From the Seven Sister's Post (April 23, 2012)
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India chickens out over Northeasterners’ food habits!
Tagged with: Chinese Cuisine Food habits Jawaharlal Nehru
University northeast Osmania university
Pork is an important part of most Northeasterners’ food habits.
Sanghamitra Baruah, Guwahati (Apr 18): “To eat is human, to digest,
divine”, reads a simple hand-scribbled message pasted on the door of
Sunep Haralu’s one-room flat in Bangalore. As you press the
discoloured, old doorbell, the startling peal is answered by a smiling
21-year-old Naga student. Sunep, who is quite fond of cooking, loves to
entertain his guests with homemade food that most of his Bangalorean
friends, he says, refuse to even touch since they think “everything is
made out of dog’s meat”. The frequently repeated ‘joke’ on Sunep’s food
habits got a new terminology in India — food fascism — last Sunday when
hell broke loose over a beef festival organised in Hyderabad’s Osmania
University. Sunep’s only regret — what a few groups of Dalit and
leftwing students dared to revolt against, NE people quietly endured
for years. “Who’ll decide what I eat and where? Osmania is not the only
university or Hyderabad not the only city.
People from the Northeast face this everywhere. When I was working in
Jaipur, landlords refused to rent out their houses to me after coming
to know that I’m a nonvegetarian. My Northeastern identity reduced me
to a butt of ridicule with far greater severity than a Muslim colleague
of mine had to face. Even though I tried to explain that I’m an
Assamese Hindu and I don’t eat beef or dog’s meat, they found it
difficult to swallow,” says Leena Saikia, an independent journalist.
In Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, NE students allege that though
NorthEast dhaba was primarily established to serve indigenous cuisines
from the region, the JNU administration till date has not allowed it to
sell any main dishes of the region with pork and beef as ingredients.
“Any right thinking person will question why the North East food joint
in JNU serves Chinese dishes mostly? When we say we are not Indian by
culture and its food habit, it doesn’t mean we are Chinese,” says a
pamphlet issued by the Naga Study Forum last month, voicing anger
against the ‘politics of food’.
It said: “Although food items from other regions are lavishly served in
dhabas, cuisines from the Northeast do not happen to fall within the
ambit of Brahminically accepted norms. Thus, they have been deprived of
their right to eat their culturally celebrated staple dishes on the
campus.” “We never question others about their strange food habits and
practices. Some drink cow’s urine, some swallow raw meat. We are caught
between the holy-cow-and-unholy-swine propaganda,” says Daisy Gatphoh,
a small-time model from Shillong working in New Delhi. Accused of
racial bias on many occasions, University of Hyderabad’s North Eastern
Students’ Ethnic Kitchen, too, has a similar story to narrate. Set up
almost half-a decade ago following demands by NE students for a
separate mess, they allege there were several attempts to close the
place down.
“Some of our fellow students in hostels humiliate us and cringe their
noses every time we talk about home-cooked food. One even went to the
extent of saying that Akhuni (a traditional naga chutney) smells like
shit. What can be more hurting?” says a Naga student who is doing his
Phd from UoH. He, however, didn’t wish to be named. The university has
reportedly the highest number — almost 400 — Northeastern students in
Hyderabad. Last year, the university was accused of racial profiling
when the vice-chancellor Ramakrishna Ramaswamy suggested that to end
drinking and drug use on campus faculty members can begin with students
from the Northeast.
As more and more people from the Northeast are making bigger cities
like Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad their home, they often find
themselves at the receiving end of crude jokes on their ‘junglee food
habits’.
“If food habits were to define how civilised a particular tribe or
group of people is, then I wonder how should one define people
practicing rituals like drinking cow piss?” asks Sunep. “I feel proud
to say that I’m a Naga and I love dogs for their meat. That doesn’t
make me insensitive. Those who mock and ridicule us are the very people
who gorge on mutton biryani and chicken pulao. As if killing goats and
chicken is a way to heaven,” he adds
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