Micro-culinary nationalism: A new monster on the loose 

Last month at Paltan Bazar, a busy market area in Guwahati, I came across a gigantic hoarding that advertised the vegan cause. It had, among other things, a prominent anthropomorphic image of a dog with the head of a chicken. It said “If you wouldn’t eat a dog, why eat a chicken?” It was not long ago that two youths from Manipur were caught for consuming dog meat in the capital. The press coverage and police interrogation in these cases are eye-openers; they equated dog consumption with abominable criminal activity.

To those unfamiliar about the culinary habits away from the mainstream, ignorant advertising hoardings play a similar role like the police—they add to the list of dietary prejudices. It creates uproar when least necessary. Furthermore, instead of hearing the local nuance, there is a tendency to weigh dietary issues solely from hitherto available perspectives. And little knowledge is, in this context, literally a dangerous thing.

The arrogance associated with little knowledge is responsible for severe damage in the national psyche—we, as a nation, have even discriminated the Kerala flood victims on lines of food. Therefore, Nandita Haksar’s memoir, Flavours of Nationalism arrives at a much needed hour. The book traces her journey from the Nehruvian era to the present times, as her understanding of the garb of “unity in diversity” evolves; one that is fed to every school-going Indian. Her anecdotes derive greatly from her personal life and her involvement as a human rights activist and lawyer in several parts of the country and abroad. Hailing from a community of meat-eating Brahmins—the Kashmiri Pandits, her insights offer a great deal of information about the intersection of migration with culinary history.

Haksar talks of a time when religious members had mutual respect for their beliefs—something she comes back to in her journey in Nagaland with Sebastian, her partner. It is important to take prescient note of gradual changes and evolution of “tradition”, Kashmiriyat in this instance. She recalls how in family gatherings meant to appreciate Kashmiri food, there were debates of new technology (fast pressure cooker vs. slow stove cooking). The former was held rather suspiciously as it eroded the essence of former cooking styles. But, of course, this book is a lot more than cooking styles—it goes deeper into stories of those who preserved food—ones that don’t emerge often.

Who would have known meetha paan has so many regional variants, or jalebi as the corruption of Arabic zalabiyah? Or that in-between ordinary paan leaves lie a thousand tales about women who engaged themselves in sensual talk when men weren’t around?

Nandita does the job of a ventriloquist in most parts of her book—it helps not fall into the trap of culinary nationalism. Across Facebook and Instagram pages, culinary nationalism is commonly expressed by recipe providers. They often turn into a battleground—once such incident that I recall is whether the popularity of broiler chicken is influenced by an urge to consume “safe” meat. Very soon, the post became a dialogue for two warring sides: ones who supported eating chicken purely for health reasons and the others who argued that the manufacture of broilers involve anything but health. When I first read Arjun Appadurai’s “How to make a national cuisine: Cookbooks in contemporary India”, I believed that food breaks barriers, if only temporarily—but today, it is used to magnify differences that perhaps can be settled peacefully.

The other issue is the way in which social media allows the consumption of the “other” in food habits. Haksar does mention culinary nostalgia, for instance, which is used (and abused) as a weapon to fight over food. Firstly, the dish is gorgeously displayed as representative of a picture-perfect culture through filters. And secondly, without much research, homogenous hashtags are inserted which limits the broader milieu from which living culinary cultures emerge from. Migrants are often victims of this process: they believe these markings are associated with their identities post 1947. Moreover, food acts as an analgesic for their anxiety over cultural dislocation.

Chitrita Banerjee talks of one such case in Eating India (2007) with the “typical Bengali fish” Hilsa—a nomenclature repeated endlessly. The partition of Bengal and its demographic consequences were responsible for how people on either side hold derision for each other’s Hilsa recipes (and other cultural practises). The idea that no other fish can come close to Hilsa—and hence the Bengalis are superior has been rightly demolished by this book. Yet, those myopic about partition history continue to establish tales of a fixed identity with this fish.

The cold clashes with culinary belongingness is nothing like the nationalism of early twentieth century, rather, it has found a way to meander in a global market. Micro-nationalisms are on the rise—and it can be as dangerous as the macro ones. They erase the need to critique dominant perceptions of food, ones that are participants in the making of a vehement “national” discourse. What happens as a result is the ubiquitous desire to imagine the national roots of a particular dish. A Naga thali may not taste anything like food traditionally cooked in homes of Nagaland. It may not portray the food of the diverse tribes, their distinctiveness, and yet the term will be sold. So much so, that today, a new wave of culinary nationalism has percolated to the regional level. Even the much sellable simulation, “North-eastern cuisine” isn’t free of guilt in this context.

The loss is greater, I feel. Like the beef Pasandas that Haksar never got to taste again after a sudden ban, I too see ethnic recipes die a slow death. To fulfil the definition of an “Indian cuisine”, most cuisines are stripped of its colloquial richness to be forgotten/ appropriated forever. Haksar’s book asks, “Is there an Indian culture, an Indian cuisine or an Indian ethos?”—and my answer to that is: Do we need one? Isn’t it time that the monster be fought, once and for all?”

The author is a Guwahati-based writer and researcher