Organizers of an upcoming food festival in Kolkata who had to replace the word ‘beef’ with ‘beep’ after receiving several threat messages, had to cancel the event over security concerns.
The ‘Kolkata Beef Festival’, which was renamed the ‘Kolkata Beep Festival’, was scheduled at a cafe in central Kolkata’s Sudder Street on June 23.
“Food Has Never Been Political To Us”
The festival, which would have offered a variety of beef preparations ranging from tenderloin, back ribs and Bolognese pasta to burgers, ‘was aimed to celebrate good food’.
“Food has never been political to us. We wanted to avoid all complications and controversies and make an event for people to have fun in, and remember,” The Accidental Note, the event organising company, wrote in a Facebook post.
Before the event was cancelled, Arjun Kar, one of the organizers, said that several right-wing pages and social media accounts were sharing his name and number, following which they changed the name.
The Accidental Note’s Facebook post read, “things have gotten out of hand. Yesterday, Arjun received 300+ calls, a lot of them to show support, but a lot of them were direct threats. We still didn’t budge. These could be empty threats. Keyboard warriors kept abusing us and sending us hate filled messages, and some seemed genuinely hurt by the idea of the festival.”
“we cannot ensure the safety of all of you amazing people who were planning to attend and our team,” the Facebook post said.
“We are afraid, because everything has been blown out of proportion somehow. Things are not in our control anymore. For all of these reasons, the Kolkata Beep* Festival stands cancelled.”
The organizers felt that by planning the festival after elections, they would not have to deal with political tension, but they were proven wrong.
Also Read: Assam: Accused Of Selling Beef, 68-Year-Old Man Beaten Up, Allegedly Forced To Eat Pork
