Food taboos vary by culture. Hindus are vegetarians, but view the eating of beef to be especially objectionable. The Chinese have a ancient taboo against eating beef because cattle have traditionally been the Chinese farmer's best friend.
It’s not true that Hindus are all vegetarians. Most of them will eat some meats and fish.
However, almost universally, they won’t eat beef. As I understand it, the Hindu people don’t ‘worship’ cattle, as some in the West believe; they *honor* cattle, for their usefulness and gifts to the diet and the earth: milk, butter, cheese, fertilizer.
-JT