Indians Are Outraged that Mumbai Is Banning Meat for Four Days

As any aspiring televangelist will tell you, strongly held beliefs may be well and good, but forcing those convictions on the uninitiated and unwilling masses is just that much sweeter. It's the religious equivalent of puff-puff-pass.

So, all this considered, it should come as little shock that Mumbai has decided to ban the slaughter, sale, and consumption of meat for four days this month.

The meat ban, which begins on Thursday and extends for four non-consecutive days, comes following a demand by the influential and strictly vegetarian Jain community, according to Reuters.

One of the most auspicious phases of the Jain calendar, Paryushana-Parva, begins this week. Officials say the Jains have asked for ban as a sign of respect for their religion, which preaches non-violence to all living beings. The temporary ban will prohibit the slaughter of buffaloes, cows, goats, and hogs, but not fish or poultry.

The tiny Jain community makes up only two percent of the population in Maharashtra, the Indian state in which Mumbai is located. This fact has other residents of Mumbai angrily taking to Twitter with the hashtags #banistan and #meatban.

Twitter user and Mumbai resident @SimplyAasiya had this to say in regards to the forthcoming ban: "#beefban #meatban is #India turning #fascist… Can we eat air????? Or even that will be banned now #Banistan"

Others agree. Lavanya Chhabra, a Mumbai resident who owns an air freshener company, said, "The Jains are entitled to their own beliefs and can peacefully follow what they believe in. But they should not be in any way involved in imposing a ban that affects others."

And a representative of the Bombay Suburban Beef Dealers' Association, Mohammed Ali Qureshi, put things in a less diplomatic manner: "They should not be in any way involved in imposing a ban that affects others." He went on to add that "Jains do not eat onions and garlic as well, so tomorrow is the government going to ban those items also?"

The region's minority Jainists may have had enough influence to affect the ban, but India on the whole is actually the world's largest beef exporter and home to around 300 million cattle.

In India at large, anti-beef-eating rhetoric has increased of late. Some attribute the movement to the ascent to power of Prime Minister Narenda and his Hindu nationalist party, which came into power last year. But Muslims, Christians, and lower-caste Hindus all eat beef. And India's Muslim population is growing fast; it is expected to be the country with the largest population of Muslims in the world by 2050, according to Pew Research.

So Banistan may not be a thing of the future. But in the meantime, Mumbai will be going light on red meat for a few days this month.