Why Bengalis won't tolerate attempts by Hindutva brigade to ban fish

The quintessential Bengali staple — maachh-Bhaat — is under threat. Or so would a section of saffron fundamentalists like us to feel and believe, if only they had their way.

Inspired by the BJP's drive in Uttar Pradesh to shut down illegal slaughterhouses, which the over-enthusiasts interpreted as a move to ban beef, fundamentalists all over the country are out to play havoc with our menu and food culture.

If a cow or any bovine creature cannot be consumed because of its association with Hindu god Krishna and because it's our "gau mata", in the same logic a group under the banner of All India Fish Protection Committee is trying to spearhead that fish, or matsya as in Sanskrit, is one of the avataars of lord Vishnu and hence it cannot be eaten.

The analogy, however skewed it might appear, is rustling up a storm in the Bengali kitchen.

They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. And saffron fundamentalists are beginning to believe that the route from the stomach leads straight to the head or to put it crassly — how you behave is what you eat.

Perhaps this is why the bovine family is being banned in the kitchen. What if the humans started walking on all fours, develops a herd mentality, sometimes, even venturing beyond tethers or worse did nothing productive but chewing away time as cud?

After all, who wants to be a cow? No matter how gentle, harmless, docile and domestic, the creature was and no matter how much in love, the saffron brigade had for them, being equated with a cow was like dehumanising, debasing the personality and worse still throwing a big question about the IQ and EQ of the person concerned.

So no matter how gau rakshaks are up in arms as the self-appointed protectors and vigilantes of the cows, they would least expect themselves to be called as one, even lovingly.

What about pigs? Pork, that is relished, worldwide and is a poor man's meat? As of now the saffron party hasn't given it much thought. May be because they are not bothered. Since pig meat doesn't augur well with the food habit of a particular community so no big deal, ban or no ban. It's not going to add to any brownie points.

But, as they say there is no room for complacency. Someone, definitely one with some smattering of knowledge in the Hindu upanishads and puranas, suggested that the pig or varaha was a reincarnate of Vishnu.

Going by the same thread of logic even matsya (fish), has bits and pieces of lord Vishnu. Memes in social media has come up to suggest that already.

In the Matsya Purana, Matsya is a half-fish, half-man avatar of Vishnu. A group — All India Fish Protection Committee — has already taken upon itself the daunting task of protecting the fishes. Words are around they will swoop down on the fish markets, once the truck strike is called off.

Hence, the axe looks to be dangling above the must-have item in a Bengali menu.

Bengalis, who swear by maachh-Bhaat (fish and rice) with an élan for negotiating the most difficult of bones in fishes, wouldn't for sure like the saffron fundamentalists to debone their menu and negotiate what they should eat and what they shouldn't.

Any attempt to peek inside a Bengali kitchen will proverbially raise a Lankakando (the Lanka episode from Ramayana).

Depriving the heart and of course the head and every part of human anatomy of what it craves for will make the guts burn with desire. A Bengali stomach, starved of what it desires (to eat), can just wreak havoc.

And at such times Hindu scriptures, Ramayana, Mahabharata or for that matter nothing, nothing, nothing can calm a Bengali down.

And then if one is looking to unite, polarise and tickle the sentimental Bengalis with dollops and dollops of dry lectures from scriptures, the Bengali psyche will revolt.

The veg-chewing saffron fundamentalists will try to reason out that too much of fish and animal protein in a Bengali diet is the cause. The cause of fire, phlegm and aggression.

There is no dearth of examples to go by, for instance closest hand is the head of the state, they would suggest.

True, what you beget is what you are, but what you are and how you behave certainly have no bearing on what you eat. Or, as they would like us to believe.