Shreepati Arcade at Nana Chowk, south Mumbai, entered the city’s imagination in 2002 as an engineering and real-estate milestone: at 45 floors and around 161 metres, it was then the tallest occupied residential tower in India. Yet, the detail that has outlasted the height record is not architectural. It is social. The tower’s developer, R C Chaturvedi, has said that the apartments were sold only to vegetarian families, primarily from Jain, Marwari, and Sindhi communities, and that a handful of interested non-vegetarian buyers from a minority community were asked to step aside in the name of establishing a “vegetarian society”.“It became the USP for selling the flats,” recollects Chaturvedi. “We realised that most of the clients showing interest were vegetarians. There were only four clients from a minority community, all non-vegetarians, who were keen to buy the apartments in the tower. But we requested them and explained to them that this would be a vegetarian society. They respected our decision.”More than two decades later, the building’s identity as a veg-only zone remains intact. The story is not so much an aberration as an example of a longrunning Mumbai pattern: housing societies and neighbourhoods as spaces where personal preference, community power, and public claims of equality are continually negotiated, and often contested.
Food, friction… flashpoints
Few issues make that friction as visible as food. Vegetarianism can be a matter of individual taste, but in many communities, it is also a marker of ritual practice and group identity. In Mumbai’s property market, it has periodically become a screening device — sometimes openly stated, sometimes silently enforced — determining who can live where, and at what cost.A recent controversy illustrates how contemporary marketing can amplify an old practice. A real estate agent posted a video promoting a high-value flat in Tardeo — priced at around Rs 6.5 crore — attached to a ‘veg-only’ condition. The clip went viral, then triggered criticism from political parties and social media users, after which the agent apologised. The speed of the backlash made the episode seem like a new flashpoint, but property market observers know how veg-only buildings, and clusters have existed for decades. The difference today is that the condition is more easily recorded, shared, and debated publicly, rather than remaining an informal understanding between brokers and resident committees.
Changing localities
Mumbai’s “vegetarian clusters” have historical roots that are partly demographic and partly economic. Localities like Walkeshwar and Babulnath in south Mumbai, and parts of Ghatkopar on the eastern suburbs are often cited as areas where communities observing strict vegetarianism have consolidated over time.Upscale South Mumbai areas of Walkeshwar and Nepean Sea Road are even said to have no non-veg restaurants anywhere. Jashwant Mehta, a Walkeshwar resident, said some housing societies there have Jain temples and are home only to vegetarians. “In fact, demand and prices in such societies are higher than in buildings with better amenities,” he said.A Malabar Hill resident said that in some housing societies, where the majority is vegetarian, it is informally understood that the sale of flats is only to vegetarian families. “However, such conditions are not put in writing. This practice is prevalent in many areas of Mumbai,” the resident said.Some of this clustering followed familiar urban patterns: groups migrated for trade and employment, relied on community networks for housing and finance, and preferred to live near places of worship and businesses aligned with their customs. Once a neighbourhood acquired a reputation — whether for Jain temples, specific festival calendars, or food norms — successive waves of residents reinforced the same identity, making it harder for outsiders to enter even without any explicit written rule.Notably, the practice is not limited to enclaves stereotyped as ‘Gujarati’ or ‘Jain’. Even traditionally Marathi stronghold areas like Dadar, Lalbaug, and Kalachowki have housing projects that cater exclusively to vegetarian communities.
The insidious veg ‘logic’
There are multiple motives behind insisting on vegetarian-only residency, and they do not all carry the same weight. Some residents argue from the standpoint of religious discipline, ritual purity, and sensory comfort: they do not want the smell of meat in corridors, the possibility of cooking odours entering ventilation shafts, or shared spaces being used for non-vegetarian catering. Others frame it as a lifestyle choice akin to rules about noise, pets, or smoking. In this view, a building is shared environment, and residents can seek neighbours with compatible habits.But the same rule can also operate as a proxy for excluding particular communities. A property agent said vegetarianism is sometimes insisted upon to keep out members of minority communities, many of whom are presumed to be meat-eaters.The conflict sharpens in buildings with shared facilities, because common spaces force residents to negotiate collective norms. Many larger complexes now include community halls, clubhouses, banquet spaces, and sometimes society-run cafeterias or in-house restaurants. Architect Moayyed Fatehi describes a common arrangement: a residential complex may be multicommunal and harmonious on the surface, yet impose parameters on food in shared spaces.Fatehi’s own example from a luxury complex in Worli, Central Mumbai, indicates how these rules can be designed as a compromise: residents are free to cook and eat what they like inside their private flats, but society-controlled kitchens and banquet facilities remain veg-only. “Non-veg food cannot be cooked in the common banquet hall, but it can be served if you get it from outside,” he said.
Societies’ gatekeepers
Developers, too, play a role in shaping these norms. Many do not impose strict dietary restrictions, because it narrows the buyer pool and complicates sales. Yet, reports suggest some have begun reserving one wing or a couple of floors within a larger complex for vegetarians, a move that transforms social preference into a physical partition.Brokers and agents become key intermediaries in this ecosystem, because they accumulate informal knowledge about which buildings will reject which buyers. Over time, many learn to pre-filter enquiries. If they believe a society will object to minority communities, single women, bachelors, or openly nonvegetarian tenants, they may avoid showing those listings to those clients in the first place. This creates a parallel property market, where the burden falls on excluded groups: higher search costs, repeated rejections, more time spent negotiating, and sometimes a “minority premium” in the form of higher rents or prices in the smaller set of buildings willing to accept them.
The legal angle
The legal picture remains contested. One approach, said housinglaw specialists like advocate Anil Harish, treats a housing society as an association of like-minded members. Under this reasoning, people may choose to contract with those who share their norms, and a society may regulate collective life much as it might regulate commercial use of apartments, structural alterations, or other activities affecting neighbours. From that vantage point, a vegetarian-only condition is defended as an expression of freedom of association and contractual choice.The opposing approach holds that cooperative housing societies are not purely private clubs; they are quasi-public institutions managing essential urban resources — housing and neighbourhood access — within a framework meant to be open and non-discriminatory.A 2005 Supreme Court judgment — Zoroastrian Cooperative Housing Society Ltd vs District Registrar, Cooperative Societies (Urban) — is the leading case on the issue. The Zoroastrian Society bylaws restricting membership exclusively to members of the Parsi community, was challenged when a Parsi member sought to transfer his plot to a non-Parsi builder. “The apex court reversed the lower court order and upheld the validity of the society’s by-law. It held that there was nothing in the Gujarat Cooperative Societies Act, 1961 or Rules that precluded a society from restricting membership to persons of a particular community, persuasion or belief. The society’s “community-based membership restriction was upheld”, and the attempt to force admission/transfer contrary to the bylaws did not succeed.But advocate Vinod Sampat has argued that open membership is foundational: societies cannot discriminate on grounds of caste, creed, religion, or sex, and restrictions that prevent someone from buying a flat violate fundamental rights tied to residence and equality. “Article 15 of the Constitution prohibits discrimination by the state, and arbitrary exclusion by private bodies/societies violating public policy,” he said.“A housing society’s role is strictly administrative, limited to clearing dues and recording transfers. They cannot superimpose discriminatory rules or reject valid sale deeds,” Sampat pointed out, adding that many restrictions imposed by office-bearers amount to an abuse of power. This argument treats discriminatory gatekeeping as an unlawful barrier to equal participation in city life.
Pan-India phenomenon
Veg-only societies span regions and cities, reinforced by kinship and community ties and promoted by a preference for dietary common ground among neighbours. So, in Kolkata, with its love of machher jhol and kosha mangsho, several buildings and societies have quietly remained as vegetarian enclaves, shaped largely by Gujarati, Jain and Marwari communities. In South Kolkata’s Bhowanipore, the constituency now represented by CM Suvendu Adhikari and formerly by ex-CM Mamata Banerjee, the coming together of veg-only societies occurred over the decades.Till the mid-20th century, Bhowanipore was mainly an upper-middle class Bengali neighbourhood with a sizeable Sikh presence. Decades of migration and clustering have made veg-only societies a common feature so much so that some properties in Bhowanipore are sold or rented only to families that follow a strict vegetarian diet.Same is the story in Hyderabad. Cosmopolitan on the outside, conservative in pockets, the Telangana capital is well used to landlords in some traditional neighbourhoods preferring to rent out their homes only to vegetarian tenants.While Hyderabad’s western corridor, particularly Gachibowli, Hi-tech city, Kondapur, Nallagandal and Tellapur, has a relatively fluid rental market where food habits rarely become a major consideration, the situation is different in older neighbourhoods like Lingampally in Kacheguda, Chikkadpally, Badichowdi, Gujarati Galli, Gowliguda, Chappal Bazaar, etc.
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“Our main objective is to keep our property clean and maintain its sanctity. We do not want nonvegetarian food to affect the atmosphere or purity of our home. Ultimately, we give the property based on trust, as we cannot keep monitoring what tenants buy, order or bring into the house,” said a landlord in Chikkadpally.So, Shreepati Arcade’s veg-only identity — once marketed as a unique selling proposition — now sits within a larger story: a reminder that a city’s skyline does not just reflect wealth and engineering, but also the boundaries — sometimes visible, often invisible — that residents draw around belonging.(With inputs from Sudipto Das & Sunny Baski)
