BEEF, FASCISM AND PSEUDO-CRACY

In Manu’s rule death sentence for beef eaters!

Friends, in the present day India, it’s impossible to describe it as a ‘democratic country’. Why? Just turn around your attention and notice the trends, read newspaper and you will agree with this thought. The current BJP government has left no stone unturned to bring fascism in all its shades and demolish the democratic spirit in toto, whether it’s the saffronization of educational institutions through the appointment of Rightwing fundamentalists i.e. FTII, NMML, ICHR and etc. or through further strengthening the neoliberal policies of loot and selling out the country’s resources. One of the hallmark of BJP government is its love with ‘BANS’. That has been the classic funda of Hindu fundamentalists for long, ‘banning books’, ‘banning movies’, ‘banning food’, banning right to express one’s thoughts’ and what not. Ban on Beef is phenomena happening in full force for last one year. Do you remember about the Ban on beef in Maharashtra, or Ban on Beef in Karnataka, Haryana’s BJP Chief Minister Khattar asking for a nation-wide ban on beef, or the recent ban on Beef in Kashmir where the muslims are the majority. Interesting thing is that rather than providing accessible education to all classes, rather than creating more jobs for unemployed youth, this government’s top leader is busy in travelling around the world, as if he is on ‘tourist visa’ and of course with selfies, how can one miss this fact. Banning of beef is particularly important to understand the psyche of this fascist government to impose its outdated, majoritarian casteist oppressive agenda on the people of this country. The state is trying its best to foster the anti-democratic agendas by attacking religious minorities. It is a ploy to criminalize the cultural habits of different communities and wipe out whatever little democratic space people have created after decades of struggles. It’s not just about Muslims who eat beef, a sizeable number of people from other castes, ethnic adivasi communities do eat beef including Hindus. The underlying force of this attack is caste and religious fundamentalism which is brahminical and cultural nationalism.

Beef eating is punishable to death only in the Manu ruled India when Beef is eaten by the entire world. In many countries people are killed by accidents and even because of religion but in India only people get killed because of a food. Nothing is comparable to the Hindu religious fanaticism. Is there anything uncivilized and barbaric than this! 

When our group The New Materialists raised this issue in 2012-2013, we conducted public meetings on ‘Politics of Food culture’, ‘Why Beef and Pork food festival in JNU’ and raised the demand for organizing a Beef and Pork festival in the campus. The Delhi High Court put a ban from organizing any such festival and some members were sent show cause notices and rusticated by the administration. At that time the radical left of this campus kept ‘mum’. Left forces of many shades tried their best to divert attention of the student community from this issue and actually murdered the democratic spirit of raising such important issues. Some even went to the extent denying this as an issue to be raised by Left. One of AISA member, said in Outlook magazine that beef is not poor peoples issue. Some senior ‘comrades’ said, ‘we are largest and responsible organization of this campus’ and hence we won’t raise our voice against food fascism in JNU. The New Materialists was the only organization to raise this issue of ‘Beef ban’during that time and many individuals and other organisations supported this demand. Friends, it was unfortunate that the so-called ‘Left forces’ have not come forward and resisted this hegemonization and fought for the diverse cultures and nationalities and spoke the language of ABVP. That this will polarize the campus, our votes will get divided, ABVP will come to power in elections and so on. We strongly condemn the lynching of Akhlaq in Dadri by mob and demand that the priest of the temple and other individuals involved in the brutal murder of Akhlaq should be booked and punished under NSA. Not only condemning but we should encourage the beef eaters and beef eating and fight for their rights otherwise we will lose our culture and habits one by one on the Hindu Altar. We also appeal the progressive forces of this campus to raise their voice against this attack on democratic choice of food and fight against the Rightwing Hindu fundamentalist state.