What’s your beef with my freedom to eat it?
Bans on eating beef and pork are contested in India. Manav Bhuhshan discusses why this is an issue of caste discrimination and can be seen as a restriction on freedom of expression.
Several cows wander down a street in India (Photo by clarividus under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licence).
The case
Hindus believe cows are holy and Muslims consider pork “haram” (forbidden). Both are staple foods for India’s lower caste Dalits who consider recent bans on beef in some states a result of caste prejudice and a restriction of their fundamental right to free expression. In April 2012 some students at Osmania University in Hyderabad started a campaign to allow beef to be served in their university canteen. Members of rightwing student groups met their initiative with stiff opposition and violence. Yet the Dalit campaign spread to Jawaharlal Nehru University, which has been a bastion of leftwing student politics for decades.
Both political opinion and court verdicts have taken an increasingly conservative view on the subject of cow and bovine slaughter in recent years. Mainstream political parties and even India’s supreme court have welcomed and upheld restrictions imposed by state governments. Along with caste and religion, the debate over cow slaughter has class dimensions. The renowned academic Praful Bidwai has argued: “the absence of beef will raise the food bill for the underprivileged”. The freedom to eat what you want is thus very sensitive, and its future appears more uncertain than ever before.
Author opinion
Eating habits and customs around the world have been restricted on the basis of religious doctrines, cruelty to animals, endangering species, etc. In many cases the lines drawn to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable foods are tenuous and arbitrary. In a multicultural society like India, allowing people to eat poultry and mutton (upper caste meats) while banning beef and pork (lower caste meats) is more than arbitrary. It is discriminatory on many different levels. The increasing tendency for states to ban cow slaughter in recent years flies in the face of caste- and identity-based politics, which have recently flourished in many states.
The only explanation for this apparent contradiction is that the Hindu right’s political rise at the national level has negated the rise of regional political parties that claim to represent lower castes. Although environmental and ethical concerns mean the right to eat what you want cannot be absolute, food practices are often a crucial way for people to express their social and cultural identities. A socially volatile country like India therefore needs a level playing field where each community’s right to choose what they eat is equally valued.