Biryani Politics In Mewat: Is Food Policing Changing Eating Habits?

Mewat, Haryana's Muslim-dominated district, has long been an island for biryani, especially when you drive down from Delhi to Alwar. It starts soon after you cross Manesar and continues right till you reach Firozpur, Zirka and Doha.

But Bakrid this time is a subdued affair here. Haryana police has been picking up samples of biryani from vends to test for beef for a few weeks now. The biryani sellers are gone.

At the Doha Chowk stretch where you would earlier find a minimum of 15-20 biryani vendors, only two were seen on Bakrid eve. Wasim, owner of one of the stalls say the rest of them are just scared to come out and open their shops.

At the Doha Chowk stretch where you would earlier find a minimum of 15-20 biryani vendors, only two were seen on the eve of Bakrid.

Wasim, owner of one of the stalls say the rest of them are just scared to come out and open their shops.

This is the result of continuous police raids over the last three months, sanctioned by a DIG-level officer of Haryana police's new 'Gau-Rakshak' wing.

Their job is to collect food samples to test them for cow meat. The biryani sellers say for the last three months, police have been seizing every kind of biryani, including the chicken variants.

The biryani sellers claim they make biriyani only from chicken and buffalo meat and that this is what they have been doing all their life.

These raids, they claim, are a direct hit on their livelihood. And this is coming in at a time when the demand for biryani peaks.

But many in Doha village are speaking in a surprisingly new voice. Md Akbar tells us that, "till the raids took place they only made beef biryani. It is only now that they have started using chicken. It is good that the raid took place , else there was a chance of communal violence".

And he was not alone; after him many others opened up saying only 10-15 people sell biryani and that there is no point inviting trouble to an entire village for these few.

While the oblique reference to the new BJP government in Haryana is clear, it also appears that Mewat is speaking a new tune.

It gives the impression that people of Mewat are scared of inviting instances like the one that happened in Dadri where villagers lynched a 50-year-old man over suspicion that he slaughtered a cow. And that they are even giving up buffalo meat - a case of a community changing its food habit - for the sake of security.