Educational institutions have a fundamental duty to inculcate scientific temper in students. There is no law in the country at present banning animal source food in schools or public spaces.
Published Jan 05, 2025 | 3:00 PM ⚊ Updated Jan 05, 2025 | 3:00 PM
Boxes with different food items. (iStock)
From 2 September 2024 onwards, a Muslim woman Sabra of Amroha in Uttar Pradesh faced a series of harrowing experiences at the school where her seven-year-old son Rihan had been enrolled.
Her son was physically abused, threatened, locked up in the computer lab for five hours and not allowed to attend classes. All her three children had been suspended from the school. Unable to access justice through the district education department, the police and the district magistrate, the mother was forced to seek judicial intervention in the Allahabad High Court which ordered the district magistrate to get her sons admitted to another school within two weeks.
The Principal, Avneesh Kumar Sharma has been captured on camera being abusive, discriminatory and communal. He said that he would not teach students who bring “non-vegetarian” food to schools and who would demolish temples when they grow up. The principal claimed that the child had threatened to “convert other children to Islam by feeding them “non-vegetarian” food. Sabra said that her son is vegetarian and she has never packed “non-vegetarian” food for school lunch for any of her sons.
This last point is of particular concern. Why are caregivers across the country hesitating to pack “non-vegetarian” foods for their children? Why are public spaces in India increasingly becoming intolerant and discriminatory of all animal-source foods (ASF) other than milk? Although milk and dairy are also ASF, they are given a “pure” status while the rest are now automatically treated as “impure” or “polluted”.
Education is intended for students to acquire knowledge, develop logical reasoning and prepare for a life that is ethical, and principled, thus contributing to their own and society’s development.
Students learn to be mindful of the rights and liberties of others who may be different. One crucial way of doing this is to be inclusive, value and respect differences/diversity, understand truths and realities, and address pre-existing misconceptions and misinformation that may even have been instilled in homes and communities. Educational institutions help students overcome some of the societal prejudices and therefore society benefits from rational, moral, informed and compassionate citizens.
One aim of education is certainly to enhance livelihood and vocational opportunities for children. This needs to be particularly emphasised in the context of children from marginalised and vulnerable backgrounds. School and higher education should be respectful spaces where children feel included and acknowledge different traditions and cultural practices.
The incident at the school in Amroha serves as an example of all that an educational institution should not be. Instead of promoting a scientific diet comprising diverse and balanced healthy foods, educational spaces such as this school, are becoming toxic spaces that not only reinforce age-old caste-based prejudices and misconceptions but perpetuate newer and more virulent forms of these prejudices. Students are now being ‘educated’ in these institutions on how to practice discrimination and intolerance based on caste and religion.
Some students graduate from these educational institutions convinced that their traditional practices are superior and that they are entitled to be prejudiced, intolerant and unscientific, with more rights and privileges than others. Other students face constant bullying, humiliation and discrimination with structural barriers to reaching anywhere close to their full potential. This can lead to an increase in dropout rates the country can ill afford. Sadly, this seems more by design, rather than oversight.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) guiding principles on healthy diets recommend a variety of foods to ensure that nutritional needs are met.
Food diversity is associated with improved linear growth in young children and is ensured by consuming at least five of the eight food groups which include:
Most of the nutrients that the body requires can be provided by ASF which is also the only known source of Vitamin B12. It can be difficult to obtain all these nutrients in adequate quantity and quality from plant sources alone as their digestibility and absorption can be limited by anti-nutritional factors like lectins, phytates, tannins, oxalates etc.
Sadly, the messaging about food from researchers, nutritionists, doctors, bureaucrats, elected representatives etc doesn’t come from the science of nutrition but rather prejudices. Ironically, milk, which is an animal source food has been assigned a “pure” status while all other equally nutrient-dense ASF are relegated to the realm of the impure and polluted.
Concepts such as sattvic foods as promoted by Akshaya Patra (ISKCON) through the school mid-day meal scheme are unscientific and not based on any research or evidence. They criminalise many of the foods eaten traditionally by Dalit and Adivasi communities attributing negative values such as lustfulness, greed, laziness etc to them.
This food fascism or imposition is constant and relentless. It leads to a lot of shame among children about their food and either rejection, guilt or secrecy. So a child is unable to take the food eaten at home to school or even proudly talk about his or her culture. They also carry back this wrong (casteist) message home and pressure their own families (through inducing guilt or shame) to give up on traditional foods.
Children also carry these misconceptions into their adult life. This affects all aspects of their health and well-being — physical, psychological and social. This is hugely damaging for the child and society on all fronts.
India has alarming levels of malnutrition and multiple nutrient deficiencies increase morbidity and mortality in childhood as well as adulthood.
The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) 2016-18, showed 36 percent stunting (less than -2 standard deviations (SD) heights than expected for age) and 33 percent underweight (less than -2SD weights than expected for age) among children <5 years in India. This was higher among children from marginalised communities, 48 percent in children from the poorest wealth quintile compared to 19 percent from the richest quintile. India ranks 105 out of 127 countries in the 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI).
According to the CNNS, only 21 percent of children aged between six and 23 months were fed an adequately diverse diet, only six percent had received a minimum acceptable diet and only nine percent had received iron-rich foods. In most states, cereals were the most commonly consumed food group (>85%), while eggs, fish, chicken or meat were least commonly consumed (<5%) among school-age children and adolescents.
The CNNS data showed 16-22 percent deficiency of vitamin A, 14 – 24 percent of Vitamin D, 17 – 32 percent of zinc, 14 – 31 percent of vitamin B12 and 23 -37 percentof folate indicating concerning malnutrition among children 0-19 years.
Anaemia is of public health concern in many states, and the number one cause is insufficient nutritional intake. The prevalence of anaemia in children aged 6-59 months went up from 59 percent in NFHS-4 to 67 percent in NFHS-5. Anaemia in all women aged 15-19 years has gone up from 54 percent to 59 percent.
In India, diets are low in iron-rich foods. In addition, a cereal-heavy diet contains high levels of phytates and tannins which inhibit iron absorption.
Non-heme iron, present in both ASF and plant-based foods (whole grains, millets, legumes, nuts, vegetables), is poorly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. Heme iron, on the other hand, present in meat, poultry, organ meat etc is highly bioavailable, digestible and well absorbed. Apart from iron, several other nutrients such as folate or folic acid, Vitamin B12 (cobalamine), Vitamins A, B2 (riboflavin), B6 (pyridoxine), C, D and E, and copper. All of these are found in ASF, particularly organ meat such as liver, spleen etc.
Little or no consumption of nutrient-dense foods such as eggs, dairy products, fruits and vegetables between six months and 23 months of age was associated with stunting. Thus India needs more, not less, consumption of ASF and educational institutions need to promote these nutrient-dense foods.
Educational institutions have a fundamental duty to inculcate scientific temper in students. There is no law in the country at present banning ASF in schools or public spaces.
Therefore, such sanctions by educational institutions are arbitrary and go against the rule of law. It is nothing more than propaganda and ideological imposition without any legal, moral or scientific basis.
All citizens have the right to choose their food without any interference from the state or competent authorities. Hence the school authority should abide by the rule book and not the majoritarian perception or understanding.
The law-enforcing authorities and the public at large should be conscious of such decadence in our society and prevent its normalisation.
The growing intolerance towards all ASFs other than milk in educational institutions makes it clear that most of the authorities in these spaces are unfit to occupy positions of power.
When school authorities such as Avneesh Kumar Sharma make ill-informed and prejudiced comments against nutrient-dense ASF, one shudder to think about what they may actually be teaching the students. These students are likely to carry these same food prejudices into any occupations they may take up.
It explains why even doctors, teachers, faculty, judiciary, policymakers media etc have such a dismal understanding of what good nutrition is. This vicious cycle has to break.
School administration has no right to poke their noses into students’ lunch boxes. Neither can they hold parents to ransom by threatening to throw the children out of school for failure to conform.
Parents and children from marginalised and vulnerable communities constantly face the threat of being humiliated for their different cultures or traditions. Educational institutions are thus becoming toxic spaces of indoctrination, prejudice and discrimination.
Scientifically speaking, children and adolescents need high-quality proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals to ensure appropriate heights, weights, organ development, cognitive skills etc.
It would appear that many schools and higher educational institutions are wilfully choosing to undermine both Constitutional as well as scientific principles. Parents, doctors, activists, scientists etc should stop unquestioningly accepting casteist and unscientific food norms that project vegetarians as pure and non-vegetarians as impure.
Crucially, children need to learn the importance of balanced and diverse diets as a life skill. They have to learn to eat together and accept that each of them has different cultural, caste and religious backgrounds. Learning to respect each other’s food goes a long way to ensure fraternity as enshrined in the Constitution. Unfortunately, most educational spaces seem to be doing just the opposite.
(Dr. Sylvia Karpagam is a public health doctor and researcher focusing on the social determinants of health. Jerald D’souza is an advocate and director of St. Joseph’s College of Law, Bengaluru. Views expressed here are personal.)
