What is on our plates today? Is it the same that our parents ate in their childhoods? How, When, & Who decided what should be on our plates? This blog presents a self-retrospective analysis of the food habits of my family through various interesting dimensions. However, it leaves the question of "Where are we heading …?" open for the readers to decide.
India has historically been a diverse country. With over 3,000 castes and 25,000 subcastes, Bharat has been home to countless cultural, religious, regional, and social practices. Centric to all this has been the various food practices and the social and political rhetorics surrounding the food debate. In this blog, I aim to cut open the various manifolds and stereotypes involving food history and food habits through the lens of intersectionality and try to bring to the table the inherent dichotomy between the so-called "traditional" food practices and the "modern" discourse surrounding them.
Over the last few days, I have tried to gather varying opinions and PoVs (Points of View) from people around me about their day-to-day food practices. Primarily, I have tried to bring in various angles to the food debate - talking about Gender, Age, Religion, Caste, Class (and Occupation), Agroecology, Migration, Marketisation, and Commodification of specific food items and food-gathering practices. In this blog, I will discuss my family's food habits and history and try to bring in all these lenses.
It thus becomes imperative to first look at my identity with intersectionality. I am a "Hindu" - particularly a "Baniya Hindu" (and believed to be a descendant of Maharaja Agrasen ji). I belong to a Middle-Class Family - who migrated from Pathankot (Punjab) to Hoshiarpur (Punjab) for economic reasons (though before my birth). I (like my family) am vegetarian - a belief in "purity" and "not harming living species" has been instilled in me since childhood. I am a student and live in the hostel of a "public" institution.
With this background, let us begin with the Gender aspect of this debate. The National Food Health Survey (NFHS) - 5 reports show that 18.7% of Women in India suffer from Malnutrition, compared to 16.2% of Men. While there is certainly a class-based angle to these statistics (21.2% Rural Women against 13.2% Urban Women - we come to this later) - it is not a denying fact that India has been a patriarchal society. Similar results come for Obesity - 24% of Indian Women are Obese, compared to 22.9% of Men. This brings in a Gender angle - even in the Double Burden of Malnutrition.
Let us keep the country-wide statistics aside and talk about my own family. My father and (late) grandfather had been eggetarian for quite some part of their life, while my mother and grandmother never consumed eggs. My maamu (mother's brother) is a non-vegetarian and consumes various varieties of meats - but my maami and naani (mother's mother) are primarily vegetarian. The Gender angle is not just limited to food consumption practices but also the rituals practiced in the households. Women in the household often wait for their husbands for meals - some as ritual, while others as love and respect (This mostly does not hold the other way round, though). In every household in my immediate relatives, all the rituals related to fasting are only performed by women in the house (with the only exception being my mausa fasting once in a while - a fast for the long lives of children).
As Balmurli Natarajan aptly states in his iconic piece, "Provincialising Vegetarianism," - the burden of maintaining a "tradition" of vegetarianism falls disproportionately on women.
A broader analysis by Michelutti L (2005) in her work "The Vernacularisation of Democracy: Politics, Caste, and Religion in India" elaborates on the link between "meat-eating" and "masculinity" in India.
My Grandmother, a widow of 4 years, has no restrictions on her diet. Even after being from an "upper-caste" Hindu social group, she eats whatever is cooked in the house and sometimes even cooks herself the food she likes. My father, sister and I are particularly fond of some dishes she makes, and we relish and savor them. I have never seen her in a white sari. All the family members respect her and consult her before making any decision. With this and many other aspects of her life, she indeed defies all the upper-caste widow logic presented in Bollywood and other "texts."
How does Migration bring about change in food habits and consumption patterns? In Punjab, "many" students go to Canada for higher studies after completing 12th (There could not be enough emphasis on the word "many." Out of my 9 cousins, 6 are in Canada, 1 in Australia, and 2 are still in school - aspiring to go to Canada one day). Thus, migration (for education and work) has been prevalent in my family. Some of my cousins have changed their food practices from vegetarian to eggetarian, and some are now non-vegetarian. This shift has partly been motivated by local food practices and less availability of vegetarian food. Thus, migration (and hence, region) plays a vital role in determining food habits.
Nevertheless, one of my mausi and her family are part of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization and practice vegetarianism very strictly. They do not eat at restaurants and local food outlets that offer non-vegetarian food (alongside Vegetarian food). Thus, 2 of my cousins (one son and one daughter of this mausi) did not change their food habits and diet even after moving to Canada. Thus, along with migration, the spiritual and religious angles also seem to play a role and dominate in some instances.
However, these logics are way more convoluted and complicated. My daadi (grandmother) has been vegetarian all her life - but owing to her recent disease, she has been prescribed Omega 3 capsules - which are made from fish. A similar case holds for my elder mausa - due to an unfortunate accident a few years back, he was prescribed a medicine that is made from meat. Willingly or unwillingly, both decided to consume those medicines - thus, in times of adversity, we somehow tend to "break" the belief systems.
To bring in Caste in this discussion, I talked to my Mother's childhood friend (school friend and neighborhood friend). Despite being from a 'lower' caste family, she has been as close to my mother as her own sisters. They still talk daily, and I took this opportunity to learn more about the discrimination she faced (faces). She recalls childhood incidents (around 35-40 years ago) where she would be discriminated against by my mother's chachi (who used to live along with my mother). She would not be allowed to enter their house or to eat anything from their gardens. Today, though, she is married in Jalandhar - where she faces no instances of caste discrimination, per se. One significant change that has come about in her life is that she has turned from being a non-vegetarian to a vegetarian. Her husband's family did not consume any kinds of meat, and hence, she gave up meat, too. Surprisingly, even her family in the village gave up eating meat since their "only daughter's" in-laws' family did not eat it. Thus, I could see the sense of Sanskritisation prevailing.
There are numerous other incidents that my parents recall from their childhoods that would be relevant here. My mother and her sisters recall that they used to visit the village temple every evening. There were 2 routes to the temple, one through the road and the other through the khet. They would often take the khet route and, in her own words - "ped (tree) se todke jamun (black plum) or ambiyan (raw mango) khaane mein alag hi maza aata tha." She further added that even their own family had much land in the village and would grow papaya and guava, among other fruits, and the villagers would just come and take them. My nana and nani would have no problem with this. This incident brings in two very interesting angles - one is that the fruits, which were once available for free in the village economy, are now no longer available, particularly in the cities. The commercialization and the Marketisation of the fruits have led to the fruit not being afforded by all households.
In fact, when my mother married, the economic condition of my father's household (in the city) was a lower-middle-class one - and so she suddenly did not have access to all those fruits that she once had for free in the village. Thus, the commodification of these fruits made the availability of fruits sparse for her.
This text would never be sufficient to capture the rich life experiences and memories I heard from everyone I talked to. Compare it to the so-called "modern" lifestyles - where we have to celebrate an entire "International Year of Millets" to make our own citizens aware of the benefits of eating Millets. In the realm of Sanskritization, we have left behind the great knowledge of our indigenous citizens, particularly in the context of food and agriculture. While we are a generation that prefers the comfort of instant gratification, we should not let go of the items that were once on our plates.