MEATMATTERS : CULTURAL

POLITICS ALONG THE

COMMODITY CHAIN IN I NDIA
Paul Robbins

In a period when the global market is generally supposed to be erasing local meaning
and applying uniform significance to objects and consumers, cultural commodity politics are
in fact proliferating. Drawing on the case of the Indian meat economy, I argue here that
the further that commodities travel in economic life, the more they affect and are affected
by non-economic systems of signification. Specifically, the expanding livestock commodity
chain in India has increased the political and social visibility of a long-standing carnivorous
tradition, and meat is increasingly leveraged for social and political power in surprising
ways.

Ihouse,
n the spring of 1994, the butchers of Delhi went on strike in an act of polit-
ical defiance, following the court-ordered closure of the Idgah slaughter-
one of only two century-old abattoirs in Delhi. When meat disappeared
in the city, public debate exploded in newspapers and on street corners, where
the closure was celebrated by the citys ruling Hindu nationalist leaders and
vocally protested by its butchers and meat consumers. 1 Tensions rose in the wake
of the closure and fears of riots circulated through the capital.2 Though the
facility was shut down for reasons of sanitation, the episode quickly changed
from a case of antiquated infrastructure to the symbolic contest over the status
of one of Indias surprisingly significant commodities: meat.
In a nation largely portrayed as vegetarian, the controversy raises difficult
questions about the symbolic status of commodities both in India and abroad.
Is meat-eating in India and the resulting political friction simply a jarring facet
of modernity resisted by tradition? By assessing the economics and cultural
politics of meat, I will suggest here that such a reading is inadequate to under-
standing the Idgah controversy. Rather, the case demonstrates the proliferation
of cultural commodity politics in a period when the global market is generally
supposed to be erasing local meaning and applying uniform significance to

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400 Paul Robbins
objects, producers and consumers.3 Tracing the origins and effects of the slaugh-
terhouse controversy, I will show that the stretching of the commodity chain and
the increasing economic value in animal exchange have together created new
contexts for cultural and social struggle. I will argue that (1) the expanding
meat commodity chain has increased the economic value and social visibility of
a long-standing carnivorous tradition in India; and that (2) association with the
animal/meat product as either a producer and consumer has no stable mean-
ing but is instead leveraged for social and political power in surprising ways. In
sum, by conducting a social biography of meat in India (following Appadurai4),
I attempt to show the cultural contradictions of regional economic change,
emphasizing that while commodity exchange systems create opportunities for
shifting signification, they do so in no simple or inevitable way.
The paper is divided into three parts. The first section reviews the work of
economic and cultural commodity research, concluding that unanswered ques-
tions remain in explaining the meaning of commodities. Here, I call for the
deployment of Appadurais social biography of things to illuminate
Baudrillards symbolic system of objects.5 In the second section, I explore the
history of meat in India in an effort to demonstrate the historicity of vegetari-
anism and the significance of meat in a vegetarian society. In the third section,
I define and explain the transformations in the regional meat economy result-
ing from the expansion of markets for meat. Next, I illustrate the symbolic pol-
itics that grafts meaning onto the animal object6 during its travels from the site
of production to that of consumption. The conclusions of the paper argue
against the idea that meat in India is exceptional; the analysis of cultural poli-
tics along other commodity chains would benefit geographers wishing to explore
the cultural geography of the capitalist economy.

Cultural politics along the commodity chain

Commodity chain analysis is an increasing focus for geographically oriented eco-
nomic inquir y, and researchers have learned a great deal about the growth and
change in regional political economy through thoughtful examinations of the
movement, exchange and transformation of commodities.7 Drawing on classic
work by economic historians, especially Fernand Braudel,8 and building upon
that of world-systems theorists, this line of research has been enormously fruit-
ful. Commodity chain analysis traces the control of exchange and value-added
processes in the creation of commodities ranging from instant coffee to shoes,
revealing the spatial and political points of accumulation and control in the con-
temporary economy.9 This work defines a commodity chain as a network of
labor and production processes whose end result is a finished commodity.10 At
each stop along the network, inputs and value are added, and surplus is gen-
erated through expropriation. Analysis reveals the links between highly struc-
tured international markets, trends in Northern consumption patterns, and
large-scale environmental devastation, making clear the relationships between
labourers, states, investors, owners and the environment.11

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 401
Even so, the relationship between the meaning of an object and its position
in a stratified economy remains somewhat enigmatic. It is clear that the mean-
ing of things and their movement along lines of trade are not wholly indepen-
dent of one another, as many rich cultural commodity histories have shown.
Neither are they determined by one another in any simple way, however, as the
complex and indeterminant role of even common commodities shows.12 Once
this false, causal dichotomy is discarded, more significant and puzzling questions
emerge. If meaning is produced in the context of exchange, who is best posi-
tioned to graft that meaning onto objects moving in a complex and fluid econ-
omy and how do they do it? Does the power rest with users and consumers,
producers and sellers, or somewhere else entirely? As Mintz puts it:
If the users themselves do not so much determine what [symbols are] available to be
used as add meanings to what is available, what does that say about meaning? At
what point does the prerogative to bestow meaning move from the consumers to the
sellers? Or could it be that the power to bestow meaning always accompanies the
power to determine availabilities?13
One possible answer to this question is to argue that the power to sign sim-
ply resides in the economic system which flattens objects into commodities. A
global economy, in such a formulation, creates a global culture.14 But that answer
is not particularly satisfying, and defies common experience in a world of pro-
liferating meanings. My survey of the animal object reaches a rather different
conclusion. I will argue here that the expansion of global markets and the
lengthening of commodity chains has actually served to expand the number of
places, locations and opportunities for diverse meaning to be created and con-
tested. In this case, the growth in the consumer market and international meat
trade associated with late twentieth-century capitalism has increased the time
and space over which the animals value is realized as a commodity in exchange.
At the same time, however, it has created new contexts and venues for that com-
modity to be invested with meaning apart from its exchange value. Put simply,
the further the animal travels into economic life, the more it affects and is
affected by non-economic systems of signification.
For the purposes of this analysis, an approach to commodity signification that
focuses upon exchange, rather than production, is most useful. Following
Appadurai, an object does not have a static and given identity as a commodity
simply because it is produced for exchange in the historical moment of capital-
ism. Rather, commodities are things with a particular type of social potential,
and an object is a commodity only in those situations where the exchangeability
of the object is its most socially relevant feature.15 This commodity status
depends on the objects social and cultural situation such that objects can move
in and out of a commodity state during their social lives.16 In this way, social,
political and cultural process invests objects with meanings (including that of
commodity) as exchange moves them into and out of various socially and polit-
ically defined situations. By way of example, a wedding ring may move out of a
jewellers store, onto a finger, into a bureau drawer and onto an auction block
through exchanges over the course of its life, simultaneously travelling into and
out of differing meanings as it goes. At each moment, the meaning of the object

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402 Paul Robbins
may be constituted through prestige, nostalgia or gendered power relations, and
tied to systems of signification outside the economy.
Commodification, therefore, is a social process in which the commodity sta-
tus of objects becomes overwhelming and begins to colonize most of an objects
social life over space and time. In the process, the social relations of producers
and exchangers take on new meaning, being reduced and alienated through
the instrumental logic commodity consumption. Following Baudrillard, con-
sumption of commodities is not a passive mode of assimilation but is rather
an active mode of relations and a systematic act of the manipulation of signs
where the object is re-signed out of the social context of production and use
and into the coherent system of meaning that constitutes and creates con-
sumption. The object now obtains its meaning through its relations to other
such consumer objects.
The commodification of nature is thus the resignification of the extant mean-
ings of natural objects into those of instrumental consumption through
exchange. The spatial division of the sites of production from those of con-
sumption along the commodity chain enables this process of commodification,
especially for natural objects whose meanings begin to differ significantly from
the site of production to that of consumption.17 Hard work, land degradation
or animal suffering is rendered invisible through the commodification of the
natural object as it is consumed at a distant site, re-signed as instrumental and
exchangeable. The politics of the commodification of nature, it follows, are
related to control over the distancing of the objects production from its con-
sumption and to control over the signification of the object at differing sites.
Such politics may centre around the way people and objects resist commodifi-
cation and around the rebelliousness of people and objects against the colo-
nization of the life world by a homogenizing instrumental rationality.18 Equally,
the politics of commodification may address the way in which rapid changes in
consumption, if not inspired or regulated by those in power, are likely to appear
threatening to them.19 In either case, the application of instrumental signifi-
cance for an object may be short-circuited and redirected by social and politi-
cal process. As we shall see in the case of meat, objects, producers and consumers
do, at times, resist the process of commodification and, most certainly, changes
in the production and consumption patterns of the meat object are threaten-
ing to some and useful to others.
Using this approach, the commodity chain is here shown to be the path of
exchange along which meaning is produced, grafted onto objects and stripped
away by political, social, and economic process. When animals become livestock
and meat, a myriad of social and political transformations occur, with ramifica-
tions for other spheres of social life in India. As will be shown here, the rise of
meat trade has certainly increased the complexity and density of such transfor-
mations in recent years. It is not the case, however, that consumption of meat is
an unprecedented cultural fact in India, nor that this fact represents a conflict
between the modern and the traditional. To dispel this notion, I first turn to
the historical presence of meat and carnivorism in Indian history.

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 403

Meat and carnivorism in Indian histor y

It would be disingenuous to speak of an all-Indian livestock culture given the
tremendous regional diversity of meanings and practices in the subcontinent.
The dietary and production practices of Kashmir are nearly unrecognizable in
Tamil Nadu or Orissa. For the purposes of this analysis, the focus of discussion
will be the broad belt of the semi-arid north, including the major cities of the
north-west (Delhi, Bombay, Ahmadabad, etc.) and the vast hinterlands that feed
the animal economy, especially the semi-arid states of Gujarat and Rajasthan.
The nature of the tensions and transformations in this region, however, are not
dissimilar to those experienced elsewhere in India. Also, while the range of
important animal products in India is vast, this analysis focuses specifically on
meat. Milk, wool, dung, stud potential and traction power are all marketable
animal commodities and configure their own complex economies in livestock
production, marketing and maintenance. Animals as meat are somewhat unusual
due to their importance in Hindu cosmological forms, specialized production
niches and agro-ecological politics, but they do reflect the complexity of other
natural commodities (trees/timber, cloth/textiles, etc.) in the region and so
make a useful representative case.
The long-standing complexity in the meanings of animals in India is evident
in a reading of the cultural history of meat in the subcontinent, which make
claims of historical vegetarianism problematic. According to the archaeological
record, meat-eating is a prehistoric phenomenon, and animals domesticated for
meat, especially domesticated goats and sheep, appear in the earliest archaeo-
logical sites of the Indus Valley Civilization, starting from 4000 BCE. Meat is also
evident in the diets of the regions residents following the decline of the Indus
Culture; animal bones marked by cutting are evident in the Black and Red Ware
cultures who inherited the north and northwestern regions of the subcontinent
between 1100 and 600 BCE.20 Kautilyas Arthashastra, from around 300 BCE, refers
to an official in charge of state slaughterhouses. Even in the far south of the
subcontinent, the historical record shows few inhibitions regarding the con-
sumption of meat at this time.21
Yet in this period of generalized meat production and consumption, the Vedic
tradition, with its vegetarian ethic, emerged as a powerful cultural and religious
structure, laying the foundations of later Hinduism. The tradition is named for
the Vedas, hymnal scriptures preserved in oral and later written form since the
second millennium BCE, and includes the earliest recorded traditions related to
animal slaughter and meat, intertwined with ritual hierarchy, sacrifice and med-
ical practice. Under Buddhist and Jain influences, hunting and meat-eating are
integrated into the early Vedic concepts of ahimsa (non-violence) and ritual
purity that are so important to later regional religious tradition. Many religious
legal texts from this period (including the Manu-smriti or Laws of Manu) under-
line the role both of meat-eating and of the limits of meat-eating in the struc-
ture of ritual and social purity. Here, a hierarchy of creation is established where
the consumption of those things lower on the food chain is justified in sacred
law.22 Simultaneously, ritual carnivorism is established wherein the eating of meat

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404 Paul Robbins
is placed under restriction and allowed only for animal foods prepared through
sacrifice by elite brahmin priests. More than 250 animals are referred to in the
Vedas, and 50 of these were seen as fit for sacrifice and so for consumption.
Prominent brahmin priests from the period praise the consumption of meat with
no fear of ostracism.23 In Vedic practice, meat-eating continued but became
reserved by and for elite groups through religious sanction.
Similarly, in Vedic tracts on ayurvedic (homeopathic and ritual) medicine,
meat takes on importance in ritual practice and in defining social and political
authority. Ayurvedic practitioners were to feed meat tissue (dhatu) to a patient
to fatten the body, produce muscle and firm the flesh. Deer and buffalo
meat was understood to be most powerful in this regard, and blood itself was
prescribed for its powerful bio-spiritual effect. Here, the healing properties of
the remedy were in the very violence of its source. Again, however, these foods
and cures were intended for elite consumers. Ayurvedic remedies and pre-
scriptions are explicitly intended to maintain the health of the ruling elite and
meats were therefore reserved for kshatriya (warrior kings), through whom soci-
etys health was realized. Even then, meats could only be eaten when prepared
by a priestly elite and purified through ritual sacrifice, which freed them from
the taint of violence. The ritual significance of ahimsa (non-violence) was in this
way reconciled with the therapeutic value of raw meat and blood while the bal-
ance of power between warriors and priests was established through sacred
dietary practice.24
Elsewhere in Vedic texts, animal and meat-related notions were established in
proscriptive and prescriptive terms. Dharmic literature, including Manu and
many earlier Dharma Sutras, is that part of Vedic ritual text relating to proper
behaviour and responsibility as outlined in spiritual order. In these texts, the rit-
ual purity of some meat consumption was outlined while polluting practices of
animal management were instituted. Generally the keeping of animals for meat
production and consumption was established as taboo; while Manu is filled with
rules in references to cattle handling, no references appear for the maintenance
of small stock, fowl and other meat animals. In other later Dharma Sutras, milk,
meat and blood, are increasingly excluded from the diet. Under Vedic cultural
hegemony, it would seem, the proscriptions and controls over carnivorism estab-
lished in text were enshrined as a solid social order of animals, people and
meat.25
The neat order of vegetarian law is shattered by closer examination of the
simultaneous archaeological and historical record in the region, which suggests
that widespread meat-eating continued through the Vedic period. Concurrent
Painted Grey Ware sites (900500 BCE) in the Gangetic plain show evidence of
mixed agropastoralism with a bewildering variety of domesticated animals,
including the pig, an animal with little value outside meat production. Complex
agricultural systems emerge during the period with a significant and expanding
pastoral component.26 Al-Biruni, an Arabic traveler to India in the eleventh cen-
tury AD, clearly states that strict vegetarianism was reserved predominantly for
brahmins and that other groups consumed and exchanged the meat of ani-
mals.27 It would seem, then, that the Vedic and early Hindu order of abstract

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 405
vegetarianism and ritual slaughter did not reflect the establishment of vegetar-
ian practice. Rather, it represented the establishment of sacred hierarchy to jus-
tify the social and political hegemony of those groups by whom and for whom
the Vedic texts were authored, kings and priests. With the simultaneous estab-
lishment of an agropastoral production system that relied upon the handling
and management of ritually impure animals and, at least in small part, upon
the eating of meat, the Vedic order begins to look less like universal cosmology
than the legitimation of ideological status. In the early history of the region,
therefore, we already see the uneasy relationship between meat production/con-
sumption and the cultural politics of the meat object.28
The arrival of Muslim armies and settlers and the rise of the Sikh faith fur-
ther reinforced the ranks of meat-eaters in South Asia. The religious status of
meat in Islam is equally significant to that in Vedic tradition with Koranic stric-
tures against carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine.29 Muslim dietary practice
integrated with that of Hinduism over a period of exchange with symbolic flows
in both directions. Many meat preparations and dietary styles followed Islam
into the region, including the consumption of sweetmeats. On the other hand,
beef consumption was added to the list of restrictions observed in mixed com-
munities by Muslims, and non-meat foods began to dominate the diet of Indian
Muslims.30 As integration continued, goat and sheep meat remained in the diet
of Muslims and the practice of animal slaughter was increasingly handled pre-
dominantly, though not exclusively, by Muslim trading and slaughtering castes
(beopari and kassai) across north India. While Hindu butchers (katiks) continued
to practise slaughter using distinct methods and a segregated customer base,
Hindus often purchased and consumed meat from Muslim butchers who
dominated the market, as they do to this day. Regional censuses from the turn
of the century confirm that qualified vegetarian restrictions continued to co-
exist with meat trade and flesh-eating in the post-Vedic era.31
Under colonialism, meat production and consumption rose, and colonial sur-
veys praise the quality and availability of sheep and goat meat. Moreover, changes
in land tenure, common property institutions and export markets increased the
number of small stock throughout the north especially in the traditional cattle-
and camel-breeding areas of the north-west. While struck by the prevalence of
vegetarianism in India, colonial authorities took note of the meat trade, praised
and consumed animal products and recorded goat and sheep meat among the
significant products of the region in economic surveys. At the same time, the
capitalization of the rural economy also created a cash-crunch for producers
and helped foster the contemporary meat markets that continue to provide a
quick avenue to capital for local producers. Finally, military contracting for
tinned foods required direct colonial intervention in the meat economy, espe-
cially during wartime.32 Thus, social and economic changes under colonialism
increased and intensified the already extant role for meat in economy and soci-
ety and laid the foundations for its commodification. The current rapidly
expanding meat economy is not a break from history. It represents a smooth
transition.

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406 Paul Robbins

The changing animal commodity chain

The history of animal production and meat consumption in India is deep, polit-
ically lively, and culturally complex. At the same time, recent developments in
the national and international economy have changed the stakes in animal pro-
duction, shifted risk and created new avenues for profit. Changing production
and consumption systems are putting more meat onto the national and inter-
national market, drawing increasing attention to the practice of slaughter and
shifting it into new political arenas. The changes in the commodity production
system are threefold. First, rural producers for the slaughter market raise increas-
ing numbers of animals. Second, systems of transport and exchange are increas-
ingly complex and internally differentiated. Third, the prospect of new markets
nationally and internationally has brought new large firms into the commodity
chain, shifting the burden of risk and changing the concentration of capital in
the process. These changes are best evidenced by following an animal from the
shrublands of rural Rajasthan, from which the largest proportion of animals
originate, to the fast-food markets of urban Delhi and beyond.
The production of meat begins in the smallest villages of the most rural parts
of arid Rajasthan. Here, the historical traditions of ahimsa (non-violence) and
the ritual pollution equated with some animal management and consumption
remain active, but rural producers are highly dependent on animal production
and upon the marketing of whole animals for meat.33 This emphasis on meat
production has changed animal demography in India, since the major animal
species of the region goat, sheep, buffalo and cattle differ significantly in
their ecological, economic and cultural roles. The religious ban against cow
slaughter in India is well known. Traditionally raised for traction and in small
numbers in rural households, the cow is the central livestock element of house-
hold reproduction. No such ban exists for buffalo, sheep, or goats and, as noted
earlier, they have been part of a traditional meat economy. Overall in the last
20 years, the production and consumption of meat has increased but with impor-
tant species-specific effects on the livestock economy.
The change in livestock figures for the state of Rajasthan are shown in Table
1 while a summary of their place in the meat economy is shown in Table 2.
Rajasthan is the largest livestock-producing state in the country, and continues
to be the source of animals for milk, meat and traction. In a state that accounts

Table 1 ~ Livestock populations in Rajasthan (000)

Cattle Goat Sheep Buffalo

1966 13 123 10 323 8806 4222

1995 11 666 15 284 12 491 7775
Change 66/95 1457 4961 3685 3553
As % of 1966 11.1 48.1 41.8 84.2

Source: Government of India, Statistical Abstracts: Rajasthan (Jaipur, Rajasthan State

Directorate of Economics and Statistics, 1966, 1995).

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 407
for many of the important traditional cattle breeds, the decline of the cow here
is apparent. The cow, it should be pointed out, is not disappearing as a result
of slaughter but instead precisely because it is not being slaughtered. While small-
scale, illicit and local consumption of beef is not unheard of, the lack of a viable
meat component to the cattle economy makes them less valuable in the grow-
ing meat economy (Figure 1). Both sheep and goat populations, on the other

Table 2 ~ Stratification of the animal economy

Animal Proportion of Manner of System of Location of

total market keeping slaughter consumption

Cattle Low Household milk Small-scale, Local

herds and urban illicit
dairy
Goat High Small herds Large-scale Domestic and
supplemental urban slaughter- international
income house
Sheep High Large herds Large-scale Domestic
specialist producers urban slaughter-
house
Buffalo Middle Household milk Small-scale Domestic
herds and urban Urban slaughter-
dairy house

Figure 1 ~ The bovine burden: sacred cattle in Rajasthan.

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408 Paul Robbins
hand, have steadily grown in recent years. Goats are held in small numbers by
rural producer households for quick cash and as an important source of milk
protein. They are slaughtered and consumed both domestically and interna-
tionally, especially in the Arab Gulf States, where their meat is most prized.
Sheep provide the added value of wool sales, and are generally held in large
numbers by pastoral caste specialists like the raika and sindhi. Sheep are slaugh-
tered and consumed domestically. Buffalo numbers have increased largely as a
result of their role in the dairy economy, where the high fat content of their
milk makes them extremely valuable. They are also slaughtered for meat, how-
ever, on a smaller scale than small stock. Taken together, there is a clear pic-
ture of the increase in the meat component of the Indian livestock economy.
Sheep and goats do not hold the same sacred value as cattle and have mostly
filled the demand for meat, growing in importance and in numbers.
In Rajasthan, sheep and goats are favoured in particular because they are
hardy browsers in a situation of increasingly marginal grazing, because they are
easy to maintain and manage and because they provide reliable sources of pro-
tein and emergency funds from dry-season sale and slaughter (Figure 2). For
these reasons the numbers of small stock have risen dramatically in Rajasthan,
especially in the arid west, while numbers of camels and cattle are on the decline.
Agro-pastoral households herd these animals under differing production
regimes depending upon variations in class and caste. Pastoral specialists
manage sheep and goats in large herds combining annual migrations with local
wet-season grazing.34 These communities historically specialized in the herding
of large animals but have changed in recent years to smaller stock raising, main-

Figure 2 ~ A herd of over 100 sheep under the care of a shepherd from a traditional
pastoral caste.

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 409
taining large herds and migrating in complex systems of combined and recip-
rocal labour arrangements.35 These migrations cycle around urban marketing
centres where wool is clipped for sale and animals are sold for meat. In the case
of non-specialist households, the production emphasis is different, focusing on
risk-spreading, access to emergency capital and limiting labour demands. For
these groups, especially marginal caste communities, goats are usually preferred
over sheep since these animals require less maintenance and provide milk and
meat as important protein supplements.
In most cases, village households sell these animals to middlemen, beopari ani-
mal traders, for quick cash during a dry season or emergency. These traders are
a subcaste of the traditionally marginal kassai caste of butchers and tanners, who
have emerged in recent years as a powerful and wealthy community with well-
organized trade networks throughout the region. These traders sometimes live
in the villages where sales are made, but more often circulate with trucks or
other transport through a territory of villages making periodic purchasing stops.
Negotiations are usually conducted on the spot, although traders sometimes
have longer-term agreements with producers, especially pastoral specialists. The
prices received for animals at the village level vary from season to season and
during drought conditions but most producers report a fairly uniform return
for sale of R200400 or $510.
These traders then either sell through their own local networks or directly
transport the animals to urban regional markets, called Bakra Mandi, in regional
exchange centres including Jodhpur, Jaipur and Bikaner. As many as 250 ani-
mals are transported by truck for one or two days at a time, sometimes packed
in two-tiered carriages with no food or water. Some losses are accrued in the
form of tissue shrinkage, bruises and the death of animals in transport to urban
exchange markets. 36 There the animals are appraised and haggled over by local
buyers and butchers and resold at a considerable mark-up at between R450 and
R600 ($1315) each. From these markets the animals either are moved to slaugh-
ter by local butchers, who often operate out of their own residences, or are trans-
ported onward to larger urban markets. At this level, production and trade has
increased significantly in recent years, growing from 17.29 thousand tons in 1986
to 25.50 thousand tons in 1993. This represents a 47% increase in less than a
decade.37 Urban markets for meat within the state are growing rapidly.
These transportation and sale transactions are increasingly complex and insti-
tutionalized with a growing number of players (traders, buyers and butchers)
involved in the exchange process. The central effects of this stratification of the
commodity chain are to depress producer prices and thereby to shift risks from
traders and value-added processors to economically and politically marginal vil-
lagers. While prices in urban markets have risen in recent years, most rural pro-
ducers report price stagnation and weak bargaining power. This follows a more
global trend in commodity exchange relations, especially in the livestock indus-
try, where an oligopoly of processors increasingly controls markets through con-
tracting and price controls.38
From exchange markets, live animals are moved by truck to processing mar-
kets in Delhi, Mumbai and Ahmadabad for urban consumption and sale on the

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410 Paul Robbins
international market. Firm numbers are difficult to find, but some three
million goats (from a state population of around 14 million) were recorded as
having been exported from Rajasthan to urban markets in 199091. At these
markets, traders report that they unload animals for R600700 each (around
$18), and these move on to slaughter facilities. In Delhi, two such abattoirs exist,
where more than 10 000 animals are slaughtered daily. Of these, most are small
stock and around a third are targeted for export from the area. Exports include
the transport of meat to adjacent states, especially Uttar Pradesh and Punjab.
From some markets, however, especially those in Mumbai, a large proportion of
the meat and live animals is destined for export markets beyond the Indian
border, particularly in the states of the Persian Gulf, where it earns a tremen-
dous mark-up from purchase price.39
In the intensification and extensification of the meat market two trends
have dominated: the explosion of value-added processing and consumption
sites in urban India and the increased international trade in meat commodities.
In the first case, retail chain food stores with available meat products are
increasingly evident in cosmopolitan centres. Domestic fast-food chains have
long-standing presence in Delhi and Bombay, while foreign chains including
giants like Wimpys, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds are pushing their
way into the market, aided by increasingly liberal investment policies over the
last decade.40 None of these firms is selling beef but all of them market some
form of chicken or mutton.
In the case of export, refrigeration technologies and trade deregulation have
allowed a considerable increase in international meat trade. Processed meat may
now be easily shipped from Indias urban ports. At the same time, the Minimum
Export Price on meat has been eliminated as part of Indian trade liberalization
policy. As a result, since 1970 the export of meat from the country has risen
dramatically. Between 1980 and 1988, exports of goat and sheep meat rose from
2200 to 8000 tons. The total value of Indian meat exports rose equally quickly
from $4 million to nearly $25 million between 1970 and 1994.41 While still not
on a par with other major exports, the growth in meat exports from a vege-
tarian country is remarkable.
In sum, it is clear that the commodity chain of meat production from village
pastures to consumer plates is increasingly long and complex and that the value
of the market is high and growing (summarized in Figure 3). The growth of the
meat market might be predicted to represent the advancing edge of a process
of commodification of the animal/meat object to its commodity form in a
mature market system. The a priori assumption that the growth of the market
and its articulation into global trade represents the arrival of the instrumental
meaning of animals and meat is not necessarily supported by an examination
of production and consumption culture in India. By following the social life
of meat, surprising lessons can be learnt about the politics of meaning. To that
end, we must examine the meaning of animals and meat at the sites of pro-
duction and consumption.

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 411

Figure 3 ~ Addition of value for animal products along the path from desert cities
of production to those of urban and international consumption. Traders largely
accumulate the surplus.

Meaning in animal commodity production

Starting at the village level, it is clear that the thing exchanged, whether viewed
as animal, capital or meat, holds non-commodity significance owing to the rela-
tionship of production and consumption to social and political status. While
Hindu ritual slaughter has dropped off, except on rare occasions, the con-
sumption of meat remains an important marker of ritual purity and caste status
through the notion of ahimsa. At the same time, keeping of herds, while on the
rise in non-traditional communities, is still stained with an element of ritual taint.
These two features of local culture emerge in complex combinations in the social
politics of the village; participation in the animal economy and the consump-
tion of meat are not always coincidental, and these practices, or restraint from
these practices, continue to be deployed as a wedge for status. The bishnoi of
Rajasthan, for example, are generally devout vegetarians and refuse either to
raise or to sell animals for slaughter. But they are somewhat unusual, and other
groups do not match this production/consumption pattern. Raika herders are

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412 Paul Robbins
vegetarians who raise and sell animals that wind up on the meat market.
Members of this community will not slaughter animals themselves and leave the
tanning of hides and other craft practices to other groups, even while they earn
receipts from animal sales. Elite rajputs, on the other hand, while long-time meat
eaters, are traditionally loath to raise small stock because the practice is con-
sidered unclean. More marginal members of the meghwal community raise few
animals for sale and eat little meat but are associated with leatherwork and rit-
ual pollution, legitimating their daily treatment as inferiors by caste elites. In all
of these cases, the meaning attached to animal/meat in the village is deployed
independently from that of animal management.
As opportunities present themselves for the claim to ritual purity or a status
of power, these practices may change. The economic value of herds is quickly
growing, and along with it the class status available from conspicuous herding.
Rajputs, for example, are increasingly likely to enter the animal market and
claim pride in the ownership of large herds while sometimes laying claim to
dietary purity through the avoidance of traditionally consumed animal products.
Members of the meghwal community, historically the targets of class and caste
domination by elites, increasingly practise vegetarianism to claim status. This
process turns this marginal group away from animal-raising and meat-eating to
seek higher ritual status.42 Running both along and against the grain of tradi-
tional cultural practice, these practices invert some cultural forms while rein-
forcing others, showing the deployment of symbols to cement and contest local
power. Clearly, meat-eating and stock-raising are meaning-laden, and while the
growth of animal markets has created opportunities to deploy these practices
for control of social status, the meaning of animals/meat has not simply been
reduced to instrumental form in the process.
At the same time, village residents can just as easily interpret and describe
animals and meat in their commodity forms. Despite claims by orientalist and
crude materialist scholarship that the value of animals in India is hidden in sys-
tems of cosmological significance,43 the position of the animal as an exchange-
able good is overtly acknowledged in most producer households. Indeed, in
Rajasthani household calculation and conversation, animal objects are weighed
as exchanges, investments and returns in ways that would be familiar to investors
in futures exchange in Chicago. Livestock, especially small stock, are explicitly
prized in village households for their rate of reproductive return, their low-input
protein production and their flexibility under conditions of ecological uncer-
tainty. Villages in rural India remain without well-integrated financial systems,
and even where such institutions exist, animals remain one of the highest-yield-
ing investments available. Smallstock, in particular, are safe and highly pro-
ductive locations for stored value. Goats and sheep reproduce once or twice a
year, making them much higher-yielding than any bank. This rate of return is
quite explicitly calculated by pastoral producers who, when asked, can swiftly
compound rates of return over time in their head, allowing for capital decline
in herd attrition.
Animals are also fully acknowledged as productive capital in the village.
Animal wastes, for example, provide a primary source of energy. Cattle turn fast-

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 413
burning silica (grasses) into slow-burning fuel cakes of gober (cow dung) while
sheep and goats cycle off-farm nutrients into the form of dung, a crucial fertil-
izer. The explicit understanding and exploitation of these processes is acknowl-
edged and calculated by producers in the village, and animal wastes have
emerged as an important part of the rural economy in recent years.44 Likewise,
milk and meat are viewed by village producers as a central return for the invest-
ment in animal raising. The many traditional techniques of milk preservation,
including creaming, condensing and making yoghurt, butter and cheese, are all
an important part of the village vernacular.45 Even the diets of the strictest veg-
etarians includes ghee (clarified butter) for food preparation. Meat, though less
visible, is present in the diets of many village households and is seen as the eco-
nomic liquid return value for the energy invested in livestock. Rural producers
embrace their access to this end of the commodity chain.
In sum, animals and meat are simultaneously commodity and non-commod-
ity objects in village life. While their status as dirty, clean, sacred and profane,
is linked to social politics, they are also viewed as capital on the hoof, tied to
instrumental logics of the market.46 Crossing back and forth across the line
where exchange becomes paramount in the understanding of value, ani-
mals/meat are meaningful symbols at the location of production.

The cultural politics of animal consumption

Following the animal object to the site of consumption, the complexities of com-
modity signification grow further. As at the rural site of production, traditional
rules against meat consumption continue to exclude meat from the diets of
some people, especially higher-caste groups. Even so, both Muslim and Hindu
butchers handle animals for slaughter and many urban communities eat meat.
Middle-class consumers increasingly eat goat and sheep meat in Western-style
fast-food restaurants in Delhi and Bombay. Nationally, the proportion of meat-
eating Hindus is unknown, but it has been estimated at not much less than 30%
of the population. This figure varies regionally; 40% and 31% of the population
eat some form of meat (including fish) in Rajasthan and Gujarat, while 55%
and 70% are carnivores in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Mahrastra.47
Figure 4 shows the percentage of non-vegetarians by state in India. These per-
centages include fish-eaters, and so the map is skewed heavily by coastal con-
sumption. Overall, however, it is clear that vegetarianism is the exception and
not the rule, even in non-coastal states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh,
where non-vegetarianism means the eating of goat and sheep meat.
The growth in the meat market follows global trends towards the use of meat
as a form of generic consumer gratification.48 Meats globally ubiquitous class-
based appeal is a central dietary element of the alleged democracy brought by
modernity and capitalism. Moreover, conspicuous vegetarianism notwithstand-
ing, meat carries with it an impression of egalitarianism that promises, in
Coetzees words, an end of the stratification of society into those who hogged
the supply of meat and those who had to stuff their stomach with grains.49

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414 Paul Robbins

Figure 4 ~ Incidence of meat eating by state in India. The coastal bias reflects fish
consumption, while inland state consumption reflects red meat eating. (Adapted from
K. T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999).

Large-scale urban meat consumption in this way suggests an image of meat as

democratic and middle-class. Whatever its meaning, meat is being eaten by more
people in urban India, especially Hindus, without any apparent sense of con-
tradiction of the Hindu faith.
This image of democratic meat is contested by a picture of meat as an exter-
nally imposed attack on Hindu culture. This latter reading of the emergence of
the meat commodity in India is offered by the conservative Hindu nationalist
Sangh Parivar (family of Sangh parties) which includes the Bharatiya Jana Sangh
(BJS), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and, currently, the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP). Their conservative account of Indian culture and the rise of
meat eating is reflected in two branches of cultural politics: cow protection and
anti-meat rhetoric. The first of these two takes the form of a long-term cam-
paign for a legal ban on cow slaughter. The second of these is demonstrated in
the general sympathy of the BJP and its supporters in Delhi for the closure of
the Idgah slaughterhouse in 1994.
In 1954, only shortly after independence, the BJS offered as a part of its man-
ifesto an end to cow slaughter in the country despite the extreme rarity of the
practice. This policy was vigorously pursued for two decades thereafter, despite

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 415
the fact that cow slaughter was already banned by the Indian constitution and
that such slaughter was almost never observed. The BJS further argued that a
ban on cow slaughter was necessary to protect the dwindling cattle population,
stating that the only way to stay the rapid decline of cattle is to ban their slaugh-
ter forthwith.50 As seen above, however, the disappearance of cattle in north
India is tied more closely to their exclusion from the meat economy rather than
their inclusion in it. This symbolic campaign seemed to be levelled at a non-
issue and to offer a redundant law. Even so, the campaign touched off a deep
divide and ended in violence.
Pushing for state-level laws to ban the killing of cattle in 1966, the BJS
launched a lobbying campaign and a series of protests in Delhi against Indira
Gandhis then-ruling Congress party. The BJS organized large demonstrations
in the city and, responding quickly, the Congress government quickly went to
work, pressuring the states to adopt cow-slaughter bans. But with crowds assem-
bled, the BJS went forward with its demonstrations, finally warning the govern-
ment of violence. This was almost immediately followed by an outbreak of rioting
in the capital, where government buildings were sacked and cars and houses
burnt.51 The non-issue of beef had proved a powerful tool for conservative politi-
cians. Later in 1994, when the BJP came to power in Delhi, it adopted an anti-
meat platform and banned cow slaughter in the city through the passage of the
Delhi Agricultural Cattle Protection Act. While the issue continues to catch the
attention of militant Hindus, the ban unsurprisingly raised no notice or protest
amongst the citys Muslim community since little or no cattle slaughter actually
occurs.52
The following year, however, the BJP would have another opportunity to com-
munalize the meat issue when the closure of the Idgah slaughterhouse entered
the news. The slaughterhouse was closed by court order in March of 1994 for
health reasons; the century-old abattoir was built for a daily capacity of 2500 ani-
mals but at the time of closure the facility was handling nearly 14 000 animals
daily. 13 000 litres of blood and offal were being discharged every day into the
adjacent Yamuna River.53 Indias highest court ruled that the conditions in the
abattoir were unsanitary and that the facility should be closed until it was up to
code. Despite long-standing complaints concerning the sanitation and efficiency
of slaughtering facilities in many of north Indian cities,54 politicians have been
reluctant to adapt public infrastructure to the recent growth of the animal econ-
omy (Figure 5). The colonial-era slaughterhouse had never been improved or
replaced over its long life.
Public response to the closure in the following months varied greatly, but the
movement of the issue away from public health and into other spheres of cul-
ture and politics occurred quickly. A Times of India poll taken two months after
the closure revealed a range of popular interpretations. Few of those interviewed
were aware of the court order. Some acknowledged the hygienic reasons for the
closure. Most seemed to think that the closure of the slaughterhouse was
intended to reduce non-vegetarianism, however. The ambiguousness of the poll
left the Times with little to report except that, in Delhi, meat matters.55
Confusion reigned in activist communities as well. Environmentally oriented

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416 Paul Robbins

Figure 5 ~ The tools and techniques of a small-scale butcher shop.

activists warned that the increase in meat-eating would lead to an explosion in

the goat population, resulting in disastrous desertification and the disappear-
ance of Delhi under a mountain of sand. Conversely, social activists argued that
rampant urban consumption of meat would so devastate the goat population
that the rural poor would be left without its chief source of milk protein.56
The issue was quickly seized in political circles, where it again became part
of a familiar symbolic strategy. Politicians in the BJP greeted the closure as a
strike against meat culture. While it was not a major plank in the BJP platform,
activist politicians jointly described Hindu culture, cow protection and vegetar-
ianism as a point of honour and a pious duty. Governing in Delhi at the time
of the closure, they declared that the meat economy was not only impious but
also damaging to the economy, explaining that the export-oriented system (of
goats) was robbery of Indias cattle wealth. Following on an earlier strategy
used in protests of the Al-Kabeer slaughterhouse in Andhra Pradesh, BJP politi-
cians alleged a conspiracy by Gulf Arabs to destroy Indias economic and cul-
tural core.57
As a result, the Muslim butchers in Delhi interpreted the closure of the slaugh-
terhouse as a sectarian attack and, in protest, went on strike. Complaining that
their livelihood was threatened, they took their case to the Supreme Court. Meat
became unavailable throughout the city and the newspapers began heavy cov-
erage of what might have otherwise been a small news event. With memories of
events in the city of Ayodhya a few months before, where rioting crowds, incited

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 417
by the BJP, destroyed a Muslim holy building, fear of riots grew during the period
after the closure and throughout the strike. The All India Babri Masjid Re-build-
ing Committee, an organization that sprang up in the wake of the destruction
of the mosque at Ayodhya, joined in public meetings about the abattoir closure
and threatened more strikes.58 Butchers outside of Delhi responded in sympa-
thy with the strikers. One butcher in Jodhpur reflected the general feeling in
declaring that the slaughterhouse would not be closed if the butchers were khat-
ics (Hindu butchers) and not kassai (Muslim butchers). Further underlining
the symbolic threat, the name of the abbatoir, Idgah, roughly translates as place
of worship in Arabic. Although secular places like bus stations and public gar-
dens are so named in much of north India, its name carries symbolic weight
amongst the Muslim minority. Unable to ruffle the Muslim minority with a cow-
slaughter ban, Hindu conservatives had here found a target for which the com-
munity would be willing to fight. While in no way as inflammatory as the events
at Ayodhya, where sacred spaces were contested, the careful deployment of sym-
bols at Idgah put a slaughterhouse at the centre of similar cultural politics.
Both this event and the earlier cow riots of the 1960s reflect the efforts of
conservative politicians to strategically signify the emerging meat economy. By
offering a programme of cultural and political renewal and cleansing through
the re-establishment of a traditional Hindu India, the parties of the Sangh
Parivar offers the return to a purer and more stable past. While claiming rep-
resentation among low-caste Hindus and the Muslim minority, the party is largely
built upon a base of upper castes, businessmen, and underemployed profes-
sionals. Public actions against cow slaughter (even where cow slaughter does not
occur) and statements supporting the closure of an abattoir (even where it is
closed for reasons of health and not culture) show a careful use of cultural sym-
bols that create cultural pride in a powerful, upper-middle-class Hindu elite.
This community makes up the BJPs core constituency and has gained electoral
power in recent decades.59
In seizing and publicly interpreting the rise of the meat economy, the BJP
mobilizes two elements of conservative discourse: economic isolationism and
anti-Muslim rhetoric. In the first case, the BJP is attacking the increased link-
ages with the global economy represented in the extension of the meat and hide
commodity chain with foreign export markets. The removal of minimum export
prices and the growth of foreign-owned fast-food chains are both opposed in
BJP policy platforms. In its rhetoric, the party favours economic isolationism and
close controls on investment, imports and exports.60
More significantly, the highly public anti-meat campaign represented by Idgah
and the ban on cattle slaughter are both linked to the BJPs careful use of anti-
Muslim symbolism. In calling for a return to a purer society, nationalists are
recalling a mythical period when all of India was Hindu and all Hinduism was
a single tradition. As shown previously, no such unified tradition existed histor-
ically, especially relative to dietary practice. Constructed by a social elite, such
an idealized vision mimics and mirrors the late Vedic appearance of vegetari-
anism as a wedge for caste status. Further, the cultural critique of meat-eating
focuses on practices and symbols broadly associated with Islam in the popular

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418 Paul Robbins
mind. Few, if any, Muslims in Delhi eat beef and most of Indias meat-eaters are,
in fact, middle-class and caste Hindus. The call for a beef ban and the support
of the Idgah closure are, nevertheless, symbolic attacks on the Muslim minority
similar to earlier assaults on Urdu and sharia (the language and legal system of
the Muslim minority). The connection of Islam with meat-eating and moral
degradation reinforces a chain of association in which, as Metcalf explains,
Muslims are invoked as oppressors who ultimately ushered in a period of
decline.61 The logic of the BJP is deployed in the political imagination through
the trope of the meat commodity. Like the vision of meat as a democratic con-
sumer good, the nationalist conception of meat as an alien food culture is
grafted onto animal trade and consumption. Made the vehicle for both con-
sumer class aspirations and conservative political machinations, meat matters,
but its meaning is highly contested.

Meat matters
When, then, does the goat or sheep become a commodity and to what effect?
Does it happen in the village, where animal-raising is becoming a ubiquitous
and generic adaptation in the local economy? Has the spread in the production
of animals across caste and class lines rendered irrelevant the non-instrumental
meanings of the animal? Certainly, sheep and goats are treated as exchange-val-
ued goods from the moment of lambing and kidding. At the same time, how-
ever, village life is dominated by complex meaning systems and social roles that
do not allow the transformation of the animal into a fully exchangeable good.
Moreover, cultural and social position in the village remains linked to the rais-
ing and consumption of animals. Does the commodification of the meat object
occur at the point of slaughter when the sentient animal is rendered to flesh?
To the degree that the brutal conditions of transport and slaughter suggest the
treatment of an exchangeable resource and not a living thing, this would seem
to be the case. But the complex cultural politics of cow slaughter and the abat-
toir closure suggest that, even then, the commodity is infused with meaning.
The case for the erasure of meaning through commodification is weak. But the
more complex questions raised previously remain. If the meaning of meat is not
erased by the economy but is instead transformed, who controls the cultural and
social status of animal-raising and meat-eating, and what pattern of meaning is
produced under conditions of economic change?
The clearest general pattern is that the social positions of people are changed
sometimes by consuming or producing meat and sometimes by not consuming
or producing it. The same fundamental cultural process is in force in either
case: people can, as Mintz observes, become different by consuming differently.62
The question is, which practice eating or not eating, producing or not pro-
ducing will carry cultural and social status? Here, it is the discursive, class and
caste power of various authorities at the site of struggle that will matter most in
the ascription of meaning.
At the site of production in the village, the handling of goat and sheep is vin-

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 419
dicated as privileged class practice. Where it once was dirty, now it is clean. This
is not solely because of the increased revenues made available through the
expansion of the meat commodity chain, but it does owe something to the
changing economic context. The flourishing meat economy creates the condi-
tions in which the meaning of animal raising will be contested, and in this case
powerful rajputs hold a strong hand in institutionalizing as normal and auspi-
cious those practices that match their own.
At the site of consumption in the city, the meaning of meat is also many-sided
and unresolved. Is meat-eating the articulation of consumption democracy for
a growing urban middle class or is it the Muslim-initiated and Western-imitat-
ing product of declining Hindu morality and power? The long-term BJP invest-
ment in a ban against cow slaughter and opposition to meat-eating is an attempt
to provide an account of Indian cultural history that enforces the latter view.
The tension created between these two accounts is not simply a product of eco-
nomic change, but the expanding commodity markets and increasingly visible
bodies of traders, butchers and urban carnivores do create new opportunities
for struggle over the symbols of consumption. Meat has always mattered in India,
as I have attempted to show here. But the extension of the exchange and pro-
cessing networks for animal products has expanded the age-old cultural contests
over the signification of animal flesh. In resolving those contests, the social and
political power of differing interests is intrinsic to determining the new mean-
ings that will be rendered normal in daily life.
In this regard, it might naively be argued that India, with its vegetarian his-
tory, is a special case with little applicability to other commodities or regions.
As shown above, however, vegetarianism is not so much a given historical real-
ity in India as it is a claim over the meaning of nature in the Indian economy.
It might be more accurate to conclude that this case actually shows how uni-
versal such struggles have become. If even the most commonsensical under-
standings of a regions commodity culture (India as vegetarian) can be
undermined in a genealogical history, then other cases may reveal the same to
careful inquiry. The meat controversy in India is, therefore, not a sideshow of
quaint tradition temporarily resisting capitalisms homogenizing forces. Rather,
it is a flashpoint that highlights the many myriad locations along the global com-
modity chain in which the meanings of objects in daily life are imposed and
resisted. The ambiguity of meat in India is reproduced in countless cases of ten-
sion around animal economies where pets and meat, zoos and wildlife reserves,
and circuses and nature programming collide in popular culture.63 More gen-
erally, the social history of meat reflects lessons learnt elsewhere in the study of
items as diverse as cloth and sugar.64
If meat seems to matter more than many other food commodities, it is per-
haps because of the unusually wide range of dramatic and visceral meanings
that flesh can possess. It can be embodied life force, palpable class power, con-
gealed death or an elixir of health. Meat is the product of violence associated
with privilege but also the by-product of an increasingly pacified distributive
economy associated with a flood of goods to meet the needs of the many. The
implications of this complexity extend far beyond the boundaries of the Indian

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420 Paul Robbins
subcontinent. While the working middle class in the US and the UK continues
to favour meat, some wealthy shoppers have turned away from the taint of flesh,
thereby opening similar rifts in consumption politics elsewhere. The opportu-
nity to re-sign the meat object appears here at largely the same moment as it
does in India, when global commodity trade extends the theatre for cultural
politics to new households, new markets and new kitchens. The economy is
therefore as much a cultural stage as it is an economic one, filled with non-cap-
italist class processes and invested with meaning under constant debate.65 The
global economy does not order the meaning of consumption, it would seem,
but it does set the stage for the dramas of commodity struggle.

Department of Geography
Ohio State University

Notes
1 HC Shuts Down Idgah Abattoir. Times of India, 21 Mar. 1994, p. 8; Slaughterhouse
Scandal, ibid. 9 Apr. 1994, p. 10.
2 H. McDonald, Wheres the Beef? Its Banned in Delhi and Mutton Isnt Available.
Far Eastern Economic Review, 5 May 1994.
3
R. Barnet and J. Cavanagh, Homogenization of Global Culture, in J. Mander and E.
Goldsmith eds, The Case against the Global Economy (San Francisco, Sierra Club Books,
1996), pp. 717.
4
A. Appadurai, Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value, in A. Appadurai,
Social Life of Things, ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986) pp. 363.
5
J. Baudrillard, Le Systme des objets (Paris, Gallimard, 1968).
6 In this paper, complex animal beings will be treated, for the sake of argument, as ani-
mal objects and passive vessels for imposed meaning and action. This is not to deny,
however, the subject character of animals. Common sense and countless personal
experiences make it difficult to ignore animal agency, especially that of the goat; see
P. Robbins, Goats and Grasses in Western Rajasthan: Interpreting Change, Overseas
Development Institute Pastoral Development Network 36a (1994), pp. 612.
7
G. Gereffi, and M. Korzeniewicz, Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism (Westport,
Praeger, 1994).
8
F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism II: The Wheels of Commerce (New York, Harper &
Row, 1982).
9
G. Gereffi, and M. Korzeniewicz, Commodity Chains and Footwear Exports in the
Semiperiphery, in W. Martin, ed., Semiperipheral States in the World Economy (Westport,
Greenwood, 1990), pp. 4568. J. M. Talbot, The Struggle for Control of a Commodity
Chain: Instant Coffee from Latin America, Latin American Research Review 32 (1997),
pp. 11735. I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System (New York, Academic Press, 1974).
10 T. Hopkins and I. Wallerstein, Commodity Chains in the World Economy prior to
1800, Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center 10 (1986), p. 159.
11 D. Goodman and M. Redclift, Refashioning Nature: Food, Ecology, and Culture (New York,
Routledge, 1991). K. Marx, Capital (New York, International Publishers, 1967).
12
S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, Viking
Penguin, 1985).
13
Ibid., p. xxix.
14
Barnet and Cavanagh, Homogenization of Global Culture. Skair, The Culture-

Ecumene 1999 6 (4)

 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 421
Ideology of Consumerism in the Third World, in Sociology of the Global System
(Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 12969.
15
Appadurai, Introduction, p. 13.
16 I. Kopytoff, The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process, in
Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, pp. 6494.
17
R. Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture (London, Verso, 1980).
18 D. Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge, MA, Blackwell,
1996), p. 138.
19
Appadurai, Introduction, p. 28.
20
R. P. Singh, Agriculture in Protohistoric India (Delhi, Pratibha Prakashan, 1990).
21 K. T. Achaya, The Food Industries of British India (Oxford, Oxford University Press,
1994). K. T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion (Delhi, Oxford University
Press, 1994). F. R. Allchin and B. Allchin, The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982). J. W. Bowers, Animal Art and
Mythology of India, MA, San Francisco State University, 1989. R. P. Singh, Agriculture
in Protohistoric India (Delhi, Pratibha Prakashan, 1990).
22
G. Bhler, The Laws of Manu (Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1886) V: 29. K. N. Jacobsen,
The Institutionalization of the Ethics of Non-Injury to All Beings in Ancient
India, Environmental Ethics 16 (1994), pp. 287301.
23
Achaya, Indian Food .
24
F. Zimmerman, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats: An Ecological Theme in Hindu Medicine
(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987).
25 Achaya, Indian Food . Bhler, The Laws of Manu.
26
F. R. Allchin and B. Allchin, The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan. H. D. Sankalia,
Functional Significance of the OCP and PGW Shapes and Associated Objects.
Purattva 7 (1974), pp. 4752.
27
M. A. Biruni, ed., Alberunis India: An Account of the Religion, Philosophy, Literature,
Geography, Chronology, Astronomy, Customs, Laws, and Astrology of India about A.D. 1030
(London: K. Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1914).
28 There remains significant debate over whether or not meat-eating in Vedic times
included the consumption of beef. For an exhaustive if somewhat polemical argu-
ment against the presence of cattle slaughter in ancient India, see J. Dalmia, A Review
of Beef in Ancient India (Gorakhpur, Gita Press, 1971).
29 A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (New York, Macmillan, 1955), V: 1.
30
F. J. Simoons, Eat Not This Flesh: Food Avoidances from Prehistory to the Present, 2nd edn
(Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).
31 Rajputana-Gazzetteers, The Western Rajputana States Residency and Bikaner (Gurgaor,
Vintage Books, 1908). M. S. Rathore, Marketing of Goats in Rajasthan (Jaipur, Institute
of Development Studies, 1993). M. H. Singh, The Castes of Marwar: Being Census Report
of 1891 (Jodhpur: Books Treasure, 1993).
32 For a general account of colonialism and the commodity economy in Rajasthan, see
M. S. Jain, Concise History of Modern Rajasthan (New Delhi, Wishwa Prakashan, 1993).
For a discussion of food systems and livestock under colonialism, see Achaya, The Food
Industries of British India. J. L. Kipling, Beast and Man in India (Lahore, Al-Biruni, 1891,
(repr. 1978). G. Watt, A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (Delhi, Cosmo,
1893).
33
Geographers have been prominent in examining these production systems and rela-
tionships. See especially M. Debysingh, The Cultural Geography of Poultry Keeping
in India, in D. Sopher, ed., An Exploration of India: Geographical Perspectives on Society
and Culture (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1980). D. O. Lodrick, Man and Animals

Ecumene 1999 6 (4)

422 Paul Robbins
in India in R. L. Singh and R. P. B. Singh, eds, The Roots of Indian Geography: Search
and Research (Varanasi, National Geographic Society of India, 1992).
34
A. Agrawal, Mobility and Control among Nomadic Shepherds: The Case of the Raikas
II, Human Ecology 22 (1994), pp. 13144. I. Khler-Rollefson, Pastoralism in India
from a Comparative Perspective: Some Comments, Overseas Development Institute
Pastoral Development Network 36 (1994). P. Robbins, Nomadization in Rajasthan, India:
Migration, Institutions, and Economy Human Ecology 26 (1998), pp. 6994.
35 Agrawal Mobility and Control among Nomadic Shepherds. P. S. Kavoori, Pastoral
Transhumance in Western Rajasthan: A Report on the Migratory Systems of Sheep,
(Jaipur, Institute of Development Studies, 1990). R. R. Prasad, Pastoral Nomadism in
Arid Zones of India (New Delhi, Discovery, 1994).
36 M. S. Rathore, Marketing of goats in Rajasthan (Jaipur, Institute of Development Studies,
1993).
37
Statistics from the Department of Animal Husbandry, Jaipur, India.
38 Goodman and Redclift, Refashioning Nature. P. D. McMichael, Tensions between
National and International Control of the World Food Order: Contours of a New
Food Regime, Sociological Perspectives 35 (1992), pp. 34365. F. Ufkes, Trade
Liberalization, Agro-food Politics and the Globalization of Agriculture, Political
Geography 12 (1993), pp. 21531.
39
Rathore, Marketing of Goats in Rajasthan.
40
V. Reitman, India Anticipates the Arrival of the Beefless Big Mac, Wall Street Journal
20 Oct. 1993, p. B1. K. Singh, Fried Chickens Fearsome Foes, Far Eastern Economic
Review 1996, p. 30.
41
Government of India, Economic survey: 199798 (New Delhi, Ministry of Finance,
1998).
42 Identified as sanskritization, where the long-term alteration of caste status follows from
adherence to ritually pure behaviours like avoiding meat and liquor. See M. N.
Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1966).
43
Most notable is the classic Sacred Cow thesis in M. Harris, The Cultural Ecology of
Indias Sacred Cattle. Current Anthropology 7 (1966), pp. 5166.
44
R. Cincotta and G. Pangare, Population Growth, Agricultural Change, and Natural
Resource Transition: Pastoralism Amidst the Agricultural Economy of Gujarat,
Overseas Development Institute, Pastoral Development Network 36a (1994).
45 S. George, Agropastoral Equations in India: Intensification and Change of Mixed
Farming Systems, in J. G. Galaty and D. L. Johnson, ed., The World of Pastoralism (New
York, Guilford Press, 1990), pp. 11944.
46 P. Robbins, Shrines and Butchers: Animals as Deities, Capital, and Meat in
Contemporary India, in J. Emel and J. Wolch, ed., Animal Geographies (London, Verso,
1998).
47 Estimated figure from A. Kala, The Vegetarian and Non-vegetarian Controversy,
Times of India, 13 Apr. 1994, p. 16. Census numbers shown in Figure 4.
48
B. Fine, M. Heasman and J. Wright, Consumption in the Age of Affluence: The World of
Food (New York, Routledge, 1994).
49 J. M. Coetzee, Meat Country. Granta 52 (1995), pp. 4152.
50 Bharatiya-Jana-Sangh Central Working Committee, BJS Manifesto , 1958.
51
This account of the cow riots is drawn from B. Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian
Politics: The Origins and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
52
E. Noronha, BJP: Cow as a Political Symbol, Economic and Political Weekly, 11 June
1994, pp. 14478.

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 Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India 423
53
N. S. Ramaswamy, Shocking Conditions in Abattoirs, Times of India, 4 Apr. 1994,
p. 12.
54
Government of India, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Report of the Ad-Hoc
Committee on Slaughterhouses and Meat Inspection Practices (Delhi, 1958). M.
Usha, Survey, Analysis, and Disposal System of Hazardous Wastes: A Case Study of
Jaipur City, PhD, University of Rajasthan, 1992.
55
The Times Question: Meat Matters, Times of India 8 May 1994, p. 24.
56
For the environmental perspective on the crisis, see M. Gandhi, Criminal Record of
the Idgah Abattoir, Times of India, 25 Apr. 1994, p. 12. For accounts from the posi-
tion of social activism, see S. S. Saikia, Meat and Dust, Times of India, 3 April 1994,
pp. 1516.
57
Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics. A. Kala, The Vegetarian and Non-veg-
etarian Controversy, Times of India, 13 Apr. 1994, p. 16. Saikia, Meat and Dust.
58
Abattoir Issue Is Tough Meat for Delhi Government, Times of India, 6 Apr. 1994,
p. 11. Butchers Stir: Affected Parties May Move SC. Times of India, 11 Apr. 1994, p. 7.
Saikia, Meat and Dust.
59
T. Basu, et al., Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags (New Delhi, Longman Orient, 1993). H.
McDonald, Revivalist Rally: The BJP Launches Its Campaign for Power. Far Eastern
Economic Review 18 Apr. 1991, p. 19. M. Parikh, The Debacle at Ayodhya: Why Militant
Hinduism Met with a Weak Response. Asian Survey 33 (1993), pp. 67384.
60
The populist neo-conservative agenda of Delhis ruling party may not represent an
explicit form of resistance to capitalism and commodification. Such resistances do
occur elsewhere in India, however, in the sacking of fast-food outlets and other direct
violent popular attacks on symbols of global capital. See S. Gorelick, Big Mac Attacks:
Lessons from the Burger Wars. Ecologist 27 (1997), pp. 17375.
61
B. D. Metcalf, Presidential Address: Too Little and Too Much: Reflections on Muslims
in the History of India. Journal of Asian Studies 54 (1995), pp. 95167.
62
Mintz, Sweetness and power, p. 185.
63
A. Arluke and C. R. Sanders, Regarding Animals (Philidelphia, Temple University Press,
1996). J. Emel and J. Wolch, eds, Animal Geographies (London, Verso, 1998). A. Wilson,
The Culture of Nature (Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1992).
64
C. A. Bayly, The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian Society,
17001930 in Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, pp. 285321. Mintz, Sweetness and
Power.
65
J. K. Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) (Cambridge, MA, Blackwell,
1996).

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