I am not a snake-charmer. Don’t call me one!

Hello New York Times,

I call myself “Aam Aadmi Partly” in the digital world. It literally means that I am a “common man – partially”. So it’s safe to assume that I do represent an average Indian – at least partially.

I got to read an article written by Sonia Faleiro, published in NYT titled “Saving the Cows, Starving the Children” dated June 26^th, 2015. To begin with, the article was upsetting. Upsetting, not because it targets the BJP or our PM or the right wing ideology. I am upset because it targets them on half baked facts and figures. There are assumptions everywhere in the article and I am going to detail out all of them here. However, before I start writing (rather commenting) on the article, there’s something that I want to highlight with 2 examples.

1. See, I hail from a not-so-famous city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. As it wasn’t famous, the only foreigners (people from Europe and US to be precise) I ever saw was in Agra where they came to visit the famous Taj Mahal or those who I saw them in movies. By movies I am here referring to porn as well as regular feature films. Back then, watching all those porn and movies like American Pie series made me (and almost every adolescent) think that these foreigners are all about sex. That’s what drive them 24*7. They are always willing to take their pants off. It made me think that the West is an open sex society. You just have to approach the person and he/she will take you to the bedroom. That was stupid, of course. As I grew, I got to know that there a lot more about the western world than sex and there are all sorts of people out there too – open minded, narrow minded, liberal, religious and conservative etc. There are people who go nuts over religion and races. There are people who drive campaigns against abortions and homosexuality. Basically, I got to know that the westerns were just like us. All I did was assuming and generalizing.
2. India has had this reputation of being home to cow-worshippers, snake-charmers, sadhus (saints) and jadugars (magicians) for ages. Even now a lot of people picture us like that. That’s absurd. Like every bit of it. We’re taking satellites of countries across the globe to their orbits. We’re the champions of the BPO/Outsourcing industry. And it’s none other than us who meticulously work to make the Hollywood movies’ animations come to life. People just assumed and generalized.

“ASUMPTIONS” and “GENERALIZATIONS” are bad. I used the examples to say as much. Let’s talk about the article now.

If I am guessing it right, the article is about

1. The under-nourished kids
2. The rise of right-wing politics in India

I’ll talk about the hungry kids first.

More than half of the pregnant women are anemic. India has a very high infant mortality rate. Less than half of the infants under the age of 6 months are exclusively breastfed. You’d be surprised to know that a basic thing like iodized salt isn’t available to half of the nation. Clearly, the tale of undernourishment starts right from the mother’s womb. A lot of kids die before turning 5 – the age when kids start their education in schools. I just wish the author had talked about every kid born in this country. However, the author chose to talk about eggs that Shivraj Singh Chouhan didn’t allow to reach school.

You know there’s a huge stock of wheat in government godowns. Its way more than the “Buffer Stock” the government has to keep and huge quantities of it are stocked out there in open. Every year during rains huge quantities of it end up rotting. Imagine the change we can make, if this wheat reaches to all those pregnant ladies and kids in form of porridge. Unfortunately, the author just wanted to associate hunger, eggs and the BJP.

Now let’s talk about BEEF!

It seems the author didn’t know that beef for almost all Indians (be it Hindus, Muslims or Christians) is buffalo meat. Didn’t she know it’s available across the nation? In the diet of Indian Muslims buffalo meat is an important component and you can find scores of street hawkers selling “Biryani” having buffalo meat. Furthermore, the buffalo meat exporting industry is growing in double digits and if I am not misquoting, it is set to become a $ 30,000 million strong industry this year. The central government in fact offers handsome subsidy for setting up a meat processing unit. What the BJP led government in Maharashtra has done deals with the meat of cows only which is anyways banned in all but a couple of states.

Clearly, the author either didn’t do her homework properly or she is biased against the Indian majority religion.

We could be anything but perfectly healthy and the government isn’t perfect either. Definitely, there’s a lot more that our government should be doing and vigilant citizens, organizations and journalists should criticize the government for every wrong step that it takes. However, I wouldn’t allow a person with a fancy name and biased intent to criticize my government and its policies.

Can your author answer the following questions?

• Why the author didn’t talk about the availability and abundance of food stuff? Pigs are present in abundance across the nation. Their meat is tasty and the high fat percent would have ensured a rich supply of energy to our kids. They are easy to rear and are prolific breeders. I wonder why the author didn’t think of including and advocating pigs. Oh wait….. muslims don’t consume pork. Is that the reason that our dear author didn’t include them?
• Did she care to study about the eating habits of Indians? The Indian non-vegetarian habits are a little different from that of the world. Apart from Muslims, Tribals and some Christians, the meat consuming Indians (primarily Hindus and Sikhs) are muscle eaters. We don’t eat eyes, offal, brain and tongue etc. and that’s kinda inbuilt. May be driven out of religion and culture. Clearly, being vegan, vegetarian or selective non-veg is a very personal choice. You cannot (and should not) ask people to change. Can you imagine a dog or snake being eaten in US? Why? Because, it’s not a part of their eating habit. Likewise we Indians don’t eat beef.

The author is probably right in criticizing the Madhya Pradesh government for banning eggs. However, I wouldn’t say it’s a super-food.  The Indian cottage cheese has a higher protein percentage and so does Tofu, the Soya cheese. I’d agree that the availability and price of eggs make it a much better food item and if a kid wants to have it, NO ONE should come in between. Unfortunately, that’s not what the author wanted to say. Three out of the first 4 paragraphs talk about how Shivraj Singh Chauhan denied the tiny-tots of Madhya Pradesh eggs, the super-food. The next 4 paragraphs talked about the ban on beef imposed harshly by the BJP led government of Maharashtra. After this, the entire article was about politics. The politics of BJP. The right-wing inclined, (communal in terms of Indian journalists’ lingo) politics. The dirty, HINDU centric, minority-hating politics of the BJP and of the Indian PM Modi.

I am not a right-wing Hindu champ of sorts. However, there has been a flood of people like this author in our country. Our journalists fabricate stories, spit venom and appease minorities (read Muslims) every single minute. Now I don’t want a reputed name like NYT to do the same. Not at the cost of my nation’s reputation.  I am not a snake-charmer, don’t call me one.