The illogic of meat bans

This week, several municipal corporations in Maharashtra banned the sale of meat or forced meat shops to close on Independence Day. In neighbouring Telangana, the Hyderabad civic body directed beef shops and slaughterhouses to remain closed not just on Friday, but also a day later for the Hindu festival Janmashtami.

The authorities in Kalyan-Dombivli – one of the municipal corporations in Maharashtra – claimed that it was a routine action taken to ensure public order, and to observe important national occasions.

But the directives sparked outrage in the state, which is ruled by a Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition, with the Opposition describing the authorities’ actions as “food policing”.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray said that “what we eat on Independence Day is our choice” and that the authorities had no right to interfere.

“Instead of imposing vegetarianism on the citizens, focus on improving the terrible roads and broken civic services,” Thackeray said. “Citizens will eat whatever they want to – vegetarian/non-vegetarian.”

Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) MLA Jitendra Awhad claimed that Maharashtra’s ruling coalition was “fuelling a vegetarian-non-vegetarian divide” after having “exhausted other social controversies”.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis pushed back, claiming that the state was not interested in knowing what people eat. But he defended the directives saying that they were issued in line with...

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