A controversy has erupted in India over an advertisement by the country's poultry union that shows Mahatma Gandhi endorsing eggs.
India's federal ruling Congress Party is furious over the advert, saying the vegetarian "father of the nation" cannot be used as a "brand ambassador" for something he had denounced.
This outrage followed the release of pamphlets by Bromark Chicken, a subsidiary of National Egg Co-ordination Committee - a confederation of Indian poultry farmers - featuring a statement by the Mahatma in London in 1931 in which he declared that eggs were "vegetarian" food and good for the health of children.
"Gandhi had always protested against the consumption of non-vegetarian food and liquor by enlightened people. So depicting Gandhi as a brand ambassador for eggs is an insult to him and the entire nation," Raghu Sharma of the Congress Party in India's western desert state of Rajasthan said, demanding an apology for the advert.
In its defence the National Egg Co-ordination Committee cites Gandhi's address to the London Vegetarian Society in which he argued that "milk is an animal product and cannot by any means be included in a strict vegetarian diet. It serves the purpose of meat to a very large extent. In medical language, it is classified as animal food. A layman does not consider milk to be animal food. On the other hand, eggs are regarded by the layman as a flesh food. In reality, they are not. Nowadays, sterile eggs are also produced."
Committee officials also distinguished between "desi" or fertilised eggs and poultry eggs that are produced in incubators.
"While desi eggs are non-vegetarian, poultry eggs are vegetarian," Bhagvati Singh of Bromark Chicken said.
This fact he claimed was little known to millions across India where an overwhelming proportion of the predominantly Hindu population was vegetarian. They believe eggs contain life and eating them is equivalent to destroying it.
High caste Brahmins and ancient sects like the Jains are vegetarians to the extent of not even consuming onions, garlic or even potatoes as they consider all things growing beneath the soil "unholy" and hence, unhygienic.
Committee members said doctors around the world recommend one egg a day to growing children, pregnant women and mothers.
They said eggs had also found use in India's ancient Ayurvedic medicine where it is used in both raw and edible forms for healing joints and in hair and skin therapies.