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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

The right to eat beef

By: Melvin Durai

Posted: 06/9/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

I did a double take when I recently visited a new East Indian restaurant in downtown Winnipeg and found beef curry on the buffet. Were those really cubes of beef in that rich red curry?

Most customers wouldn't raise an eyebrow -- after all, this is the land of the steak and burger, where few people can last a week or two without some form of beef landing on their plates. But beef is a rare sight in Indian restaurants, even in the West. You're more likely to find chicken, lamb or goat. Restaurant owners are loath to risk offending their Hindu patrons, many of whom consider the cow sacred -- an animal to be revered, not devoured.

Restaurateurs, of course, have every right to decide which meats, if any, they offer their customers. But what about university cafeterias? Should they take beef off their menus to appease Hindu students? Well, if that happened in Manitoba, it would trigger protests from other students, perhaps even a march to the legislative building to demand the "right to eat beef."

That's sort of what's happening at a few universities in India, except Hindu students are the majority there and the calls for the "right to eat beef" are coming from within the religion. Student groups from the historically oppressed Dalit caste (once known as Untouchables) are demanding that beef be served on campus, where menus typically exclude beef and pork in deference to Hindus and Muslims, respectively. While upper-caste Hindus eschew beef, it has long been a source of inexpensive protein for economically and socially disadvantaged people, among others.

A group of students at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi recently formed what they call the "JNU Beef-Pork Eating Campaign."

Students at Osmania University in the southern city of Hyderabad went even further: They organized a beef festival in April. About 1,500 students, as well as some professors, ate beef biryani (a fragrant rice-and-meat dish) beside a campus dormitory, saying they were asserting their cultural identity and opposing the "cultural nationalism" and "food fascism" of the upper-caste Hindus.

What one writer described as a Rosa Parks moment resulted, predictably, in violence, with a group opposed to beef-eating on campus clashing with the beef-eaters.

The students' efforts to add beef to the menu could have major ramifications in a country where the protection of cows is a highly charged religious as well as political issue -- used by some to perpetuate violence against (and claim purity over) beef-eating Muslims, lower-caste Hindus and others.

"To deny the right to eat their traditional diet is the denial of the right to live with dignity and without fear," Murali Shanmugavelan recently wrote on the website of the U.K.'s Independent newspaper.

The slaughter of cows is banned in three Indian states and partially banned in at least 10 others (where bulls and buffaloes aren't protected). But despite such laws and other pressures, beef consumption is a reality in India. The meat is widely available in some states, and in others, where restrictions exist, it's sold secretly like illegal drugs. The underground trade has made India a major exporter of beef, much of it smuggled into neighbouring Bangladesh.

The Indian constitution calls on states to protect the cow, but it's a directive that's hardly practical. Farmers have little use for under-producing cows and none of the country's handful of billionaires has stepped forward to create a chain of Old Cows Homes. But don't put it past Narendra Modi, the controversial leader of the northern state of Gujarat, where cow slaughter is banned. He boasted last year that his state was providing cataract surgery and dental care for cows.

Most Hindus seem to accept that beef consumption is inevitable, but whether it should happen in public places remains a contentious issue. In a country that prides itself in being a secular nation, where religious ceremonies often occupy public spaces and elicit no objections from non-participants, confining the eating habits of a sizable minority to the privacy of homes seems oppressive.

Melvin Durai is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 9, 2012 J11

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