Beef and Kerala

Now we have the issue of beef ban as the hot topic in media and social media (At least in Kerala).

I think, this is the right time to let the rest of India know what the real situation is. Because I saw some absurd claims in
facebook such as beef is a part of Onam and vishu feast and it is kerala tradition etc.

I have been to all the districts of my state and have politically litterate friends from most of the parts. However, I am not
trying to generalize my views as the situation of the entire state. But I am forced to express my views as others are
blatantly generalizing a society.

When there was a new law from the central government on forbidding sale of cattle for slaughter in agricultural markets,
it is interpreted as beef ban and spread like a wildfire. I too heard this news as a beef ban and celebrated with my friends
and family sharing trolls in whatsapp. My wife, an animal sympathizer, but a big fan of beef roast and porotta, was very
angry to me. She even disconnected my ISD call and did not pick it further. She expressed her protest in harsh language.
Later, I called my sister to express my happiness over the 'ban on beef'. She was someone who did not like this red meat
and never had it, when beef was my only non veg choice in restaurants. She used to belittle me for my 'sub standard
eating habit' those days. She was scolding me as if I am the one who banned beef all over India. I didn't know that she had
also turned a beefetarian. Later I called my fellow NRI brother-in-law, a non bhakt Modi supporter. He was also too angry
and started threatening me about a seperate beef dominion for Kerala.

Later when I got the pdf file of the passed law, I got some picture of what exactly is the law, and how lame it is, when it
comes to the level of implemenation.

With the advent of social media secesion thoughts are the new fad among some of the urban liberals. I saw this during
the JNU sedition issue, Jellikettu protest in TN and now from the very state I belong. This is something, which any non-
brainwashed Malayali cannot tolerate.

In this juncture I would like to remind my brothers and sisters about the plight of the states with active separatism. Well, if
you are looking for a TN model sectorial pride, I don't disagree, unless it is not against the unity and integrity of this
nation.

That being said, I would like to take you to the soceity which I have seen in late 90's and early 2000's. In my childhood, I
lived in a coastal town in malabar where Hindus are majority and nobody cared that they are Hindu. The first time I heard
about this red meat when I was in my primary school, while attending a muslim wedding ceremony near the beach. That's
the area where muslims are majority. I was there with my mother and they were serving biriyani to everyone. I had heard
that Biriyani is an expensive item which only the rich would serve during a wedding. The host being a poor fish seller,
managed to serve biriyani for his daughter's special day. But my mother did not let me eat that, and she requested for
white rice. I was disappointed to miss my favorite dish. While leaving I asked my mom, why she did not let me have that.
She said that's not chicken biriyani. It is made of the meat of Buffalo which our people do not eat.

I still remember the expression in her face when she talked about the meat. That expression itself was enough for me not
to have this for the rest of my life. When I look back, I can now understand that beef was perceived as an inferior meat
among the people of Malabar, not because cow is holy to them. Because beef was just buffallo meat and cow had nothing
to do with it. But I can firmly say that no Hindu in malabar was brought up by feeding beef. Neither our blood cells are
made of beef protein, nor our brain is made of beef fat.

Still now if you look at the soceity, you cannot find this 'secular' meat in a traditional Hindu household. And you know
what, most of the people who marked their protest on beef ban never had the luck to get it done at their own houses by
their mothers. The fondness on beef just grew up with my generation. It was not at all part of our traditional diet.

To know how this red meat earned state wide popularity, we must look into basic economics and some part of our History.
The basic economics is nothing but the price of this item. Well, let's first look at the price of Biriyani in calicut town during
the year 2006.

Chicken Biriyani- 50/-

Mutton Biriyani- 80/-

Fish Biriyani(Ayakoora)- 100/-

Beef Biriyani- 20/-

Meals- 15/-

This is something which made most of us beef eaters. Just see the difference in prize. If you compromised a little, you get
the same taste( May be better) for 60% discount. Also you just have to pay 5/- more than your regular meals. Just that you
can tell at home that you bought A4 sheet for 5/-.

If I go further on other menu on roast, fry, kappa biriyani etc., I am sure that any Gowrakshak will forgive me.

My view on this low prize of beef is that beef was not just buffalo meat as we thought. It had some cow meat also mixed.
Because, it is general practice among locals to sell old cows to butchers. If the cow is not yeilding anymore and you have a
generous buyer out there, who will keep the poor animal at home. The existing law in kerala is limitting slaughter of cow
only with the approval from local bodies. This might have forced the slaughter houses to sell it as beef. As you can guess,
no sensible person will sell a yeilding cow for slaughter.

Over the last decade, the people who felt beef disgusting, was silenced by the liberal lobby. Beef gradually gained
popularity almost to the status of chicken, when I was leaving the town and now to the level of mutton after libs learned
to use socail media.

Latest price of Biriyani in Calicut

Chicken Biriyani- 150/-

Mutton Biriyani- 190/-

Fish Biriyani- 220/-

Beef Biriyani- 130/-

Meals- 50/-

There is only a margianl difference between beef biriyani and chicken Biriyani.
The price of beef dishes gradually increased to the level of chicken, pointing the fact that in one or two decades beef
dishes managed to get rid of it's low class status.

Well, this economics alone will not help beef to become popular without the support of a little history. Because, it did not
happen in other parts of India. It happened only in the overtly secular highly litterate state.

The sad truth is that kerala society in general is not sympethatic to any animal. Usually, in other parts of the world, the
left or communists are the people who are against red meat owing to their environment protection agenda. But they have
one more agenda too, to be against the traditions of the land where they are. In case of India, unfortunately, the cow
protection is a right wing agenda and the left has to conviniently forget their larger goal.

However, the general mentality that everything in nature is for human consumption has nothing to do with the left. That
must be the mentality of human race in the pre-modern world. But many philosophies all over the world made human to
think in the other way to be empathetic to fellow creations. Among that, Budhism and Jainism are the major factors in
case of India. I am not daring to claim that Hinduism also belongs to this group. Because we too had a lot of rituals with
cruelty on animals. If someone believe it in other way, based on our ancient texts, I am not objecting. The same texts
failed to make such thoughts in people for the past millenia. Otherwise we wouldn't have seen the animal sacrifice in
Nepal and some part of India. That's why I prefer to give the credit to the former. In my opinion, we have assimilated such
good ideas from the faiths which originated here.

In case of Kerala, this is the land which gave birth to the great personality who debated against budhism and revived
Hinduism in it's most practical form. I like to assume that the people of this land might have taken the idea of coming back
to Hinduism to a greater extent, by leaving all the budhist ideas they learned.

One more observation is the role cow had played in all river based civilizations. In case of Gangetic, Cauvery, or
Brahmaputra regions cattles where the main source that fulfilled basic nutritional needs. Killing them would seriously
harm the food supply and such soceities might have implemented strict cow protection norms. Seeing cow as mother
must be part of that. But in case of Kerala, it is not cow but Kera(Coconut tree). When cow was considered kamadhenu in
those regions, coconut tree was considered as kalpa vriksham here. This might have made the Hindus here to

Also we can see that the coast of kerala in the past had welcomed people from all over the world for trade. Not being
isolated gave the people of this land, the flexibility to accept anything convinient and tolerate the ways of other cultures.
Kerala learned bakery from the west and Biriyani from the middle eat. And if someone prefered to eat a beef biriyani,
nobody stopped them from doing so. But if this alone is the reason, we should have seen beef items in all the kitchens in
kerala.

While our ancestors carried such liberal ways, they were always careful to pass good values to their children and build a
Hindu identity to them. This process is stopped somewhere down the line. I assume this must have happened, when
leftist ideas penetrated into the land of Adi shankara. With all due respect, my parents generation is the culprit. To be
precise the people who are born in communist Kerala. They were the weakest in sharing our traditional values to us. They
wanted us to be more liberal and 'secular'. They told us to respect all religions never said to respect all 'race'. They
corrected us when we named someone 'muslim', but they named poor tamil workers as 'Annachi'. People of same
language and ethnity are respecting their differences is expalined to us as religious harmony and told us that it is a rare
comodity in other parts of India. But they failed to tell us that in other parts of India people of some religion speak a
different language and are ethnically different. They told us that we have a more equal society attributing the credit to
the socialist mind set. Unknowingly, they were creating a false sense of supiriority in out minds.

To my generation, it became an honour to object anything popular in north India. Taking pride in your Hindu identity is
considered communal. Speaking about the wrong things in other faiths is considered devicive. Bashing Hinduism is
considered most progressive. When our parents tolerated others killing cow, we accepted the habit of beef for
convinience.

And today, we can see some congress workers killing cow in public to show their protest. With a public display while
hurting the sentiments of rest of India, they made sure to do it after magreeb bang. Leftists conducting beef festival in
educational institutes. This is also after the fasting time is over for muslims. The state Govt. Challenging the central Govt
that they will not implement the law. What went wrong with these people. CPIM, you don't desire to open account in
other states. Just this news is enough for you to get a life ban in rest of India. Congress doesn't even have the plan to have
a come back it seems. Do they really know what they are doing. Hurting the sentiments of

Beef is not even banned. What would you be doing, when there is a real beef ban.

I am not postulating any conspiracy theory, but there was an invisible cultural revolution, though not similar to the one
happened in China, had happened in Kerala soceity. It was gradual and silent. It really had the agenda of moving away
kerala soceity from mainstream Indian thoughts. Someone made us to think weired and believe the weirdness as
enlightenment.

But, like any such revolutions happened in the world to make people forget their identity, coming generations always had
searched for their real self. Our civilization is not a benign entity that a marxist ideology can easily erase. Otherwise we
wouldn't have even heard the feable voice of Hindus who really worship cow. In 60's when China erased their traditions,
through cultural revolution. But still now we can see many new generation chinese being inspired by confusionism and
Taoism. Just look at Iran. Centuries long arab rule or the Islamic revolution of 70's did not make them Arabs, they are still
Persians and proud of their Persian identity.

If one Adishankara had brought the entire land of Bharat back to it's self, we will see a lot of Nava Shankara's in this era of
Knowledge to bring the tiny state of Kerala back to it's self.

I would like to remind all of you about the strange missing of nazi voters from the post world war Germany. Millions of
conservatives who supported Hitler were not present in Germany post world war. Everyone turned liberal and started
critizising Hitler. It just mean that if some dectatorial element is controlling a literate soceity, most of the people who
oppose this will prefer to stay silent for a peaceful life. Like that, when the communists are ruling a state with absolute
power in most of the social sectors like trade unions in all kind of govt offices, party watchers in your locality above all the
guaranteed control of govt in alternate 5 years, majority of the people will stay silent to avoid unnecessary attention. So
their voice will not be heard. When we get a permenant cure for communism, the rest of India will be searching for the
communist just like how the world searched for Nazis.