India, Feb. 2 -- I often receive suggestions from my readers about the subjects I should take up in my weekly column in this journal. Some are gently persuasive, some angry, some merely curious. Occasionally, one of them sends me a document and asks a simple question: Can this really be done in a constitutional democracy?

That was the case when a friend from Thiruvananthapuram forwarded to me a copy of an official order issued by the Collector and District Magistrate of Koraput, Odisha, on January 23. I found out his name was Manoj Satyawan Mahajan.

The order instructed all his subordinate officers to prohibit the sale of "meat, chicken, fish, egg etc and non-vegetarian food on the occasion of the 77th Republic Day celebration." I read ...