'I do not agree with what you eat, but I'll defend to death, at the cost of the animal's death unfortunately, your right to eat it.'

Banning beef, says Zelda Pande, is about imposing fundamentalism in everyday life.

A long-standing colleague has spent the last year faithfully visiting every restaurant across Mumbai, big or small, that serves beef steak.

His logic when I asked him last year: Modi's government is coming. Very soon we won't get to eat steak anymore.

While I was amused then at his logic, I could only be surprised by his foresight when I read, bemused, that beef can no longer be consumed in Maharashtra.

Being a vegetarian -- I am a seriously staunch animal lover and definitely not a proponent of Hindutva-style shakahari-ism -- I am caught in a conflict.

It makes scant difference to me if they stop slaughtering just cows. It is just one poor, luckless creature among many being brutally slaughtered in a bad system.

All animals suffer, not just cows. Think of those sad-looking chicken, being carried upside down, tied to bicycle handlebars, to the market for certain, inhumane, death.

More important is to examine, in these modern times, the manner in which an animal is allowed/not allowed to live his life and how he is slaughtered, whichever the species.

And to look at how livestock is being unhealthily (for humans), industrially reared purely for ingestion by the 'higher' species and as well as for providing us milk (the bhakts, too, please note), eggs and wool.

Read more from the original source:
A vegetarian on why banning beef is wrong