Much ado about laddu: The politics of food and faith

Readers of a certain vintage may recall an egg being advertised as Ram Laddu and recommended as okay for consumption by vegetarians too. This is because the product advertised was an unfertilised egg, which would not hatch into a chick. Hence, a vegetarian did not have to fret over ethics while getting the nutrition of a regular egg. While many are aware of the difference between a fertilised and an unfertilised egg, the brand Ram Ladoo never took off. Perhaps it had something to do with the choice of name, but one can be sure that those were not times when jobless young people could be brought on to the streets over the naming of a product or the choice of characters in
an advertisement or what community they seemed to represent if they were not wearing bindis.

Whilst Ram Ladoo came and went out of the market without any controversy, the Tirupati laddu has not been so fortunate. Certainly among the tastiest of laddus, one always wondered why people who brought them would expect you to share one between your whole family as prasada when you would have been happy to have just one or more for yourself.

Now with the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh stating that some lab in Gujarat had discovered that the ghee in the Tirupati laddus was contaminated with animal fat, many vegetarians went into a tizzy wondering whether they had unwittingly been turned into non-vegetarians. With the charges and the tests proving inconclusive, many heaved a sigh of relief.

The more discerning among them even wondered why Chandrababu Naidu, the newly-elected CM of a state, should set aside more pressing matters of governance and concentrate instead on sending a batch of Tirupati laddus for testing and that too to a lab in Gujarat when there are so many competent ones in his own state, as well as in the neighbouring Southern states.

If Naidu or other Indian CMs were concerned about contamination or serious about the health of their voters, would they not be wise to check on the amount of plastic that an average citizen is ingesting, not to mention the inhalation of toxic pollutants or the contamination of water used for cooking and drinking?

The Supreme Court rapped Naidu over creating the controversy by saying, “We should keep God away from politics.” The average citizen would probably be wishing that the Supreme Court actually had the powers to keep God away from politicians. But that again would be a double standard considering that the Chief Justice himself created a controversy by inviting the Prime Minister of the country to a Ganesha Puja in his house. However unorthodox the invitation, the invitee and the VVIP guest could still have avoided the controversy of keeping God away from politics by opting for a private function with no cameramen in tow. But the limelight is something that few in power are able to shun.

Anyway, with the Bharatiya Janata Party in power for more than a decade, it has become fashionable to show public devotion to one’s God, and no one has been more blatant about it than the ex-Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal. His public recitation of the Hanuman Chalisa and his offer of subsidies for temple visits for the city’s residents have revealed the power of soft Hindutva.

Rahul Gandhi also tried it for a while with his temple visits and claims for being a janevdhari. Don’t think that it impressed as many people as did his Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Mamata Bannerjee did not want to be found wanting, and one heard her reciting the Chandi Path vigorously, even as she started giving out a dole of Rs 85,000 to each Puja Pandal in Kolkata to counter the criticism that she was only offering sops to the minorities. One wonders how this money is accounted for in the exchequer and at whose cost. After all the furore over the horrific rape and murder at the RG Kar Hospital, barring two pandals that refused the government dole, it is business as usual for the Kolkata Pujas.

One did expect better from a mature politician like Naidu, but clearly he has learnt from the success of the BJP in the past 10 years. There is nothing quite like religion and identity politics to be able to rule over a gullible electorate.

(The writer is an independent author)