Kolkata Beef festival becomes Kolkata Beep Festival after right-wing threats     

The saffronisation of Kolkata is underway and no one seems to be taking a stand against this. An innocuous food festival ‘Kolkata Beef Festival’, was forced to change its name to ‘Kolkata Beep* Festival after it was subject to online targeting and trolling. Several right-wing groups had begun to write posts against the festival on Facebook and shared the festival organisers’ names and numbers.

Hindustan Right Wings, as the name suggests, had posted that “It is only in India, where a beef festival is being organised openly in a Hindu-Majority country,” erroneously suggesting that most Hindus in this country are vegetarians and do not eat beef.

Another one from the saffron troll army, Chakrawarti Vikramaditya called on his Hindu brethren to take note of the fact that their ‘gau mata’ was going to be slaughtered in Kolkata and asked them to go to Kolkata in large numbers to save their ‘mother’. He even put out the number of the organiser hoping that his ‘Hindu bretheren’ will call to intimidate and threaten the organiser.

Arjun Kar, who is one of the founders of The Accidental Note, an independently running media company, is the organiser of the festival. “This festival was conceived even before the elections, but we thought we must hold the festival after May 23. In November, December last year, I was travelling through parts of south India where I tasted several beef varieties and realised that we don’t get those in Kolkata. That is how we decided to organise the festival. We have no political inclinations, and we didn’t conceive it to make a statement. Beef is consumed in Kolkata; we were just organising an event where people can come, have fun, meet and have a great weekend,” emphasises Kar, who also has an advertising company.

“It did get popular quite soon. As soon as it got popular, people triggered a political debate. For me, it was only about food. Realising that it wasn’t too safe, we organised an online poll for the name change and one of the options was ‘Kolkata Beep* Festival. Everyone seemed to prefer it, so we went ahead with it,” contends Kar.

Kar also got calls from people who identified themselves as members of the Bajrang Dal and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and threatened to stage agitations against the Festival.