Varanasi’s order to relocate 350-400 meat and fish shops to the city’s outskirts has been justified through various shifting reasons— from cleanliness to pilgrim “discomfort.” Behind these explanations lies a familiar pattern of caste-coded exclusion, with serious constitutional questions left untouched.
On June 7, the Varanasi Municipal Corporation announced plans to shift approximately 350 to 400 meat and fish shops operating within the city limits to designated locations on the outskirts. The decision has been justified through a notably shifting set of reasons.
The shops will be shifted to Ramnagar, Sujabad, Ganeshpur, Avleshpur and Shivpur in the coming days according to the officials. Most of these places are located approximately 25-30 minutes from the city centre, which the residents say is not a practical solution, as it will increase the travel time and monetary cost for a simple daily purchase.
A meat shop trader told The Indian Express, “If a person wants half a kg of chicken, why should they travel several kilometres outside the city? This only creates inconvenience for consumers and losses for traders.”
A Reason for Every Audience
The official stated rationale has not been singular or stable. Mayor Ashok Kumar Tiwari said, “Varanasi is an important religious, cultural, and tourist destination. More than 1 lakh people come here for darshan every day. Visitors find it very unpleasant when meat and fish are being openly cut and sold on roadside markets.” As per a report in the Indian Express.
Authorities, meanwhile, believe that relocating these shops will help maintain ‘cleanliness’ and streamline municipal services while ensuring that traders can continue their businesses in regulated spaces. However, the Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Regulations, 2011 mandates valid licensing for all food businesses. Slaughterhouses and meat shops are specifically required to follow hygiene-related guidelines laid by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). Therefore, the reason that these shops are being relocated in the name of ‘cleanliness’ or ‘sanitation’ is difficult to accept.
The ‘Cleanliness’ Argument and Its Caste Undertones
It would take a considerable degree of wilful naivety to ignore that the connection being drawn between meat and cleanliness here has far less to do with biological hygiene and far more to do with Brahminical sensibilities that determines what is considered ‘pure’ and what is deemed unclean. In her article titled ‘Dirty food: racism and casteism in India,’ Dolly Kirkon argues how vegetarianism is associated with dominant-caste purity, while meat-eating is seen as ‘polluting’ bodies and associated with lower social status.
The stinky or smelly odour of cooking meat is also frequently used as a visual and olfactory register to categorise food as contamination. As a result, landlords in metropolitan areas frequently use this as a justification to label individuals as filthy which also gets linked to maintaining caste purity within shared living environments. This segregation has also seeped into various educational institutions, which maintain separate spaces for both kinds of eaters. Read the detailed reports by CJP and Sabrang India here and here.
In 2019, the Hindu-nationalist BJP government already banned the sale and consumption of meat and alcohol within a 250 m radius of all temples and heritage sites in Varanasi. The current relocation drive therefore fits into a broader, recurring tendency of the right-wing forces to use civic language to impose vegetarianism which disproportionately affect Muslims, Christians, Dalits, tribals, and even communities from the Hindu fold for whom meat is a dietary staple. Reported the Natinal Herald.
This is not, at its core, a debate about vegetarianism versus non-vegetarianism. But the conversation around meat, fish, or eggs on one’s plate is invariably pulled into disputes over the “religious sentiments” of certain groups and therein lies the problem. The stakes are especially high given that the livelihoods of meat shop owners, their families, and the many people who rely on meat as a food source are all bound up in this question. Rather than encouraging a grounded, rational discussion; right-wing upper-caste figures in positions of power have consistently sought to impose vegetarianism on everyone. In doing so, non-vegetarian food is branded as contaminated. The stubborn insistence of mainstream caste society on labelling food practices that fall outside the Brahmanical fold as unclean reveals the extent to which caste authority continues to reproduce itself through the politics of purity and civic order.
If the aim was to maintain cleanliness, residents have purportedly asked why the same civic zeal hasn’t been directed at Varanasi’s infamous potholes, that cause water stagnation during monsoons or at alcohol shops and intoxicant stores that cause far more visible public disruption.
Who Eats Meat?
The Hindu reported that contrary to the popular belief, over 90% of Indians consume fish, chicken, or meat daily, weekly, or occasionally. The dominant narrative that links aggressive meat consumption primarily to Muslims does not hold up against the data. The state-wise breakdown of the data is shown in the map below:
While Muslims account for up to to 28.82% of Varanasi’s population as per the 2011 census, the city is also home to largest Bengali community outside West Bengal and is often called a mini-Bengal. For the Bengali community fish and meat make up not only an integral part of the daily diet, but fish is also considered auspicious and is heavily featured in weddings, durgo pujo, and Navratri celebrations. As a result, the community has reacted to the relocation announcement with frustration and have described it as unnecessary, pointing out that traveling long distances for meat is simply not feasible. Some have even suggested that the policy may effectively coerce people into giving up meat altogether.
Constitutionality of Such Relocations
The Traders have raised serious concerns over accessibility, customer convenience and economic losses the relocation would cause. They contend that the customers are unlikely to travel to distant peripheral locations to buy meat as suggested by the civic body. Reported the India Express.
“If the concern is slaughtering and sanitation, then create slaughterhouses outside the city. Let
traders bring processed meat from there and sell it through proper enclosed shops with
refrigeration… That would address sanitation concerns without affecting consumers,” one meat trader told The Indian Express. He further pointed out that no consultation had taken place before the proposal was passed. “We have been paying fees and operating legally for years,” he said.
The Municipal Corporation has stated that consultations with affected traders will happen before implementation begins. However, what value does that assurance hold, when the Corporation has already unilaterally decided that the relocation will happen?
Another reason given by the municipal authorities is that annual closure of meat shops during the holy month of Shravan severely affects the livelihood of people engaged in the meat business. However, this raises another question, what is the constitutional standing of such closures in the first place? CJP had taken a deep-dive into the jurisprudence surrounding meat ban. The detailed legal resource may be read here.
The Preamble to the Constitution reads India is a ‘secular’ State. While discussing in detail the concept of secularism, in S.R. Bommai vs Union Of India (1994), the Supreme Court held secularism to be the basic structure of the Constitution and clarified that Indian secularism is not anti-religion, but rather a principle of religious neutrality. The judgment also affirmed that religion and politics must be kept separate and using religion as an instrument of state policy is deemed unconstitutional.
The right to food and the freedom to pursue a livelihood are enshrined in the Indian Constitution and protected in Articles 14, 19, and 21, which make restrictions on non-vegetarian food legally contentious.
Article 14 guarantees every citizen the right to equality, embodying the principle of equality before the law and barring unreasonable classification between persons. The relocation of meat and fish shops effectively creates exactly this kind of discrimination. Article 14 rests on two key tests- first, reasonable classification and second, intelligible differentia. In essence, any law that treats one group of people or objects differently from another must be based on a distinction that is logical, clear, and grounded in reason. The people actually impacted are small-scale meat vendors, whose daily livelihood depends on selling meat that may remain freely accessible through online platforms and restaurants regardless of the relocation.
Further, Article 19(1)(g) guarantees citizens the right to practise any profession or carry on any occupation, trade, or business, subject to the limits set out in Article 19(6). The Constitution states, such restrictions can be imposed only by law and on such reasonable grounds, which are found to be in the interest of the public. The Supreme Court in Hinsa Virodhak Sangh v Mirzapur Moti Kuresh Jamat (2008) held that butchers have a right to practice their ‘trade’ of meat it is their fundamental right under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution which is guaranteed to all citizens of India. Moreover, it also held that it was not a matter of the proprietor of the butchery shop alone but also several workers therein. Applied to the present case, the relocation of meat shops thus infringes not just on the right to trade of shop owners, but on the livelihoods of the many workers employed in these shops and, by extension, their families too.
Article 21 also encompasses the right to livelihood. In Olga Tellis v Bombay Municipal Corporation (1985), the Supreme Court said, “If the right to livelihood is not treated as a part of the constitutional right to life, the easiest way of depriving a person his right to life would be to deprive him of his means of livelihood to the point of abrogation. Such deprivation would not only denude the life of its effective content and meaningfulness but it would make life impossible to live.”
The right to self-determination in matters of diet is similarly protected under Article 21. In Shaikh Zahid Mukhtar Petitioner v. The State Of Maharashtra (2016), the Bombay High Court and in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), the Supreme Court declared an individual’s food habits protected under article 21.
In the case of Mohd. Faruk vs State Of Madhya Pradesh And Others (1969) the Court said, “The sentiments of a section of the people may be hurt by permitting slaughter of bulls and bullocks in premises maintained by a local authority. But a prohibition imposed on the exercise of a fundamental right to carry on an occupation, trade or business will not be regarded as reasonable, if it is imposed not in the interest of the general public, but merely to respect the susceptibilities and sentiments of a section of the people whose way of life, belief or thought is not the same as that of the claimant“.
In 2004, the case of Om Prakash v. State of UP challenged the constitutional validity of a ban on the public sale of eggs within the municipal limits of Rishikesh. The petitioners, who operated hotels and restaurants, challenged the municipal bye-law, arguing it violated their fundamental right to carry on trade and business guaranteed under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution. However, the Court noted that a major section of society in these towns desires a “vegetarian atmosphere” to be maintained for residents and pilgrims and defined reasonableness as a flexible concept that must be viewed through the lens of social engineering and balancing interests. Ironically, the Court referenced Article 51-A, stating that citizens have a duty to promote harmony and preserve India’s composite culture.
During the Constituent Assembly debates, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru described secularism as an ideal that demanded, above all, an act of faith from the majority community, who would need to demonstrate generosity, fairness, and justice toward others. Responding to the objections raised at the time, Pandit Laxmikantha Mitra clarified, “The State is not going to establish, patronize or endow any particular religion to the exclusion of or in preference to others and that no citizen in the State will have any preferential treatment or will be discriminated against simply on tile ground that he professed a particular form of religion.”
Dr. Sarvpalli Radhakrishnan while expressing his view on secularism in India had said, “Though faith in the Supreme is the basic principle of the Indian tradition, the Indian State will not identify itself with or be controlled by any particular religion. We hold that no one religion should be given preferential status, or unique distinction, that no one religion should be accorded special privileges in national life or international relations for that would be a violation of the basic principles of democracy and contrary to the best interests of religion and Government.”
One ought to ask is harmony, under Article 51-A, truly served by imposing one group’s ideology and preferences over the lives and livelihoods of many? The broader issue of how restrictions on non-vegetarian food represent a collision between imposed majoritarian faith and the Indian Constitution was explored by CJP in 2025. This may be read here.
The Wider Problem
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated issue. The situation is compounded by the fact that right-wing Hindutva vigilante groups routinely take the law into their own hands, making it a communal problem by targeting Muslim vendors with harassment, violence, and calls for economic boycott. In January 2021, for instance, Swami Anand Swaroop reportedly called for mass mobilisation at a Hindu Sabha gathering in Meerut, urging people to “boycott Muslims from social, economic and political bases so far that they themselves get converted to Hindu.”
In another instance, amid the economic devastation of the pandemic, Uttar Pradesh legislator Suresh Tiwari from Deoria reportedly told constituents “Keep one thing in mind. I am telling everyone openly. There is no need to buy vegetables from ‘miyans’ [Muslims].”
In 2022, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal threatened bus operators along the Saurashtra-Surat highway with consequences if they stopped at Muslim-owned eateries. That same year, in Karnataka, Muslims were barred from setting up stalls at temple fairs.
India has also witnessed a disturbing surge in violence carried out by cow vigilante groups, with Muslim truck drivers and traders bearing the brunt of attacks justified under the guise of curbing cattle smuggling or illegal slaughter. A detailed report by CJP documents how, between December 2024 and January 2025, attacks spread across states, including Uttar Pradesh. This can be read here.
Against this backdrop, the Opposition has dismissed the Varanasi relocation as unconstitutional, framing it as part of a broader strategy by the ruling establishment to enforce uniformity across society.
“Firstly, such a decision goes against the right to livelihood, which is the fundamental right to earn a living with dignity, and it amounts to depriving a large population of their means of survival. Secondly, the decision is part of a larger design to impose uniformity on the Hindu society. Bali chadhana [animal sacrifice] is a traditional ritual practised primarily within Shakta tantric traditions in many regions of India, at temples. So, imposing a particular decision on a whole city is wrong,” said Congress national secretary Shahnawaz Alam. As reported in The Hindu.
This is not a one-off. In April, the Haridwar Municipal Corporation similarly approved a proposal to ban the sale of raw meat within city limits, ahead of the Ardh Kumbh. The 45-day event is scheduled to begin on January 14, 2027, coinciding with the Hindu festival of Makar Sankranti. Among the justifications offered, the mayor contributed a notably creative one that open meat shops create problems with stray dogs!
If not for open calls to action by vigilante groups, taken together, these episodes point to a recurring playbook of civic and administrative measures dressed up in the language of hygiene, tradition, or public order. While these measures land hardest on Muslim, Dalit, and other minority communities, it is important to remember that their impact is not confined to them alone, since meat-eaters cut across all communities in India. It is the Brahmanical framework that selectively attaches this practice to minorities, using it as a tool to other them, even as the underlying questions of constitutionality, due process, and equal treatment for all affected citizens remain conveniently unaddressed.
(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this resource has been worked on by Tanishka Shah)
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