Why Zomato’s ‘pure veg’ service is being criticised as casteist

Food delivery app Zomato on Tuesday launched a “pure veg mode” service that will allow users to choose from restaurants that serve only vegetarian food. The company’s Chief Executive Officer Deepinder Goyal said that a separate fleet of delivery persons dressed in green uniform would cater to customers “who have a 100% vegetarian dietary preference”.

On Wednesday, the company rolled back the decision to colour-code its fleet after several social media users pointed out that it could prompt residential societies to restrict the entry of delivery persons carrying meat-based dishes.

But Zomato’s revised decision does not address another strand of criticism: that the segregation of its fleet is a move rooted in casteist notions. Vegetarianism in India, unlike in other countries, is largely driven by the casteist idea of so-called purity, analysts noted. Zomato’s decision only promotes this discrimination, they said.

The notion of ‘pure veg’

Dalit rights activist and writer Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd told Scroll that the expression “pure vegetarian” in itself is discriminatory as it suggests that anyone with other dietary preferences eats impure food.

“These are dehumanising terms coined by Indian Brahmins,” Shepherd said. “What is the difference between a pure vegetarian and just vegetarian? There is no such term as pure vegetarian in other countries. These terms come from the Brahmanical idea of looking down upon Adivasis, Dalits and Muslims. And now, Zomato is extending this idea by segregating its delivery riders.”

Public health researcher Sylvia Karpagam agreed and added that Zomato’s decision is not just discriminatory, but illogical as well. “How can you say something is pure and something else is impure?” she questioned. “Paneer and ghee and butter are also animal-sourced food. You are purifying what some people eat and saying what others eat is impure.”

Karpagam contended that Zomato’s decision was aimed at pandering to what she described as “aggressive vegetarianism” that strengthens the false idea that the majority of Indians do not eat meat, fish or eggs.

Several studies have shown that only a minority of Indians are vegetarian. Even official data from the National Family Health Survey-5 released in 2022 showed that 83.4% of men and 70.6% of women in the age group of 15-49 years eat fish, chicken or meat.

Karpagam said that Zomato’s move was nothing but an attempt to make money out of the popular sentiment that India was a “de facto vegetarian country”.

“If that is not the case, why don’t they colour code all different kinds of food?” she questioned. “Many Muslims only eat halal meat. Zomato should have a separate fleet for them too.”

A vegetarian minority

Given that most Indians are not vegetarians, why would Zomato introduce a policy that is not in sync with the dietary preferences of the majority?

In his tweet on Tuesday, the Zomato CEO wrote: “India has the largest percentage of vegetarians in the world, and one of the most important feedback we’ve gotten from them is that they are very particular about how their food is cooked, and how their food is handled.”

Political economist Suraj Jacob, who has co-authored a research paper on provincial dietary preferences in India, told Scroll that Zomato’s reasoning was “disingenuous”, critiquing its comparison of vegetarianism rates in India with the world.

“It could be factually true that the largest proportion of vegetarians in the world are from India,” Jacob said. “But why would you craft the message like that? Why would you not mention that vegetarians are actually in minority in India?”

Jacob said that the possible reason behind Zomato’s decision was that a large section of its clientele were urban upper castes with significant purchasing power. This demographic is more likely to be vegetarian than Indians as a whole.

Political scientist Shivani Kapoor, who has authored a research paper on the links between caste and sensory perception agrees with this. She added that the reasoning provided by Zomato’s CEO, that food could spill from delivery boxes, leading to “the smell of the previous order travelling to the next order”, also refelected the food delivery app’s attempt to cater to the casteist idea of purity.

“A large part of the caste system has to do with purity-pollution norms and social and physical distancing norms and that is what Goyal [Zomato’s CEO] is speaking about,” Kapoor said. “It has been Dalits who have been forced to deal with jobs like cleaning excreta or picking waste that involve foul smell or sight. So, sensory perceptions play a huge role in our caste-ordered society.”