“Violence erupted in the historic Osmania University in Hyderabad on Sunday evening, when student groups representing right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad clashed with the Dalit and minority student groups in protest against the celebration of the first-ever ‘Beef Festival’ in the campus.
“The Dalit students were celebrating the ‘Beef Festival’ (Pedda Koora Panduga in Telugu) - cooking and serving of beef in the open - on the OU campus as an expression of their cultural identity and constitutional right.
“The students have been opposing the imposition of what they call Brahminical culture on the food habits of SCs, STs and minorities in the educational institutions.
“However, the event was strongly resisted by the ABVP students stating that it was against the Indian culture and would hurt the sentiments of the Hindus who treat cow as a holy animal.
“The rightwing student groups distributed pamphlets in the last two days asking the students to stay away from the beef festival. They described the festival as a mischief being perpetrated by a few individuals who claim themselves to be Dalit intellectuals and scholars having a political agenda.
“Trouble began at around 6.30 pm, when more than 1,000 students assembled at the Ambedkar Hostel, where the Dalit Students Federation made elaborate arrangements for the festival. [...]
“As the Dalit students were raising slogans, singing songs and eating biryani made of beef, several ABVP students swooped on the venue and ransacked the area. This resulted in the two groups of students attacking each other and pelting stones. Several students and media persons covering the event received injuries.
“As the students continued with stone pelting, the police had to lob teargas shells to disperse the students. The irate mobs also set afire a vehicle belonging to a television channel. [...]
“Beef festival organizer B Sudarshan, a research scholar, said it was unfortunate that some upper caste students tried to disrupt the festival which was going on peacefully. ‘We have not made any slaughter of animals in the hostel premises but only distributed food among the students to acknowledge the age-old custom of Dalits and minorities. We wanted to remove the dirty image associated with beef, as spread by the Brahminical culture,’ he said.”
The right to eat by S. Anand (Business Standard, April 26, 2012)
Hyderabad: VHP, Bajrang Dal men purify Osmania University campus (Express News Service, April 28, 2012):
“Just when the dust seemed to have settled at the Osmania University following the controversial beef festival, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal on Thursday conducted a ritual at a temple adjacent the Arts College to ‘purify’ the campus.”
And see further:
Is it India’s Rosa Parks moment? by Ajaz Ashraf (Daily Times (Lahore), April 27, 2012):
“For nearly a century and a half, the cow wasn’t just a cow but an incendiary political issue, which periodically ignited many a communal conflagration all around India. Underlying the acrimony was the demand asking Muslims to eschew beef-eating in respect for the religious sentiments of Hindus, who considered the cow holy. It tacitly assumed a monolithic Hindu community united in its veneration of the cow and the need to save her from the Muslim butcher’s cleaver.
“This assumption stands challenged in Hyderabad, not by Muslims, but by assertive lower-caste Hindus who were contemptuously treated and referred to as Untouchables and who now have adopted the nomenclature of Dalit (oppressed) for defining their identity. On April 15, Dalit students organised a beef festival at Hyderabad’s Osmania University, where 2,000 of them publicly partook of the savoury beef biryani even as a singer belted the song: ‘Beef is the secret of my energy.’
“This demonstration of defiance was in support of their demand to have beef included on the hostel’s menu. Their logic was — beef is taboo for high caste Hindus, not the Dalits, sections of other backward castes, Muslims and Christians, whose diet includes beef. In excluding it from the menu, the university, they said, is guilty of showing an unjustifiable predilection for the religious sensitivity of high-caste Hindus. At one stroke was thus shattered the myth of the Hindu community being a monolith.”