ABSTRACT
In the context of mobilization for Hindu nationalism, processes of stereotyping a familiar other, the neighbourhood Muslim, play a significant role in fomenting experiences that confirm stigmatizations. These experiences concern the figure of the Muslim that arouses a phantasmagoria of fear, disgust and anger. Fear surrounds the ‘Muslim’ as she invokes the possibility of terrorism and calls for heightened security measures. Disgust is the register of a radical identification with a new form of hyperbolic vegetarianism. Anger, however, is what allegedly fuels the violence of the masses. This article investigates enunciations and representations that relate directly to consumption and production of meat in concrete quotidian practices: vegetarianism and rejection of animal sacrifice. It argues that the affect of disgust for meat has become an important cultural relay in the vegetarian politics of the state. By insisting on an identity formulated in the language of non-violence, it simultaneously renders permissive identification with violence.
