Paneer by another name is... anything

India's war on linguistic inflation has finally reached the refrigerator. FSSAI has proposed reserving the word 'paneer' for, well, paneer, the startlingly old-fashioned substance actually made from dairy. Manufacturers of vegetable-fat impersonators may continue selling their pale cubes, but get another name, guys. This is sensible but philosophically troubling. Modern commerce has been moving magnificently in the opposite direction: if something looks approximately like something else, appropriate its name. Indian 'rum' isn't rum but a concoction made from molasses. 'Chocolate' may involve remarkably little cocoa. 'Fruit drinks' can sometimes maintain a relationship with fruit roughly comparable to that between a lovely aerial photo of Kolkata and Kolkata.

Why stop there? Soon, a restaurant might serve cauliflower as mutton, explaining that protein is a colonial construct. Words, however, were invented partly so that ordering X did not result in Y arriving at the table. India already conducts an exercise in semantic disorientation through the renaming of roads. FSSAI's paneer proposal, therefore, strikes a small blow for this cultural practice by insisting that the label on a thing should describe the thing! Otherwise, one day, we shall order paneer, receive sunflower oil, complain. And discover that 'refund' now means 'thank you'.