This month a group of Dalit (or Untouchables, as they were formerly labelled) students organised a Beef Festival in Osmania University of Hyderabad. It was the festival to assert their culinary rights in public and make a political statement of dietary habits of Dalits and Muslims – by cooking and eating beef Biryani on campus. About 2000 students participated and although it started out well, the festival was disrupted and students...

Meena Kandasamy, one of Chennai’s well-known activists and poets, was recently in Hyderabad delivering a few lectures at NALSAR and other institutions about Ambedkar, when she heard about a beef festival at Osmania University being organised by the Telengana Students’ Association and the Progressive Students Union. Several students and teachers had gathered to support the event organised by the Dalit students and also as a symbol of admonishing cultural oppression from...

Overlooked and ignored, the problem of untouchability continues to be practised and perpetrated in the country. It is a lifetime of misery and humiliation, unimaginable for the relatively privileged but a daily reality for over one-fifth of the country’s 120 crore-plus population, as revealed succinctly in 22 short and easy to view videos under the Article 17 Campaign launched on April 14, 2012 by India Unheard, which claims to be...

-The Telegraph   A student was stabbed and injured last night as violence flared at Osmania University over a “beef festival” organised by Dalit students to assert their right to eat their traditional food on the campus. The government, worried that the issue may snowball and re-ignite the Telangana movement at its epicentre, has swamped the campus with paramilitary and police who caned the fighting students and fired tear gas. Still, skirmishes continued...

-The Hindustan Times Dalit students’ assertion of the right to eat beef — a tradition in Andhra Pradesh — triggered a riot with the right wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists at Osmania University in Hyderabad on Sunday. Even after the overnight clash that left five persons injured and two vehicles torched was brought under control, the campus — a hotbed of the Telangana statehood movement — remained tense on Monday. The...