Opinion Meat ban on Republic Day? In Odisha, trading rights for notions of purity and pollution
The order of the District Administration of Koraput, Odisha, speaks to deeper biases, and disturbing bureaucratic mentality
Banning the sale of non-veg in Koraput, in which over 50 per cent of the district’s total population belong Scheduled Tribes and around 15 per cent are Scheduled Castes as per the 2011 census, exposes the myths of 'bureaucratic rationality'. (Express Photo: Neha Banka) By Rama Naga
The order of the District Administration of Koraput, Odisha, issued on January 23, directing all Tahsildars (Revenue Officers), Block Development Officers (BDOs) and Executive Officers to ban the sale of “meat, chicken, fish, egg and non-vegetarian food” on Republic Day, is an assault on the public’s constitutional right to food and to exercise choice. It was later withdrawn after widespread criticism. The order is not an aberration but a symptom of something deeply rooted in the mindset of those exercising power.
The most dangerous part of the diktat was conflating constitutional rationality with a religious irrationality. Republic Day is not a religious event. It marks the beginning of a new nation based on justice, liberty, equality and fraternity.
The Constitution has placed a great deal of importance on the role of the administration and executive institutions, such as the civil service, in nation-building. B R Ambedkar, while introducing the Draft Constitution in the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948, termed these administrative positions as “strategic posts”. He said, “… it is perfectly possible to pervert the Constitution, without changing its form by merely changing the form of the administration and to make it inconsistent and opposed to the spirit of the Constitution”. Therefore, those in the administration are responsible for disseminating the spirit of the Constitution to the people, rather than going against it.
Banning the sale of non-veg in Koraput, in which over 50 per cent of the district’s total population belong to Scheduled Tribes and around 15 per cent are Scheduled Castes as per the 2011 census, exposes the myths of “bureaucratic rationality”. It reveals the mainstream stereotypes towards Adivasis and Dalits. Civil society always teaches “civility” to Adivasis and Dalits, especially in a region like Koraput.
There are reports of such a prohibition on selling non-veg on Independence Day as well. The Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation also issued an order to close all the meat shops on Independence Day last year. Such orders passively transmit notions of purity and pollution rather than rights. It’s to establish that eating or selling non-vegetarian on such days is “inauspicious”.
The core of the Republic is celebrating the rights of people, which were restricted during the colonial regime. Instead of working on the everyday issues of the people, the district administration is more concerned with “prompt actions” to ensure that chicken, fish, egg, etc., are banned. Such an order seems more the province of vigilantism to enforce certain religious-cultural ideas than bureaucratic, state-sanctioned action. While we celebrate the 77th Republic Day, we need to remind ourselves of the difference between the rule of law and the rule of the mobs, and between a civil servant and a vigilante.
The writer is a native of the Koraput District of Odisha and has a PhD from the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He currently works as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at GITAM University, Visakhapatnam
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