House Hunting in Mumbai? Being a Vegetarian Will Open Many Doors

Never mind pets, smokers, or loud music at 2 a.m. House hunters in this city increasingly are being asked, “Do you eat meat?”

If yes, the deal is off.

As the city of 16 million becomes the cosmopolitan hub of a booming Indian economy, real estate is increasingly intersecting with cuisine. More middle-class Indians are moving in, more of them are vegetarian, and the law is on their side.

“Some people are very strict. They won’t sell to a nonvegetarian even if he offers a higher price than a vegetarian,” said real estate broker Norbert Pinto.

Vegetarianism is a centuries-old custom among Hindus, Jains and others in this country. The government reckons India has about 220 million vegetarians, more than anywhere else in the world.

“Veg or nonveg?” is heard constantly in restaurants, at dinner parties and on airliners. And the question long has been an unwritten part of the interrogation to which house hunters must submit.

But it’s becoming more open, and the effects more noticeable, all the more so in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, which attracts migrants from Gujarat and Rajasthan, strongly vegetarian states, as well as followers of the Jain religion.

In constitutionally secular India, there’s no rule against 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 India’s highest tribunal last year 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 on posh Nepeansea Road.

“If you step out to eat, there’s nothing for miles because everything around is veggie,” he said.

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. “Many customers don’t like nonveg, so we stopped stocking it.”

K-value took the action even though it was in a heavily Christian neighborhood, and Christians in India aren’t known to have many vegetarians among them.

Although Indians are accustomed to housing societies demarcated by religion, separation by diet has meat eaters worried. Mumbai 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 Mumbai banker looking for an apartment, said vegetarian colonies were fine in neighboring Gujarat, a state dominated by vegetarians. “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 confessed that he used to eat chicken in his youth. “I respect their concerns so I didn’t lease my flat.”