The beef and the bare life – Ambedkar’s Broken Man, Agamben’s Homo Sacer, and the biopolitics of beef and dietary consumption

This article examines the intersection of caste, xenophobia, and biopolitics in India through Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer and Bhimrao Ambedkar’s conception of the Broken Man. It argues that the cow’s sacralisation operates as a biopolitical instrument through which the state codifies Brahmanical hierarchy, criminalizes and targets Dalit and Muslim dietary practices, and legitimizes violence under the guise of ‘scientific’ governance in modern contexts. Situating the beef ban in North India as a case study, the article shows how juridical prohibitions transform caste into an instrument of sovereignty that renders marginalized groups into bare life. Bridging Agamben’s critique of law and Ambedkar’s account of caste, it demonstrates how religious morality and capitalist extraction converge to regulate life and death, exposing the paradox of a secular democracy that sacralises bovine life while abandoning human life to sanctioned disposability.