When Tradition Becomes Transaction
Peerzada Masarat Shah
Yesterday, in the same Qamarwari butcher shop where I have bought meat for fifteen years, the price for one kilogram of mutton was quoted at ₹730. Across the city, it is selling for ₹750–₹800, even though the All Kashmir Butchers Union fixed ₹740 and the administration capped it at ₹750. The gap between paper rates and counter prices has become ritual itself.
This is not just inflation. It is a symptom. Eid al-Fitr — the “Sweet Eid,” the festival that ends a month of restraint, reflection, and empathy — has been quietly colonised by a single, expensive protein. What was meant to be a celebration of breaking fast with gratitude has morphed, in parts of Kashmir, into a status-laden feast where the absence of mutton feels like an incomplete Eid. The real story is not the price. It is what that price reveals about us.
The Decontrol That Changed Everything
Since the Centre revoked the Jammu & Kashmir Mutton (Licensing and Control) Order of 1973 in 2023, pricing has been left to “market forces.” Every Ramadan and Eid since has followed the same choreography: demand spikes, supply is blamed, rates soar, and enforcement vanishes. Last Ramadan alone, Kashmir consumed mutton worth over ₹252 crore. That is not celebration. That is an economic event disguised as devotion.
Butchers cite genuine pressures — live sheep shortages, transport costs, middlemen. Consumers cite helplessness. Both sides are speaking past each other because the deeper question remains unasked: Why has one dish become non-negotiable for a festival whose founder never made meat mandatory for Eid al-Fitr?
Post-Mortem of a Society’s Purpose
Ramadan teaches scarcity, patience, and compassion for those who have less. Eid al-Fitr is supposed to be its joyful payoff — a day of prayer, forgiveness, new clothes for children, and Zakat al-Fitr (the compulsory charity of food) so that even the poorest can feast. Instead, we have inverted the lesson.
We emerge from restraint and immediately demand excess. We fast for Allah and then pressure the market in the name of “tradition.” We lecture about sabr (patience) for 30 days and then complain when the butcher does not show mercy. The festival that should humble us has been repurposed to display our purchasing power.
This is not uniquely Kashmiri, but in Kashmir it hurts more because our cuisine — the grand Wazwan — already centres meat. Rogan Josh, Tabak Maaz, Goshtaba: these are not just dishes; they are identity. Yet identity, when frozen in time, becomes a cage.
Four Examples That Show Another Way Is Possible
- The Sweet Eid the World Still Celebrates In Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, Eid al-Fitr is literally called “the Sugar Feast.” Tables groan under kahk (date-filled cookies), maamoul, and sheer khurma — not mountains of mutton. Meat appears, but it is not the measure of joy. Families measure success by how many neighbours receive a plate, not by how many kilos of meat they can afford.
- Kashmir’s Own Forgotten Simplicity Elders recall the 1960s–70s when mutton cost ₹6–14 a seer. Eid meant phirni, saffron kehwa, fresh roti, and whatever meat was available — often shared. No one felt Eid was “incomplete.” The same families who now demand ₹800 mutton grew up celebrating with far less and felt far richer.
3.The Chicken-and-Vegetable Eid That Actually Happened
In several Srinagar households this year, women have quietly switched to chicken biryani or nadru yakhni (lotus stem in yogurt gravy) and loaded the table with dum aloo, haak, and sheer khurma. One friend in Hyderpora told me: “My children didn’t even notice the missing mutton. They noticed we visited three poor families and sent Eidi to ten children.” The laughter at that table was louder than any Wazwan I have attended.
- The Zakat al-Fitr Test
The Prophet (peace be upon him) made fitrana obligatory before the Eid prayer so no one goes hungry. Imagine if every family that can afford ₹800 mutton instead bought two kilograms, cooked it simply, and sent half to a widow’s home in downtown Srinagar or a labourer’s family in Batmaloo. That single act would revive the festival’s original purpose more powerfully than any government order.
Consumer Power Is the Only Regulation Left
Markets listen to demand, not editorials. If even 20 per cent of middle-class families in Srinagar decide this Eid to cook chicken, fish, or a lavish vegetarian spread, the price of mutton will correct itself within days. Butchers are not villains; they are responding to the signal we keep sending: “We will pay anything for mutton on Eid.”
Tradition is not a fossil. Kashmiri cuisine survived famines, migrations, and political storms because it adapted. The same genius that invented goshtaba can invent a festive haak-tsaman or dum aloo worthy of Eid. The warmth of family, the laughter of children in new clothes, the takbir in the air — none of these require a ₹800 kilogram of meat.
Eid will still be Eid. The mosques will fill at dawn. Grandmothers will still distribute Eidi. Neighbours will still exchange trays. The only thing that might change is our collective realisation that the true feast was never on the plate. It was in the restraint we practised for thirty days and the generosity we choose to show on the thirty-first.
This Eid, let us give the market a different signal. Let us prove that Kashmir still knows the difference between a festival and a transaction.
The mutton will still be there next year — perhaps at a saner price. But the soul of Eid? That is ours to reclaim, or to lose, one overpriced kilogram at a time.
