On the 15th of April this year, various student organizations of OsmaniaUniversity organized a Beef Festival on campus. The festival became controversial even when the idea was first mooted leading to a tense atmosphere on that day. Some student organizations, mainly the ABVP pelted stones on the organizers and even set fire to a vehicle. A student was stabbed by another group of students. Though the tension has since subsided, the discussion and arguments continue to feature in the news media and on social networking sites. In the meantime, some students’ organizations in other universities like JNU, New Delhi have announced that they will hold a Beef and Pork Festival in the coming days.  However, this issue is by no means a new one. Over the past two decades, the hostels in the universities of Hyderabad have witnessed intense debate, argument and altercation over the nature of food cooked, served and eaten in the university hostels. The absence of beef in the hostel menus has been particularly contested.

In 1997 when the mess secretary decided to serve beef in the hostel of  the then Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages [CIEFL (now EFL University)], this move was welcomed by a significant group of students. These included a number of Bengali and Malayali students, Muslim and Christian students, a handful of dalit students, and those upper-caste students who were progressive and therefore supported this practice despite their not eating beef themselves. But there was also stiff opposition from other upper caste students and staff organizations, besides the refusal of the head cook to prepare beef. Therefore, the students themselves cooked beef and served it for a period of one month.  The mess committee changed in the following month and removed beef and pork from the menu.

In 2006 the annual students’ festival called Sukoon in the University of Hyderabad became the occasion for the question of beef to be raised once again. The dalit students demanded setting up of a food stall serving beef, arguing for representation of their culture as part of the festival. The permission to establish a stall was denied by the university administration stating that it would create caste and communal tension. But the students managed to set up the stall with the support of some students’ organizations. The ABVP opposed it claiming that beef eating was against “Indian culture”. However, the University acceded to the demands of the majority of the students/organizations and permitted the setting up of the stall. In 2010, an event of mass eating of beef cooked on the campus was once again organized at the English and Foreign Languages University (earlier CIEFL).  this event was disrupted by students opposing it who resorted to stone pelting and vandalization of the food prepared.

One fundamental question that immediately comes to our mind is—why do dalit students want to organize beef festivals in the campuses and why now? Another related question is, why do mainly right-wing upper-caste students object to beef-eating? Although modern higher educational spaces like universities belong to every citizen of this country, they were dominated and controlled by the upper castes for a long-time. It is only in the last two decades that universities have begun to welcome the entry of dalits, adivasis, backward castes and other marginalized sections of our society.  As long as the university spaces were dominated by the upper castes, their culture was hegemonic in all aspects of university life, including the kind of food that was served in hostels. Only those items of food that have been traditionally consumed by the Brahmins and non-Brahmin upper castes – varieties of vegetarian food, chicken and mutton items, were served in the hostels. Although dalits also consume all varieties of food that are consumed by the upper castes, they are also traditionally habituated to eating beef on regular basis.  Indeed, for dalits, who cannot otherwise afford to buy expensive varieties of vegetables and meats, beef is the cheapest and most nutritious food available. When dalit students enter universities and hostels, they miss their traditional food. Interestingly, this is not the case with the upper caste students. What is being consumed in their homes is also being served in the university hostels, and so they do not miss their food at all. In other words, for the upper caste students whether they are at home or in universities, it is the same in terms of food. But for dalits their entry into universities is the beginning of not only the loss of their traditional food but also the experience of the stigma and humiliation attached to the practice of eating it. Over a period of time, this pain of losing of their traditional food turns into deprivation, which, in turn, may negatively affect the overall performance and well-being of the dalit students in universities.  It has been common experience of several dalit students in the Hyderabad campuses that whenever they feel like having a ‘good meal’ (that is a meal with beef), they go to the Kalyani Biriyani hotels that serve beef biriyani and other varieties of beef dishes. The Kalyani Biriyani hotels are located in several pockets in around Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Alternatively, these students get raw beef, cook it themselves and eat in their hostel rooms.

The changing student composition in universities has allowed certain questions to be raised about the nature of such public institutions and our so-called secular politics.  Demanding that beef be served in the hostel, setting up beef stalls as part of cultural events, publicly consuming beef and in fact, celebrating it as a festival ought to be, therefore, seen as a political challenge to vegetarianism and cultural assertion of Dalit and other marginal groups.

There is yet another important dimension to the recent beef festival at Osmania. It is the dalit and marginalized students of the University who are at the forefront of the movement for separate statehood for Telangana. These students are seeking not just a territorial Telangana, they are seeking a just and representative Telangana (Saamaajika Telangana). What do they mean by just and representative Telangana? A just Telangana is one in which people are treated with respect and dignity and there are no discriminatory practices against the marginalized; and a representative Telangana is one in which dalits and other marginalized groups are given due representation in all the public spaces of Telangana state. The Beef Festival is then a challenge addressed to the ABVP group which is involved actively in Telangana struggle but which opposes dalit cultural assertion. The entire contestation is, in that sense, a contestation for the democratization of public spaces and public culture.

To shift our focus a little—let us examine the arguments that are offered in opposition to the consumption of beef in hostels and university campuses. One argument claims that beef eating is against Hindu culture, even Indian culture. This, of course, begs the question whose culture is defined as Hindu culture or Indian culture. Historians have asserted that eating the meat of cows was a common practice among all castes, including Brahmins in ancient India. They have also pointed out that vegetarianism became a “Hindu” virtue only after the challenges thrown up by Buddhism and Jainism. And further, it is during the 19th century nationalist mobilization in north India, that the “cow” becomes a holy symbol of Hindu religion and a rallying point. They have also pointed out that the cow protection movement targeted Muslims who were believed to be the main consumers of beef.

But contemporary dalit assertions critique the right-wing opposition to beef eating on several different counts. Firstly, they offer their own history of oppression by the Hindu caste order as primary evidence. The hierarchical caste order compels them to sacrifice cows and buffaloes in temple rituals, to eat the meat of the sacrificed animals and to make footwear from the hides of these animals. In many places, dalits have refused to conduct these sacrifices. They also speak of the ways in which they were forced to remove the carcasses of dead animals in the villages. Secondly, dalits also talk of their intimate relation with cows and buffaloes and with cattle in general. While, the upper castes only venerate the “cow”, it is the dalits who clean, feed, nourish and take care of the animals in sickness and health. As the madiga labourer in a Kannada story by Kumbhara Veerabhadrappa argues it is the right of the dalit to receive the dead body of the cow. So, when his Gowda landlord buries his dead cow, the madiga digs it up in the middle of the night and claims his “right” much to the shock and disapproval of the landlord and the bewilderment of the police called upon to arrest the “criminal”. The dalit critique thus complicates the claims of hurt Hindu sentiments by interrogating what constitutes Hindu culture and by foregrounding their own pain and humiliation when beef eating is seen as a sign of their backwardness and inferiority.

Another argument usually put forward by those opposing beef-eating is that the university hostel is a common public space and therefore, the preferences of the majority of the students ought to be respected. We have already discussed this as indicative of the hegemony of an upper-caste culture which describes itself as modern and secular. Here, we want to make the further point that today vegetarianism is no longer as hegemonic as it used to be even a decade ago. At least in all the metropolitan cities, including Hyderabad, big and small restaurants serving meat are more visible. With the arrival of multi-cuisine, international restaurants, the variety of foods, both vegetarian and meat-based has definitely increased. Nevertheless, beef is available only in select restaurants which are either very cheap or very expensive. So, while there is now a market for a wide variety of meats in the public domain, the hostel mess is sought be preserved as a domain of some putative national culture!

A pervasive false belief is that beef is not nutritious and that it is, in fact, ‘contagious’. Those opposing the practice of beef eating often use this argument. Therefore, in 2008 some Dalit students from University of Hyderabad wrote a letter to the National Institute of Nutrition seeking clarification on this issue. They received a reply from the then deputy director, Veena Shatrugna stating that beef is a non-contagious and nutritious food. As Shatrugna has argued elsewhere the hegemony of vegetarianism has affected not just hostels but the nation as a whole because the national nutrition policy itself does not acknowledge widely-consumed and inexpensive meats and eggs as sources of nutrition that could be distributed to a chronically undernourished population.

Furthermore, when beef-eating is framed simply as a “religious” or “cultural” issue, the economic dimension of this issue which is extremely significant remains unacknowledged and unaddressed. There is an entire industry and trade that is dependent on the beef business. The meat is sold as food and various parts of the animals are used in making leather products, cosmetics, medicines, musical instruments and so on. A significant number of Hindus and Muslims are involved in the meat industry both domestic and export. And several dalits and poor Muslims (especially Qureshis) are involved in the meat business at different levels. The cow protectionists and animal rights activists seldom take into account the interests of these sections. Neither do they take note of the fact that anti-slaughter laws have led to a lot of illegal and secret slaughtering and have increased the cost of beef.

It is a range of such issues that the selections in this broadsheet address, interrogate, critique and grapple with. Unlike earlier issues of the broadsheet, we have put together here different genres of writing—not just academic or journalistic articles but fiction, poetry, experiential accounts, visual material and even menus of some hotels and recipes of subaltern foods!

The Editorial Team

We would like to thank M.A. Moid, A. Srinivas, R. Srivatsan, A. Suneetha, L.V. Lakshmi, N. Manohar, Veena Shatrugna, Susie Tharu, B. Venkat Rao, Gogu Shymala for invaluable discussions, translations and critical inputs. We would also like to thank Skybaba, N.K. Hanumantiah, Ankur Betageri and Du. Saraswathi for permission to reproduce and translate their writings.