Building bridges with food

Food, glorious food.  And how well food goes with faith.  In fact, our food is so often an expression of our faith.  The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has a food blog!  The recipe below is suitable any time of year but is,  in particular, a Passover recipe.

Offering a lamb dinner to the Hindu God, Ganesha? No, non, nyet. It's offensive.

Why it's offensive to offer a lamb dinner to the Hindu god Ganesha

The Hindu god Ganesha.
Anant Nath Sharma, CC BY-NC-ND

Jeffery D. Long, Elizabethtown College

A recent ad from the meat industry in Australia, seeking to promote lamb as a food that people from a wide range of religious backgrounds can consume, has given offence to many Hindus in Australia and internationally.

In Australia, the ad prompted a complaint by the High Commission of India. In the United States, Hindu organizations issued a statement protesting the airing of such an ad.

While the ad was initially released in Australia, it quickly made its way onto YouTube, where it had recorded over a million views at the time of writing.

The ad features a host of deities from various religions sitting down to a meal of lamb. These diners include Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, Kuan Yin (the Buddhist goddess of compassion) and Confucius, as well as Greek Gods Dionysus, Aphrodite, Thor, Isis and the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Prophet Muhammad is left out as his depiction is considered highly offensive to Muslims.

However, on this guest list is a highly revered and beloved Hindu deity, Ganesha, readily recognizable by his elephant head. As a scholar of Indic traditions, I can see why Hindus are upset.

Animal sacrifice and Hinduism

Vegetarianism is an important part of Hindu religious worship. To be sure, not all Hindus practice vegetarianism. According to a 2006 survey, only 31 percent of India’s population, home to the vast majority of the world’s Hindus, are vegetarian.

It is also true that there are some Hindu deities who are offered meat. Most famously, goats are regularly offered to the Hindu goddess Kali. Meat offerings are also not uncommon in Nepal, a majority Hindu nation.

But the vast majority of food offerings to Hindu deities today are vegetarian in nature. This author has witnessed, for example, offerings of gourds, cucumbers and bananas being made to the goddess Kali at worship services in both the U.S. and India, despite the fact that this goddess is considered to be fierce and is widely associated with animal sacrifice.

These food offerings have religious significance. After being reverently presented to the deities, they are distributed to worshipers as “prasad.” Prasad represents the blessing of the deities in return for the worship and devotion they have received.

Vegetarianism through the centuries

Hindu vegetarianism developed gradually. In ancient times there were Hindus who ate meat, including beef, and meat was part of many religious rituals.

Later texts condemn the violence in meat offerings. “Bhagavata Purana,” an ancient Hindu text from the Vaishnava tradition, for example, condemns violence against animals to feed oneself. In this tradition, the popular deity Krishna is also worshipped as the protector of cows.

“Manu Smriti,” considered to be the authoritative book on Hindu codes dating from roughly 300 to 100 B.C., also condemns meat-eating, saying,

“Whoever does violence to harmless creatures out of a wish for his own happiness does not increase his happiness anywhere, neither when he is alive nor when he is dead.”

Indeed, by the eighth century, religious rituals had become largely vegetarian. It was at this time that an influential scholar and reformer, Shankara, promoted the replacement of meat offerings to Hindu deities with vegetarian substitutes. Meat, due to its association with death, came to be seen as ritually impure.

Today, roughly 55 percent of Brahmins in India are vegetarian.

Who is Ganesha?

Coming back to the ad, what does it mean for Hindus when Ganesha is depicted in an ad serving lamb?

For many Hindus, Ganesha is a beloved deity who is considered to be the “remover of obstacles.” As such, he is invoked at the start of any venture (including worship offered to other deities). Most recognizable for his elephant head, he is the son of Shiva, the supreme being for the Hindus and his consort, Parvati.

A plate of ladoos, the favorite sweet of Ganesha.
v i p e z, CC BY-NC-ND

While at least one ancient text, the “Manava Gṛhyaśāstra,” suggests that at one time, Ganesha may have been offered meat, in contemporary practice this has been replaced with vegetarian food, the most popular of which is the “ladoo” – a delightful Indian ball-shaped sweet made from chickpea flour, usually yellow or orange in color. It is common for Ganesha to be depicted holding a plate of ladoos.

The chief rationale for vegetarianism is the principle of “ahimsa,” or doing no deliberate harm to any living being. This value is promoted not only in Hindu traditions, but among the Jains (a community that is almost exclusively vegetarian) and Buddhists in India.

While vegetarianism may not be universal among Hindus – nor have they always practised it – the ideal it represents is held in high regard. This makes an image of Ganesha sitting down to eat lamb jarring, to say the least, for many Hindus.

Jeffery D. Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Elizabethtown College

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Religion and Food: Dutch-British Transnational, Unilever, upsets Hindus

From Inside FMCG

Unilever upsets Hindus

September 4, 2017
Remedios Lucio

Hindus are seeking an official apology from Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman for the non-disclosure of beef in some of its products and an immediate product recall.

Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, said in a statement yesterday it was shocking for Hindus to learn that some of the Unilever food products, which they had been eating for years, might contain beef. He said it was not explicitly mentioned under the ingredients listed on the boxes or packages.

“Gelatin is made from animal protein. It is used in some of our products to provide a lower fat, lower calorie product with a pleasing texture and consistency. The protein of animal origin is processed according to high standards of purity. It is so highly refined, that it is no longer considered a meat product by the US Department of Agriculture. We cannot guarantee if the gelatin is derived from beef or pork,” according to Zed.

He has pointed out that the consumption of beef is highly conflicting to Hinduism. Cow is considered sacred and has long been venerated in their religion. The statement said it was a very serious issue for the devotees and is deemed offensive when they would come to know that they were unknowingly eating beef-laced food products.

“We’ve developed a clear and global approach to nutrition labelling, to help people make healthy food choices,” stated Zed.

He said it was difficult to comprehend why Unilever did not mention beef explicitly under the ingredients on the box or packaging when it was part of the product inside. Unilever brands include Knorr, Hellmann’s, Magnum, Blue Band, Becel/Flora and Best Foods. It includes also a product bearing the same name as Hindu deity “Rama”, which sells margarine, cheese, cooking fats and cream alternatives.

Sikhs at the 2015 Parliament of the World's Religions in Salt Lake City

Sikhs served up thousands of free meals at the #2015Parliament in Salt Lake City http://t.co/pb7MAGBa4m pic.twitter.com/ijjGQxVNI8

— Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) October 18, 2015

The Buddhist nun, Jeong Kwan - the Philosopher Chef.

Posted by Ballarat Interfaith Network on Saturday, 17 October 2015

Please read this post. 

It is accompanied by the most beautiful photography.

Celebrating the end of Ramadan on Saturday July 19? Do it the Aghan way....

Free kitchen in India run at the Sikhs' holiest shrine produces 200,000 flat breads and 1.5 tonnes of lentil soup daily.

Beside The Creek editorial comment: Reckon the Sikhs could feed the world no trouble at all. 

A story from Aljazeera:

Two hundred thousand rotis (Indian flat bread), 1.5 tonnes of dal (lentil soup) and free food served to 100,000 people everyday are what makes the free kitchen run at the Golden Temple in the western Indian city of Amritsar stand apart.

By all measures, the kitchen (called langar in Punjabi ) is one of the largest free kitchens to be run anywhere in the world. The concept of langars was initiated centuries ago by Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikh religion.

Sunday, November 17, was his 545th birth anniversary.

At the Langar, no one goes hungry - and everybody gets a hot meal regardless of caste, creed and religion. All Sikh Gurudwaras (places of worship) have langars, but the one at Golden Temple - Sikhs' holiest shrine - has little parallel.

“Anyone can eat for free here and on an average we serve food to 100,000 people. On weekends and special occasions double the numbers of people visit the langar. The langar never stops and on an average 7,000 kg of wheat flour, 1,200 kg of rice, 1,300 kg of lentils, 500 kg of ghee (clarified butter) is used in preparing the meal every day,” says Harpreet Singh, manager of this huge kitchen.

“The free kitchen uses firewood, LPG gas and electronic bread makers for the cooking and we use around 100 LPG cylinders and 5,000 kilograms of firewood every day,” he adds.

The kitchen is run by 450 staff, helped by hundreds of other volunteers.

Sanjay Arora, 46, from New Delhi, comes to volunteer at the langar two days a month. “This is seva (service) for me. I feel happy after doing this service. This is not just free food because here you forget all the differences that separate humans from each other,” he says.

Volunteers also wash the 300,000 plates, spoons and bowls used in feeding the people. The food is vegetarian and the expenses are managed through donations from all over the world. The yearly budget of the langar runs into hundreds of millions.

For more, please go here

where there are some magnificent photographs.

Poetry, Music, Food, and an Ancient Oak conclude The Tree of Life Project

To-morrow, Saturday - from 2pm-4pm, 

there will Poetry at The Known World Bookshop, 

14 Sturt Street, Ballarat. 

(a bookshop to die for!). 

Local published Ballarat poets Barry Breen, Ross Gillett, and Lorraine McGuigan will entertain you. The Known World is a wonderful experience so please take note of the books. You may even want to purchase one or two. 

And the TKW chatelaine Michelle does lovely coffee and bikkies too. All this is part of Ballarat Interfaith Network's The Tree of Life Project - Ballarat's all-inclusive, end-of-year, community-wide celebration.

Then it will be a dash over to the Ballarat Botanical Gardens for The Finale - singing from Like Honey (from Geelong), food, and perhaps a visit to the Druid's Oak planted in 1870!

See you there!