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

Food, Culture and Society in India

Social, Political, Economic and Cultural Perspectives

Edited by Rituparna Patgiri and Gurpinder Singh Lalli

330 pages, 12 ills., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-83695-254-1 Hb Published (November 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-255-8
web ISBN 978-1-83695-255-8

Details

“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

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 role 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.

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.

Gurpinder Singh Lalli is a Professor in Education for Social Justice and Inclusion in the School of Education, University of Wolverhampton . He is a co-director and founding member of the Centre for Research in Education and Social Transformation (CREST). Lalli is an award-winning researcher and has authored 4 books including Food Futures in Education and Society (Routledge, 2023). He is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki.

Subject: Food & Nutrition Sociology Anthropology (General)

Area: Asia

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC055000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Agriculture & Food; SOC008020 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Ethnic Studies/Asian Studies

berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

Food, Culture and Society in India

Social, Political, Economic and Cultural Perspectives

Edited by Rituparna Patgiri and Gurpinder Singh Lalli

Subject: Food & Nutrition Sociology Anthropology (General)

Area: Asia

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Contents

Food, Culture and Society in India

Social, Political, Economic and Cultural Perspectives

Edited by Rituparna Patgiri and Gurpinder Singh Lalli

Subject: Food & Nutrition Sociology Anthropology (General)

Area: Asia