The northeastern Indian state of Assam has prohibited the eating of beef in public places including in restaurants and events.
This is an extension to an original rule that regulated the sale of beef near certain religious places like temples, the Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Wednesday.
But, the meat can still be purchased from shops and eaten within homes or private establishments in the state, according to Sarma.
Eating beef is a sensitive issue in India because cows are held in high esteem by Hindus who make up about 80% of the country’s population.
Several states governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – which is also in power in Assam – have over recent years, taken stern measures on cow slaughter.
About two-thirds of India’s 28 states, many of them governed by the BJP, have fractionally or completely banned cattle slaughter and beef consumption (though consumption of buffalo meat is legal in some of these places).
In several parts of India, cow vigilante groups have been accused of enacting the ban through violence and these accusations often lead to deadly attacks on Muslim meat sellers and cattle traders and Dalits (formerly untouchables), for whom beef is a foremost and cheap form of protein.
The sale and purchase of beef was banned in Assam in 2021 in areas where Hindus, Jains and Sikhs (all of whom don’t usually eat beef) live. That law also banned the sale of beef around temples.
Sarma also added that the new ban on public consumption will be added to that existing law.
This decision is coming days after India’s main opposition party Congress claimed that Sarma had used beef to win a by-election in Samaguri, a Muslim-majority constituency. This charge was denied by the BJP.
But congress legislator Rakibul Hussain said that by “offering beef” to voters, the chief minister had “betrayed” his own political party’s Hindu nationalist values.
Other political parties have also criticised the ban, saying it hindered with people’s right to eat what they want.
Selling and eating beef remains legal in some states, including Goa and Arunachal Pradesh, both of which are governed by the BJP.
