Vegetarianism is a centuries-old custom among Hindus, Jains, and others in India. The government reckons India has some 220 million vegetarians, more than anywhere else in the world.
``Veg or nonveg?" is heard constantly in restaurants, at dinner parties, and on airlines. And the question has long been an unwritten part of the interrogation house hunters must submit to.
But it's becoming more open, and the effects more noticeable, all the more so in Bombay, which attracts immigrants from Gujarat and Rajasthan, strongly vegetarian states .
In constitutionally secular India, there's no bar to forming a housing society and making an apartment block exclusively Catholic or Muslim, Hindu or Zoroastrian . Vegetarians say they, too, need segregation. ``I live in a cosmopolitan society," said Jayantilal Jain, trustee of a charity group. ``But vegetarians should be given the right to admit who they want."
Rejected home-seekers have mounted a slew of court challenges to the power of housing societies to discriminate, but last year India's highest tribunal ruled the practice legal.
``It's just not fair. It's a monopoly by vegetarians," said Kiran Talwar, 49, a prosthetics engineer who has seen vegetarianism take over restaurants and groceries all over his childhood neighborhood.
Suburban supermarkets have been known to dump their nonveg foods overnight because of complaints from shoppers. ``We cleared our shelves of tuna tins and frozen chicken. We don't keep any nonvegetarian items now," said Neelam Ahuja, owner of the K-value supermarket.
While Indians are accustomed to housing societies demarcated by religion, separation by diet has meat-eaters worried. Bombay likes to think of itself as a city wide open to the world, and some worry that the vegetarian tide goes against that trend.
Vikramaditya Ugra, a young Bombay banker in search of an apartment, said vegetarian colonies were fine in neighboring Gujarat . ``That's in tune with local sensitivity," he said. ``But to impose this restriction is not right in a cosmopolitan city like Bombay."
Ravi Bhandari, a 68-year-old retired businessman, said he tried to lease his apartment to an Indian oil company, but the housing society bluntly nixed the deal.
``They said the first tenant is vegetarian, but who knows who will replace him?" said Bhandari, a vegetarian who confesses that he had a soft spot for chicken in his youth. ``I respect their concerns, so I didn't lease my flat."
