The meat of the matter

Bans on certain kinds of food marginalise communities and threaten people’s livelihoods

Since the population of Gujarat comprises about 15% Scheduled Tribes, nearly 10% Muslims, 7.5% Scheduled Castes and about 50% Other Backward Classes, and migrants — most of whom don’t have an ideological aversion to meat unlike the Jains and Vaishnavas — we can safely say that a predominant share of the population is meat-eating.

Recently, the BJP-ruled civic bodies in Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar and Junagadh along streets and footpaths on the ground that selling such food in the open “hurts religious sentiments”. Subsequently, hundreds of food carts or stalls dotting the roads selling non-vegetarian food were shut by the authorities. To say that Gujarat is a vegetarian State is akin to saying that the people of the State are teetotallers since prohibition is in place. That liquor freely flows everywhere under the watch of the state is an open secret. Similarly, people regularly consume non-vegetarian food but increasingly not in the open for fear of censure.