Right-leaning commentators and ideologues have chosen to lambast the LoP, Rahul Gandhi, for taking issue with the vegetarian-only meal provided at the recently concluded BRICS summit in New Delhi.

On the one hand, one may trivialise the LoP's objection, but on the other, the ruling government's psychology and intent are clearly revealed. Whether the revelation was intentional or not is unascertainable.

Food is not merely food when power enters the recipe. What we eat, what we are allowed to eat, and what we choose to display as Indian is an overwhelmingly effective determinant of inclusion and exclusion.

While the fare provided showcased an impressive range, it only told half, nay, less than half the story. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) posits that almost 80 per cent of Indians consume non-vegetarian fare, excluding dairy. This means that when someone communicates only vegetarian food as authentically Indian, or elevates it as purer, more respectable or more representative of the nation, it effectively delegitimises 8 in 10 Indians.

To delegitimise a person's food is eventually to delegitimise the person.

A state banquet is not a private dinner. Such a display on an international stage is an exercise in national representation. It is a semiotic statement about what the State chooses to project as authentically Indian. It is also an attempt to get others to legitimise the propaganda.

This is not surprising, given the tendencies saffronists exhibit. In a classical case of moral inversion, they lynch people, kill children, set houses on fire, rape women and garland the rapists, and yet allege that it is the non-vegetarians who are prone to violence.

A Bengali Hindu may consider fish inseparable from culture and ritual. A Kashmiri Pandit may eat mutton. Coastal communities have generations of seafood traditions. Christians, Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and countless Hindu communities have culinary traditions in which meat and fish are entirely ordinary. Their food habits are not foreign intrusions into India. They are India.

The problem, therefore, is not vegetarian food. The problem is claimed majoritarian normativity, the elevation of one cultural practice as the norm against which the legitimacy of others is measured.

The incongruity of the Indian argument becomes even more evident when we compare how "Indians" act when they visit other places. They expect others to respect their dietary preferences abroad. If an Indian dignitary travels overseas and asks for vegetarian food, that request is understood as an exercise of personal or religious choice. But hospitality cannot be a one-way street. If India expects the world to respect the dietary choices of its representatives, should it not extend the same courtesy to guests at its own table?

Who in their right minds can claim India to be a "Vishwaguru" with such hypocritical displays?

The politics of food has already travelled far beyond the dinner table. Beef has become a matter of suspicion. Meat shops have been targeted or regulated in the name of culture. Food choices have entered housing, schools, festivals and public spaces. What should be a matter of personal, familial, regional, or religious choice is now a test of acceptability. Dietary habits are being used to define a hierarchy.

India has always been a civilisation of many tastes, traditions and tables.

If there is truly one nation, there need not be one plate; conversely, if there is only one plate, then there is no nation at all, only a dictatorship.