Cooking Covertly: Examining Food Politics and Culinary Hierarchies in India

<p>As humans, we all have different dietary preferences and are<br>influenced/dissuaded by community/social standards in terms<br>of what we eat and don't eat. The things we consider culinary<br>taboos can differ depending on our cultural background and<br>religious customs. A societal, religious, or legal ban on the<br>intake of specific foods-food taboos, like other cultural<br>phenomena, vary widely over the world. Food culture<br>develops into a body of knowledge that enables people to<br>select natural resources, prepare them for food, produce<br>recipes, and relish them. When discussing the social features<br>of food, it is assumed that food is a social phenomenon: what<br>constitutes food and, thus, what can be eaten; how it is<br>prepared, presented, and consumed; and so on reveal<br>intricate relationships to class, caste, and gender. The paper<br>aims to investigate how the hegemony creates hierarchical<br>food structures and food strictures in order to maintain caste<br>superiority and class identity. It also illustrates that food, in a<br>caste-ridden society, may be used to oppress and enslave<br>marginalised groups by denying them of food and<br>stigmatising what they eat.</p>