Tag Archives: beef festival

Identities, Politics, Right watch

Observing Human Rights by Defending Food Rights of Dalit-Bahujans and Muslims: Sudarshan, Osmania University

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Guest post courtesy DALIT CAMERA

[On 10th December 2015 Osmania University students celebrated Beef festival to mark Human Rights Day in a novel fashion. BJP MLA Raja Singh few days before stated he would kill or get killed to protect the cow. It is strange because the Osmania Uuniversity students had only said they would eat beef which is already available in the market, they never said they would kill cow, but the BJP/VHP was spreading rumours that OU students are killing cow. Print and Electronic media gave a full coverage for the BJP/VHP activists). With threats pouring in from different corners (Police, Judiciary, Administration) OU students organized the Beef festival, and in their support EFLU, TU, UoH organized beef festival. Most importantly TVV organization ate beef in Delhi Red Fort.

Why did OU students hold the Beef festival? Here we present an interview of Sudarshan, key organizer of the Beef Festival in OU for the larger public. The interview was conducted and transcribed by Dharma Teja.]

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Culture, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Right watch

Resisting Culinary Fascism: Nabanipa Bhattacharjee

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 Guest post by NABANIPA BHATTACHARJEE

At the end of last month (March 2012) students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi under the banner of a recently formed group called the New Materialists (NM) organized a public meeting to debate the issue of (dis)allowing certain kinds of food – beef and pork in particular – on the campus. The group, as one of its members Suraj Beri said, intended to petition the university administration to allow the sale of beef and pork in the canteen(s), and fight for inclusion of the same in the hostels’ menus; it was a struggle, as the NM declared, against the Brahmanical dietary impositions on Dalits and other minority community students of JNU. In fact, Francis (JNU students of the 1990’s would remember the man from Kerala) who ran a canteen at the basement of the School of Social Sciences II did serve beef curry on Saturdays, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that there would be more than a mad rush for that. However, he was pressurised – by Hindu right wing groups and other similar forces – to stop the sale of the “forbidden” food, and the canteen was eventually closed down.

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