A Christian leader has joined others in condemning a provincial government’s decision to ban the consumption of beef in restaurants and public places in a northeastern Indian state.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma of northeastern Assam state on Dec. 4 announced the ban following a cabinet meeting on the previous day.
Sarma, who belongs to the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the existing Assam Cattle Preservation Act of 2021 will be amended. New provisions will be inserted to enforce the ban in the Hindu-majority state, bordering Bangladesh.
“We have decided that beef will not be served in restaurants and hotels and at public functions,” he said.
Under the existing law in Assam, cattle slaughter and sale of beef are banned in areas where Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs are in the majority and within a 5-km radius of a temple or a monastery.
“It is unfair to ban beef consumption” as it affects the right to consume food of one’s choice, Reverend D.C. Haia Darnei, president of the United Christian Forum of Dima Hasao in Assam state, told UCA News on Dec. 5.
Darnei said the government should have taken the people into confidence before enacting the law. He said several tribal communities in the state prefer beef as it is their staple diet and easily available.
“What is the alternative now?” he asked.
Chief Minister Sarma said the government’s decision was prompted by allegations from opposition Congress party leaders that his pro-Hindu party had won a local body poll by “offering beef” to voters in a Muslim-majority constituency.
Priyanka Chaturvedi, an opposition lawmaker in the Rajya Sabha (upper house of the Indian parliament), accused Sarma of scoring “brownie points” with the ban.
Chaturvedi warned that the decision would increase the communal divide between Hindus and Muslims in the border state.
Christians make up 3.74 percent and Muslims 34 percent of the state’s 31 million people. Assam is the biggest of the eight northeastern states.
Opposition lawmaker Iqra Hasan from BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, where a ban on the consumption of beef is already in force, said the interference in people’s personal lives “is against the provisions of the constitution.”
Beef is widely consumed in India’s three Christian-majority states – Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya — which are located in India’s northeast.
Many provincial governments, most of them led by Modi’s party, have banned the consumption of beef, citing the holy status of the cow in Hinduism.
source : uca news