“Millets, morels and soft power: Absurd BRICS menu outrage missed Bharat’s culinary and diplomatic triumph”, Firstpost, 15 Sep 2026.
“I wasn’t planning to write on the Brics menu controversy, but then the debate moved to such an odd corner that one felt compelled to respond. It seems there has been quite a storm in the dinner plate over the delectable plant-based menu served at the gala at Bharat Mandapam.
Planned around India’s regional cuisine with millets the star of the show, there was mushroom galouti from Awadh, khandvi from Gujarat, morels from Kashmir, poriyal, tomato-lentil soup (Thakkali Belle Saaru) from the South, paneer from the North, Old Delhi fruit cream, phirni, that tells a tale of culinary migration from Persia — the thoughtfully designed menu took guests around the world on a culinary journey across the length and breadth of India.
Such a creative effort of marrying regional ingredients with culinary heritage deserves praise, not charges of casteism. A flippant comment or a joke or two over the lack of animal protein in the menu is understandable, but it is absolute bananas to call the showcasing of the richest vegetarian cuisine in the world that speaks of India’s incredible diversity “Brahminical Hindu-coded food preference” or “dietary despotism.”
The Congress expectedly weighed in, with Rahul Gandhi, unironically, proclaiming that “80 per cent of Indians are non-vegetarians”. It may not have struck the Gandhi scion how self-defeating his argument is. Let’s focus on the Leader of the Opposition’s statement excluding everything else…………”
Read the full article at Firstpost.
