The Majority Is Hungry: In 2012, student groups made a dietary—and political—demand: beef on the menu

"It is largely taken for granted that Hindus regard the cow as holy and therefore will not eat beef. Cow slaughter is banned in many states; communities open to beef-eating make do with meat from buffaloes or old bulls. Now and then, a riot will break out over moonshine beef or over vigilantes intercepting cows or calves being transported for slaughter. In much of India, the holy cow is ima­g­ined as being threatened by beef-eating Muslims. The sanctity of the cow is erroneously but vehemently traced back to the Vedas; in fact, Vedic rituals involved cow sacrifice and beef-eating. For pointing this out in his book, The Myth of the Holy Cow, D.N. Jha, a professor of history, ended up fearing for his life. In India, the emotional connect with the cow cannot be overstated.

It was in this charged atmosphere that, in 2012, students on some campuses made beef a rallying point and demanded its inclusion in hostel and canteen menus. It was a battle of cultures, between a dominant minority that had succeeded in imposing a food regimen on generations of students and a vocal majority seeking to overturn it.

At Osmania University in Hyderabad, political scientist and activist Kancha Ilaiah joined a band of students in organising a “cultural festival” to demand beef on the hostel menu. It provoked an outrage. But there was also a lot of confusion. What beef were the students—many of them Hindu, but from the obcs or the Dalit castes—demanding? Was it meat from buffaloes or cows? As beef biryani was served to 200-odd people, ABVP activists stormed the place, triggering a full-scale battle between two groups of students, one for beef and one dead opposed to it. The university became a pitched battleground for contending cultures.

The demand was considered sacrilegious by the dominant upper castes, not necessarily in a majority but whose considerable clout in educational institutes has ensured a dietary regime that did not care about the diversities that characterise the country. For those deman­ding beef, it was a battle for acco­rding recognition where it was long due. Similar “food festivals” were organ­ised at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University in the capital. But there were many who wondered what the fuss was all about. After all, in Ker­ala, West Bengal and the Northeastern states, beef is readily available. On a tangential note, Ilaiah even points out that buffalo milk is consumed more than cow milk, and so the buffalo has greater utility than the cow, and yet it is not protected against slaughter..." (Continue reading.)