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Exploring the entangled relationships between food, culture and society in India, this edited collection brings together empirically grounded research across diverse regions and contexts. Organised into four sections – Food, Culture and Identity; Food, Memory and Migration; Food, Livelihood and Nutrition; and Food, Consumption and Media – it highlights the complex roles food plays in shaping identity, mobility, labour and representation. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives, the volume contributes to broader conversations in sociology, social anthropology, international development, geography, cultural studies and food studies, offering a textured account of contemporary foodways and their significance in everyday Indian life.
“This is a volume that promises to go beyond the reductive archetypes of Indian food and succeeds in doing that with aplomb. It digs deep into disgust, digitization, littoral subaltern tastes, syntax and semiotics and Nipponization of NE Indian foods that is rarely brought together in one volume.” • Krishnendu Ray, New York University
Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati. She has been a recipient of the Krishna Raj Fellowship, the Zubaan-Sassakawa Peace Foundation Grant for Young Researchers from the Northeast, the Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati Start-Up Grant and the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) Grant.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Rituparna Patgiri and Gurpinder Singh Lalli
Part I: Food, Culture and Identity
Chapter 1. ‘You Are What You Eat’: An Assessment of Evolving Identity of Caste and Changing Food Preferences
Aniket Nandan
Chapter 2. Cast(e)ing Curries: Creating the Culinary ‘Other’
Neha Arora
Chapter 3. Littoral Gastronomies and Border Eating: Dismantling the Narratives of ‘Disgusting Food Habits’ by a Study of Culinary Practices of Coastal Communities in West Bengal
Kashyapi Ghosh and Sayan Dey
Chapter 4. Eating Away (from) the National Consciousness: The Post-National Prospect of Street-Food in Muslim Localities of Bihar
Md Asif Uzzaman
Chapter 5. Indian Masalas in Kosher Kitchens: Mapping Cultural History through Food Writings of Jewish-Indian Women
Barsha Nayak
Chapter 6. Changing Patterns of Modern Food Habits in Nagaland: A Cake Narrative
Videkhono Yhokha
Part II: Food, Memory and Migration
Chapter 7. Eating Shutki in Postcolonial Bengal
Rituparna Roy
Chapter 8. Food, Memory and Materiality in East African Asian Women’s Narratives: A Reading of Parita Mukta’s Shards of Memory
Sruthi Ranjani Vinjamuri
Chapter 9. Kashmiri Cuisine as Collective Memory: How Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits Bond over Food
Sehar Iqbal, Farah Qayoom and Fayaz Ahmad Bhat
Chapter 10. In Search of a Recipe: ‘When I Cook our Food, I Belong – My Food Centres Me’
Preetha Thomas
Chapter 11. More Than Just Kababs: Food Memories and Identities in Delhi’s Afghan Refugee Areas
Shirin Mehrotra
Part III: Food, Livelihood and Nutrition
Chapter 12. Sprinkling Fortification: Gendering Food, Nutrition and Knowledge in Mid-Day Meals
Shreeja Banerjee
Chapter 13. A Note on High-Yielding Variety Rice and Inequality in the Floodplains of Assam, India
Sampurna Das
Part IV: Food, Consumption and Media
Chapter 14. Consuming Nippon: Food, Anime and Japanese Soft-Power in India’s Northeast
Moureen Kalita and Aashirwad Chakravarty
Chapter 15. Are Food Advertisements Gendered? A Content Analysis of Post-Pandemic Bengali Print Advertisements on Food
Amrita Basu Roy Chowdhury
Chapter 16. The Digitization of Uttarakhand’s Cuisine: A Case study of eUttaranchal
Disha Bisht and Priyakshi Pandey
Chapter 17. Virtually Mediated Farms: Social Media, Digitalization and Organic Farms in India
Sohini Bhattacharjee
Chapter 18. Food, Social Media and Representation: An Emergent Syntax of Homogenizing Indian Heterogeneity
Diganta Bhattacharya
Conclusion
Rituparna Patgiri and Gurpinder Singh Lalli
Index