Caste on the Plate

Abstract

This chapter discusses the politicisation of food in India. Not shying away from such controversial topics as meat-eating and vegetarianism, the chapter recounts how the documentation of culinary practices in India has discriminated against those of the Dalits, as a weapon of exclusion and oppression. The “cookbook tradition” is comparatively recent in India, and associated with urban middle-class women. A majority of the urban middle and upper-middle class is also upper-caste, so it is their tastes and “moral” preferences that are reflected in cookbooks. Food has always been central to the question of “untouchability”, and continues to be used as a means of censorship as well as of “otherisation”. Most recently, it has emerged as a factor defining national politics, with regard to the debate over cow-slaughter.