Kashmiris eat a meat dish called Harisa in Srinagar in December. They eat dishes like Harisa, which is made with lamb, as they believe it will keep them warm during the harsh winters. (Reuters)

Srinagar, Dec. 19: You can shove the yummiest of beef steaks under their nose, but the people of Srinagar city wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole.

For centuries, this predominantly Muslim city, where people are voracious meat eaters, has maintained a unique tradition of saying no to beef.

Although beef is widely consumed by Muslims the world over and is even part of the staple diet of rural Kashmiris, it has never found a place on the menu of this 1.3 million-strong city.

“Beef was never consumed in Kashmir, not even during the Sultanate period (14 th century onwards),” said Kashmir’s noted historian Fida Mohammad Hasnain.

“In fact, the eating habits of Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits have always been similar. Both are voracious mutton eaters.”

It was during the Sultanate period that mass conversions to Islam took place. “But despite conversions, people never took to beef,” said Hasnain.

Today the situation is different in rural Kashmir, where people prefer beef to mutton. But Srinagar city remains the same. “Even if people from the city attend marriages in villages, the host makes special arrangements for mutton dishes for them because they know they don’t eat it (beef),” Hasnain said.

A recent survey by Srinagar Municipal Corporation has revealed that around 95 per cent people here do not consume beef. “Just five to seven people, that too belonging to the lower strata of society, consume it. They take it because it is cheap,” said health officer Shafqat Hussain.

“We have found that the city consumes over 2,200 sheep or goat daily. Against this, the animals slaughtered for beef are a few dozen. There must not be more than 20 shops selling beef in the entire city.”

Sources in the municipal corporation said the little beef that is sold is served in the guise of mutton by restaurant owners and barbecue shops.

A kg of beef sells at little more than half the price of mutton. “Otherwise, the consumption would have been less,” an officer said.

Abdul Ahad Trali, who sells beef at Dalgate, said there has been some increase in the number of beef-eaters in the city. “Earlier, very people here would take it but now I find some customers.”

Before militancy started in Jammu and Kashmir, there was not even a single shop selling beef in Srinagar city. Selling the meat of bovine animals, including ox, bull, cow and calf, is a cognisable offence in the state.

“This is the only state in India where selling beef is a cognisable offence,” said health officer Hussain. Under Section 298 A of the Ranbir Penal Code, any violator is liable to imprisonment of 10 years and a fine.

Farooq Ahmad Kaloo, deputy director of the animal husbandry department said beef shops had come up because of the lawlessness.

“Even today, those people who take beef only consume bulls and buffaloes and not cows,” he said. “The main reason that people here do not take beef is that they think it is not good for health.”

The slaughter of cows and other bovine animals was banned by the erstwhile Dogra rulers, a practice continued after 1947.