The vegetarianism amongst Hindus while celebrated abroad goes back to applying caste based discrimination. There’s a reason that most Indian cities have ‘pure veg’ restaurant. The association of veg and purity is about caste.

While, being vegan/vegetarian in the west means going against the norm and is a decision based on unlearning generations of living. In India, this in most cases, stems from learned morality from a religious tradition that has used it to create borders of purity and impurity.

Purity/pollution, clean/unclean, sattvik/tamassic are all about maintaining a hierarchical status quo. No where does ‘love of animals’ figure in this.

That only comes, as afterthought, when caste prejudice is challenged. In fact hunter-gatherer are perhaps the only group that lived in a perfect balance with nature and large-scale agriculture marked our break from the natural world.

Per the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau, 33.2% Indian men and 36% women have a BMI less than 18.5 which means they aren’t getting enough food to perform activities of daily living.

On average, Indian girls and boys are around 10 cm and 5-6 kg less than the expected heights and weights for their age. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), of the total children in India age 6-23 months, only 9.6% receive an adequate diet.

Beef 98%, and whole egg 94% have a higher protein bioavailability, compared to vegetable proteins like Bengal gram (76%) and soya bean (54%). Meat is also an excellent source of vitamin B12, zinc, selenium, iron, niacin, and vitamin B6.

Bioavailability of iron in pork muscle (86%) and beef liver (70%) is much higher than that of vegetables like spinach (19%) and lettuce (25%). Vegetarianism is a personal choice (for those with privilege of choice), state policy pushes it down to those who lack it like in MP.

Anemia is the largest cause of maternal mortality in India, most indian vegetarian recipes fall short of the daily iron requirement to protect women against anemia. Anemia is also the biggest cause of disability in India.

Modi in his famous WSJ interview said, that women get anemia because they are beauty conscious. For, in his world, he only sees middle class and up, no on else. Large scale poultry farming is a problem however when we talk of being vegetarian in India, it means brahmin values.