrenched opposition, that he should be allowed to entertain these Indian ambassadors at his house, and thus fulfil his perpetual preoccupation, to demonstrate to Indians 'the decency of the English character' and the 'National honor'. Burke managed to get King George to agree that the conduct of the Company directors had been 'shameful' and to authorise Burke to spend £200 on gifts for the agents. Within a few days, Humund Rao had become a cause celebre and was visited by a train of intellectuals and dignitaries such as the artist and critic Sir Joshua Reynolds. His visit became the topic of conversation and it was Burke's sensitive accommodation of his eating habits that impressed most of all. Burke's friend Mary Shackleton confirmed that Rao prepared his dinner on a flagstone in a greenhouse because 'he would eat in no house which was not his own'. He refused to eat 'animal food or wine, eating off the ground stripped from his waist up, and throwing away his dinner if anyone came within a certain distance from him'.
When the time came for his departure, Burke wrote to the deposed Peshwa to testify that his ambassador had done nothing in England to jeopardise his purity. 'I endeavoured to make my place as convenient, as any of us are able to do' Burke asserted. But 'for a person so faithfully strictly observant as he was, of all the rules and ceremonies of the religion, to which he was born, and to which he strictly conformed often at the manifest hazard of his Life', there were inevitable teething troubles. The sufferings this Gentleman underwent at first: Burke apologetically assured him, 'was owing to the ignorance not to the unkindness of this Nation.' He assured the Peshwa that now the British had the benefit from the instructions he has given us relative to your Ways of Living, that whenever it shall be thought necessary to send Gentus of an high Cast to transact any business in this Kingdom, on giving proper Notice and on obtaining proper License from authority for their coming we shall be enabled to provide for them in such a manner as greatly to lessen the difficulties in our intercourse and to render [England) as tolerable as possible to them.
By Tristam Stuart in the book 'The Bloodless Revolution'- A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Moderm Times-Published by W.W. Norton, New York-London, Chapter 19, p. 259-274- Edited and adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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