The paper starts with a comparative discussion of food in Hindu religion and law and in Indian democratic polity, examining the general question whether the Hindu system possesses at all a substantive cultural basis of its own for addressing the goal of 'food-accessibility-for-all'. Though democracy demands egalitarian 'public policy' and 'public action programmes' for food for all its citizens, the Hindu system frames the issue within its language of karma, debts and duties, and yields some moral-practical (if socially weak) formulations and four specific 'notions of shared sustenance'. But today, as dharma, history, caste, and modern India entangle with one another, there is no clear social direction, and the issue of 'right to food' also remains correspondingly muddled.
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