In a country with a plural
character, after one particular animal, the cow, is made 'holy', it
is undemocratic that even an individual's traditional right of
consuming beef has become a 'crime' these days. Receiving a tip off,
an angry crowd, armed with deadly weapons, reach the Muslim beef
eater's home and lynch him for the 'crime'. But, it is a wonder that
no such people were murdered for eating beef in Coimbatore decades
ago.
Sarcastically mentioned as
'Periyattu Kari' ( Big goat's meat), beef was eaten by the people in
the slum areas including Puliyakulam and Ammankulam. Since most
residents from these two localities were from a lower socio-economic
background, they could afford to buy only beef, as the prices of
mutton and chicken were so high even those days.
It was a common sight that a number
of beef stalls functioned busy along the Sowripalayam Road in
Puliyakulam. Further, near the junction, where the Asia's largest
statue of Lord Ganesha stands now, functioned a pork stall, serving
its customers hot idlis with tasty meat.
The beef cattle were also seen
slaughtered in Yerimedu, which connects Ammankulam and Puliyakulam on
the banks of the Sanganur stream. Hence, the frightened children of
Ammankulam, who walked with their parents to watch films in the
yesteryear movie halls Maniam and Krishna at Ramanathapuram, would
beg them not to take the short route via Yerimedu.
44 year old Jayaprakash from
Ammankulam, a school bus driver, recalls:
“ My mother was an expert in
making tasty dishes in beef, and not a Sunday would pass our home
without a delicious meal in cow's meat ”
Nonetheless, it is hardly correct to
conclude that beef was eaten only by the people, who were from a
lower socio-economic background.
According
to the book Pasauvin Punidham : Marukkum Aadharangal by
D. N. Jha, the ceremony of sacrificing animals in the rituals called
'Yajnas' and consuming their
meat dates back to the
Vedic age with the settlement of the Indo- Aryans in India.
The
verses in the Rigveda, a literature portraying the Aryan social life,
inform that their Gods Indra, Agni and
Soma loved eating beef. Also,
Lord Indra speaks in a verse that He had eaten the meat of around
1000 oxen !. Taittriya Samhita, another Vedic text, even instructs
the method of sacrificing animals in Yajnas and how their meat
should be shared among the people.
Moreover,
a work of Dharmasutra ( A manual of early Hindu law) points out that
the meat of the cow and oxen is pure and worth to be eaten.
Yajnavalkya,
the well-known sage and philosopher in the court of king Janaka in
Mithila, loved eating beef and preferred more, if it was the meat of
a calf !
Source:
Pasuvin
Punidham : Marukkum Aadharangal – D.N.Jha. V. Govindasamy in Tamil.
Link to my article in The New Indian Express: http://epaper.newindianexpress.com/c/6757157
