Beef row: Non-vegetarianism is as much a part and parcel of life in some parts of the country as vegetarianism is in others

This isn’t a story about just beef — after all, it was mutton in that refrigerator in Dadri, right? Rather, this is a story about not-sosubtle attempts to tell a healthily omnivorous nation — see data of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) on this page, if any doubts persist — that the meat, fish and eggs it eats is not on India’s cultural menu; that you have to abstain from meat when a community you do not belong to goes on a fast — never mind that it is not that community that is insisting on it but perhaps the municipal corporation in the area you reside that has chosen to do it on their behalf; that if you want to move in as a tenant in one of Maximum City’s high-rises, you’d need to leave your meat and fish-eating instincts at the gate; and that if you break that unwritten rule, you could be manhandled — as at least one police complaint against residents of a housing society in a Mumbai suburb alleged.

A year ago, a grain trader from central India reportedly sent a letter to the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, expressing his anguish over the tamasic behaviour of students in IITs who were “practising non-vegetarianism”.

The solution: separate dining halls for the vegetarians and those students who preferred to be lulled into a state of inertia (tamas) courtesy of meat, onion, garlic and the like. That letter was reportedly forwarded to the directors of all 16 IITs in the country.

A year ago, that would have seemed a one-off case. But when meat bans and politics in the name of beef follow, and when even frying fish in your home in the country’s commercial capital becomes an ‘offence’, you have to wonder: is the onus now on the non-vegetarian to defend his choice of food?

In 2011-12 — the latest data put out by NSSO — well over a third of India’s states spent more on meat, fish and eggs than they did on vegetables, on the basis of monthly per capita expenditure.

The rural parts of at least 13 states, including West Bengal (Rs 131.3), Andhra Pradesh (Rs 125.1) and Tamil Nadu (Rs 110.5), spent more on meat, fish and eggs than what rural all-India did on vegetables (Rs 95).

And if you consider urban expenditure, some 14 states, including Kerala (Rs 235.3), Andhra (Rs 133.2), Tamil Nadu (Rs 126.8) and Jammu & Kashmir (Rs 128.6), spent more than Rs 122 (the all-India urban monthly per capita spend on vegetables) on non-vegetarian foodstuff.

If you prefer to take those figures with a pinch of garlic, ET Magazine figured the proof of the pie may well lie in the eating, which is why a team of writers brought together a buffet of reports from all over the country — from Jammu and Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, from the metros of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata (and Gurgaon, too), and from Nagaland in the northeast. In all these cities and states, meat and fish coexist peaceably with vegetarian fare. The refrain from all over is pretty much the same: please don’t tell us what to eat, and what not to.