Two years ago, India’s President Droupadi Murmu “broke with tradition" and served an entirely vegetarian menu for the official banquet for the heads of state and government gathered in New Delhi for the G-20 Summit. The star of the menu was millets, now widely acknowledged as a planet-friendly superfood, which was once an Indian staple but had fallen out of favour during the hybrid-seed, high-yield grain mantra of the ‘Green Revolution’ era.

The foreign media was initially in two minds, whether to appreciate India’s bold assertion of its unique food philosophy that has led to the world’s largest repertoire of vegetarian fare, or criticise President Murmu for depriving guests of customary animal proteins. Finally, the consensus was that India had shown the way to healthier, sustainable diets and shown that vegetables and heirloom grains need not be mere boring ancillaries to meat-centric meals.

Those most cut up about this ‘restriction’ and ‘imposition’, however, were mostly Indian diehards, who trotted out the usual line about denying ‘honoured guests’ their daily meat, as if G-20 leaders would be laid low by one meal without meat. They also pointed out that most Indians are supposedly ‘non-vegetarian’—itself a concept familiar only to sub-continentals—ignoring the fact that meat/fish/eggs are usually not consumed at every meal, much less daily.

Two years on, the same ‘debate’ erupted again when President Murmu’s official banquet for the visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin was also vegetarian. The same Indian diehards imagined that he was unable to digest a morsel—let alone a morel—at Rashtrapati Bhavan. They surmised he only gorges on Beef Stroganoff or Solyanka, with Chicken a la Kiev off the menu for the time being. The fact is, he has a mostly vegetarian, high protein food regimen.

In short, Putin is well acquainted with vegetables and vegetarian staples and........

© News18