New Delhi: The operation was covert. Tankers containing Vanaspati ghee were intercepted by the Punjab police on a highway. They suspected beef tallow in the ghee. Fifty raids were conducted on the factories of Vanaspati dealers across Punjab.
The beef panic had reached Hindu kitchens. This was more than four decades ago. This time, the culprit was a Jain business family, which sold Jain Shudh Vanaspati, an immensely popular brand of the 1970s and the 1980s.
Politicians were up in arms. Then Union Minister of Commerce VP Singh was on the defensive. Three members of the Jain family were absconding, and the Punjab superintendent of police flew out to apprehend them a foreign country. An already raucous monsoon session of Lok Sabha went into a tizzy when the startling revelation was made.
In 1983, an Indian household staple had been contaminated with what was then primarily socially illicit—beef tallow. There could be nothing more blasphemous.
Jain Shudh Vanaspati Limited, one of the industry’s biggest players, was accused of selling pasty, treacly animal fat under the guise of ghee. And they were selling to the Mittal Group’s Bhatinda Chemical Limited. The sale and use of tallow involved a web of companies and interests, and these were the two in the line of fire. ThePrint has reached out to both companies and this report will be updated once they respond.
Outside the Jain Shudh Vanaspati Limited office in Delhi, protests were staged by religious organisations. At a press conference, Managing Director Vinod Kumar Jain denied the allegations. “Technically it was not possible,” he said, according to an August 1983 report in the Hindustan Times.
Members of the Jain community, upholders of ‘purity’, had committed the ultimate sin—all in the name of profit.
The people’s outrage mutated into quick action on part of the government. It was interpreted as a different kind of betrayal. Members of the Jain community, upholders of ‘purity’, had committed the ultimate sin—all in the name of profit. The import policy was amended to ensure that animal-sourced tallow could not be used by manufacturers.
Decades before the Tirupati Temple laddu crisis, it was Shudh Vanaspati Ghee that sent shockwaves across the Hindu community.
“I would like to make it clear that under the REP [the license by which an exporter is permitted to import goods] and advance licenses, beef tallow could not come,” VP Singh said. “Beef tallow has already been banned and even mutton tallow is being closed.”
Consumer outrage
Rage mutated into quick action. According to another report in the Hindustan Times, the blanket ban was issued as a salve to soothe “public misgivings.”
“People were enraged. And they knew—where there’s smoke there’s always fire,” said Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary-general of Consumer Unity and Trust Society. “The consumer is entitled to know what’s going into their bodies.”
Consumer rights were still in infancy in India, rights-groups were yet to come of age and the Consumer Protection Act was still three years away from implementation. Channels of protest were unorganised, but anger was palpable.
“The [jain] community was up in arms. Owners of the company had made donations to a Jain charity. But they were so incensed that fans donated by the family were ripped from the ceiling,” told consumer-rights activist Sri Ram Khanna to ThePrint.
Much like today, righteous anger was the flavour of the season—even if modes of expressing it were different. While there wasn’t much mass mobilisation, there were a handful of protests by Hindu organisations, and those who lay down in opposition at Jantar Mantar.
“There was a sense of dismay, of being fooled. There was annoyance at organisations whose job it was to protect public food and safety,” said Dilip Cherian, a communications professional who was then a journalist at Business India, a magazine.
Anger and polarisation wasn’t dictated on religious lines, in Hindu-Muslim binaries. Instead, Cherian said, it was seen as “a desecration of what was considered, at that time, an ethical Hindu life process.”
In the eyes of Congress, beef inroads were due to lapses in the import policy of the Janata Party government.
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The Jain trauma
Jain Shudh Vanaspati Limited had imported 12,000 tonnes of beef tallow in the name of soy-bean oil. When they were questioned at customs, they simply had to make a few calls. They paid a fine of Rs 1.09 crore and got away. Subramanian Swamy, a member of Parliament at the time, alleged that the Jains had their fair share of political connections. “This is amazing,” he remarked.
The government then issued orders that whatever remaining tallow was lying at the ports would not be cleared by customs. At least 10,000 tonnes, according to MP VK Pandit, lingered on.
It was a free-fall from grace for the Mittals and the Jains. At the time, the Jain companies had a turnover of Rs 100 crore. In India Today, journalist Prabhu Chawla referred to Vinod Kumar Jain as a “major opposition target because of his close links with the opposition party.”
On 1 September 1983, Dwarka Das Mittal, Rajinder Mittal, managing directors of Bhatinda Chemical, were denied bail. Bhagwant Singh Sidhu, Punjab’s Advocate-General, reiterated the gravity of the offence. “This matter is of a very serious nature, as Vanaspati containing beef tallow was sent out of the factory in a fraudulent matter,” he said.
Despite the big names, the case wasn’t completely insulated from its religious tinge. According to a report in The Tribune, the local Gau Rakshak Samiti was also represented.
While action was swift—due to a heady mix of political pressure, the CBI, and the fact that Jain had been arrested by the National Security Agency (NSA)—the investigation faced major setbacks. A few weeks later, on 26 September, the Delhi High Court ruled that there “was no material” to prove that Jain was a major accomplice of the Mittals.
Jain had claimed he was a long-suffering Tihar inmate, a victim of a system that was working against him. When he returned to his office in Delhi’s Connaught Place, he declared that he wanted to be left alone to work through his trauma.
However, reality might have been slightly different—or Jain’s conceptions of trauma. “Better Class for Jain in Jail,” reads a headline from the time. The Delhi High Court had informed jail authorities that Jain was entitled to exercising his right to choose when it came to jail food. If the management was unable to procure what he wanted, food could be brought for him from home.
“Eventually it (the case) leads to public boredom, and then even legal reporters stop reporting it.”
Other than once a week meetings with his family, Jain was also given the luxury of a mosquito net. But unfortunately for him, as Prabhu Chawla wrote in India Today, “the young tycoon’s time [was] entirely at the disposal of the CBI.”
Despite the case having crores of Hindus as stakeholders, according to Mehta, the public lost interest as the case lost its frenetic energy. “The CBI did not find enough to keep them [the perpetrators] in jail,” he said.
From the front pages of the newspapers, the case meandered into the political pages. Then, it went to the business pages. Until finally, said Cherian, it made its way into the commodities pages—hardly prime newspaper real estate.
“It took years for the judgments. The Jains could afford a good bunch of lawyers and a series of dilatory tactics were made,” he said. “Eventually it leads to public boredom, and then even legal reporters stop reporting it.”
The Mittals were sentenced three decades later, that too after being acquitted by a lower court—and the case had been more or less ousted from public memory. There were 11 accused in the case, but the rest died during the span of the proceedings.
Tale of tallow
During Parliament proceedings, Subramanian Swamy claimed to have asked representatives from the US and Australia, who were then the largest producers of tallow, whether they exported to India. After they responded yes, Swamy followed up on VP Singh’s declaration—that only mutton tallow was imported—and was told that 99.9 per cent of their imports were beef.
“Average prices of mutton tallow were 9.8 to 12.7 per cent higher than other fats, including beef tallow,” wrote Khanna in the Economic and Political Weekly. “This naturally resulted in the preference of beef tallow as it was cheaper and both were near substitutes for their end uses.”
In the eyes of Congress, beef inroads were due to lapses in the import policy of the Janata Party government.
“Obviously some people have exploited loop-holes in the import-export policy framed during the Janata regime,” said VP Singh.
The Modi government’s first major decision was to end restrictions on the export of buffalo tallow.
Khanna’s study found that during the first two years of the Congress (I) government, which came to power in 1978, there was no rise in the imports of beef tallow. Although, in 1980-1981, he said, there was a fall in prices of both types of tallow [beef and mutton], and both saw a corresponding increase in imports.
The next two years were also witness to a ‘canalising’ of all kinds of tallow-imports, as facilitated by the STC (State Trading India Corporation Limited). This free reign came to an abrupt halt with the blanket ban on foreign trade by the Congress—which remained for over three decades.
The reinstatement of the foreign trade of tallow came toward the tail end of 2014, from unexpected sources. According to a report in The Hindu, the Modi government’s first major decision was to end restrictions on the export of buffalo tallow.
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Sanctity of Tirupati laddus
While the debate on tallow-ethics rages through political circles and a furious public, there’s a clear caveat. Ghee is clarified butter, which makes it a dairy product. It’s already animal fat.
Now, only the Karnataka Milk Federation’s Nandini ghee is going to be used for the Tirupati temple laddus.
“It comes from milk which is an animal product. And in terms of consistency, it’s better to adulterate with tallow, which is cheap,” said a senior journalist. “Tallow use has gone up, as have exports. But it’s still cheaper.”
The chances of loose ghee sold in large tins and wholesale quantities being adulterated are high. Vanaspati, a hydrogenated vegetable oil, is solidified to mimic the properties of ghee. According to the journalist, what is sold in ghee tins, is in all likelihood 10 kgs of desi ghee, 2 kgs of palm or vegetable oil, and 3 kgs of tallow.
After Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu hit out at the former Jagan Mohan Reddy government, and tallow once again became a taboo word, the Tirupati Temple underwent a ritualistic sanitation. A four hour prayer took place to cleanse the temple of its sins. The executive officer of the temple trust, J Shyamala Rao, said the rituals were meant to “restore the sanctity of the laddus”.
This need for ‘purification’ has also crossed state boundaries, with the trust announcing that only the Karnataka Milk Federation’s Nandini ghee is going to be used for the laddus.
The furore continues. The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) announced a nation-wide movement to free temples from the shackles of the government. According to them, these issues of ‘corruption’ are widespread in states wherein there’s government control over temple trusts.
“The problem is in the wholesale market—in hotels, restaurants, sweet-shops, markets,” said the journalist. “If you pick up a sample, it’ll almost definitely be adulterated.” In consumer packs, such as what is sold by Amul and Mother Dairy, there is no adulteration, as their ghee production isn’t too high, and they also use up much of their surplus fat. To make ice-cream, for instance.
The cold economics of it don’t make it easy to mark the end of adulteration. While in its latest avatar, the debate is religious—back in the day, it was more personal. Women were outraged.
“The indignation was coming from women, from the housewives. And they were being heard because they were the ones using the ghee,” said Cherian.
Yet today, consumer consciousness is much higher, with labels being high on the priority list. Back in the day, Dalda, the company that’s often conflated with vanaspati, had to place a fence around their products—reassuring their consumers of its ‘purity’.
Food historian Pushpesh Pant remembered the1980s as a simpler time. “Conversation was amiable and focused on taste, cost, options, and the palate. Now, the climate of intolerance has turned even mutton, chicken, and fish into something demonic,” he said.
However, consumer-rights groups like CUTS continue to fight for clearer, more transparent labelling. But as for the scandal itself, this one doesn’t always make the cut in terms of social and political churn. There’s still room for more.
“On a scale of 10, I’d give the Tirupati laddu issue a 3/10. And Jain Vanaspati ghee a 8,” said Khanna.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)