Watch ‘Caste on the menu card’, the documentary on beef banned by film division

Mumbai: The organisers of an Indian film festival were pressured by the government to drop a documentary on the beef industry, amid a heated debate about beef eating in the majority-Hindu country. Officially secular India is the world's biggest exporter of beef, but the slaughter of cows -- which Hindus consider holy -- has long been contentious.

Organisers said the documentary, called "Caste on the Menu Card", was the sole film of 35 submitted to the Information and Broadcasting ministry they did not clear. The beef issue has become particularly divisive in recent months, with one Muslim man lynched over false rumours that he had killed a calf for food. Chandra said there was "nothing controversial" about the film, which looked at the beef industry in the western city of Mumbai -- home to a large Muslim community. Mumbai is the capital of Maharashtra state, which recently toughened its laws on beef, in a move that hit the city's mainly Muslim-run slaughterhouses hard.

The documentary delves into the idea of food as a site of exclusion by focusing on beef-eating practices in Mumbai. The film was to be screened on Saturday at the Jeevika Asia Livelihood Documentary Festival 2015 in Delhi. However, the filmmakers say that they were told by organisers that they would need a censor certificate.