By C.M. Paul
Itanagar, April 4, 2026: On Christmas morning in 1978, the people of Lekhi village near Naharlagun, then Arunachal Pradesh’s administrative capital, came together to mark their first Christmas* with ritual, reverence and feast.
At the heart of the festivities stood a mithun, the semi-domesticated bovine revered across the Northeast. Its ritual slaughter before the then Bishop Joseph Mittathany of Tezpur marked the beginning of the feast. VIPs were served fresh raw flesh — the prime portions — as a mark of honor and abundance.
For the hill tribes of Arunachal Pradesh, such rituals were not mere indulgence but a declaration of identity, a way of affirming community through food.
Directive to change the menu
Nearly five decades later, that memory collides with a new reality. On March 31, 2026, the Itanagar Municipal Corporation (IMC) issued a directive ordering hotels and restaurants to erase references to pork, beef, chicken and mutton from their signboards and trade licenses.
The order, framed under the Arunachal Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act of 2019, was justified in the name of “public decency” and “animal welfare.”
But in a city where meat is woven into the fabric of daily life, the directive has unsettled more than just menus — it has unsettled the very sense of belonging.
The IMC insists the move is about propriety. “Naming establishments with specific meat references is inappropriate and inconsistent with prevailing norms of public decency and animal welfare,” explained Datum Gadi, joint commissioner of IMC.
Yet to many residents, this language carries a troubling implication — that their long-standing dietary habits are indecent.
“If mithun meat is the pride of our feasts, why must its name vanish from our signboards? This is our culture, not indecency,” protested one restaurateur.
A resident quoted in The Arunachal Times was more blunt: “A vast majority here eats nonvegetarian food. This directive feels politically driven and intrusive.”
Opposition and Christian resistance
Opposition parties have seized on the issue, framing it as part of a larger project of cultural control. Congress leaders described the order as “politically driven and culturally insensitive,” warning that today it is signboards, tomorrow it could be sales or outright bans.
Regional voices have gone further, calling it “the thin end of the wedge” in a BJP-ruled state where Hindutva’s vegetarian ethos is increasingly visible.
Christian leaders, too, have spoken out. The Arunachal Christian Forum, which has previously resisted restrictive laws, sees the directive as another attempt to curtail freedoms.
“Food is part of our faith and fellowship. To call our diets indecent is to call our people indecent,” one leader remarked, drawing a parallel between the regulation of food and earlier efforts to regulate religious practice.
Symbolism and debate
The symbolism is stark. What was once celebrated openly — beef feasts, mithun rituals, pork markets — is now being pushed into silence.
The directive does not ban meat, but by erasing it from the visible identity of eateries, it reshapes what is deemed acceptable in public life.
For many, this is the first step toward controlling dietary habits in a state where tribal autonomy has always been expressed through food.
The debate now unfolding in Arunachal is not simply about signboards. It is about who defines decency, whose traditions are honored and whether governance should extend into the symbolic realm of food identity.
In a BJP-ruled state, critics see the directive as aligning with Hindutva’s vegetarian sensibilities, gradually conditioning communities to see their own practices as marginal.
For the people of Itanagar, the question is clear: If mithun meat is the pride of their feasts, why must its name be erased from the menu?
(*Editor’s note: The author was a witness, reporting the first public Christmas celebration in Arunachal Pradesh for The Herald weekly in Kolkata.)
(Image supplied)