Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T00:33:57.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2009

JAYANTA SENGUPTA
JAYANTA SENGUPTA*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Notre Dame, 219 O'Shaughnessy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines themes related to cooking, food, nutrition, and the relationship between dietary practice and health in late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century Bengal, and argues that food and cuisine represented a vibrant site on which a complex rhetorical struggle between colonialism and nationalism was played out. Insofar as they carried symbolic meanings and ‘civilisational attributes’, cooking and eating transcended their functionality and became cultural practices, with a strong ideological-pedagogical content. The Bengali/Indian kitchen, so strongly reviled in European colonialist discourses as a veritable purgatory, became a critically important symbolic space in the emerging ideology of domesticity during the colonial period. The gastronomic excesses of gluttonous British officials—crucial in asserting the physical superiority of a ‘masculine’ Raj—became an object of ridicule in Bengali culinary texts, signifying the grossness of a materialistic. The cooking and eating of food thus became deeply implicated in the cultural politics of bhadralok nationalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 1: The politics of work, family and community in India , January 2010 , pp. 81 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The literature on the role of these forms and practices in shaping the cultural politics of nationalism is substantial and expanding. To give just a few selected examples: for history writing, Chatterjee, Partha, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; for the visual arts, Guha-Thakurta, Tapati, The Making of a New ‘Indian’ Art: Artists, Aesthetics, and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and for music, Bakhle, Janaki, Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Curtis, C., An account of the diseases in India, as they appeared in the English fleet, and in the Naval Hospital at Madras, in 1782 and 1783; with observations on ulcers, and the hospital sores of that country (Edinburgh: W. Laing, Longman, and J. Murray, 1807), pp. 280–281Google Scholar. Cited in Harrison, Mark, Public health in British India. Anglo-Indian preventive medicine, 1859–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 40–1Google Scholar.

3 Burt, A., A tract on the biliary complaints of Europeans in hot climates; founded on observations in Bengal; and consequently designed to be particularly useful to those in that country (Calcutta: John Hay, 1785), pp. 9–10, 14Google Scholar. Cited in Ibid.

4 Johnson, James, The Economy of Health or the Stream of Human Life from the Cradle to the Grave with reflections Moral, Physical and Philosophical on the Successive Phases of Human Existence, the Maladies to which they are subjected, and the Dangers that may be averted (London: Highley, 2nd edn., 1837), p. 11Google Scholar. Cited in Harrison, Mark, Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India 1600–1850 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 82Google Scholar. For another in-depth examination of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century British medical ideas on the ideal diet for a tropical environment, see Arnold, David, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1993), especially pp. 36–43Google Scholar.

5 Fay, Eliza, The original letters from India of Mrs. Eliza Fay (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1908), p. 140Google Scholar.

6 Cited in Burton, David, The Raj at the Table. A culinary history of the British in India (London and Boston: Faber, 1993), p. 7Google Scholar.

7 Collingham, E.M., Imperial Bodies. The Physical Experience of the Raj, c.1800–1947 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), Chapters 1–3Google Scholar.

8 Beames, John, Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian (London: Chatto & Windus, 1961), p. 197Google Scholar. Cited in E.M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies, p. 156.

9 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Rethinking Working-Class History. Bengal 1890–1940 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 167Google Scholar.

10 Wyvern, Arthur Kenney-Herbert, Culinary Jottings: A Treatise in Thirty Chapters on Reformed Cookery for Anglo-Indian Exiles (Madras: Higginbotham and Co., 1885), p. 499Google Scholar.

11 Ibid.

12 ‘An Anglo-Indian’, Indian Outfits and Establishments: Practical Guide for Persons to Reside in India (London: Upcott Gill, 1882), p. 68.

13 Shalot, Oscar Tschirky, Things for the Cook: In English and Hindustani (Calcutta: Thacker and Spink, 1906), p. 89Google Scholar. For a study of the deep-seated Anglo-Indian misgivings about the native ‘bazar’ and the Indian cook, see Procida, Mary, ‘Feeding the Imperial Appetite: Imperial Knowledge and Anglo-Indian Domesticity,’ Journal of Women's History, 15:2 (2003): 123–149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Martin, J.R., Notes on the Medical Topography of Calcutta (Calcutta: published by G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1837), pp. 43, 45, 52Google Scholar.

15 Metcalf, Thomas R., Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 105Google Scholar.

16 Orme, Robert, Of the Government and People of Indostan (Lucknow: Pustak Kendra, 1971), pp. 42–45passimGoogle Scholar, cited in ibid.

17 See Risley, Sir Herbert, The people of India (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1908), p. 57Google Scholar. Cited in Sinha, Mrinalini, Colonial Masculinity. The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 20–21Google Scholar.

18 John Rosselli, ‘The Self-image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal’, Past and Present 86 (February 1980), pp. 121–148.

19 Rajnarayan Basu, ‘Prospectus of a Society for the promotion of national feeling among the educated natives of Bengal,’ in National Paper (1866). Cited in Ghatak, K.K., Hindu Revivalism in Bengal: Rammohun to Ramakrishna (Calcutta: Minerva, 1991), p. 35Google Scholar.

20 Shubhendu Shekhar Mukhopadhyay, ‘Hindu Melar Bibaran: 1789–1791 Sakya’ (‘Description of the Hindu Mela: 1868–1870’), Sahitya Parishat Patrika, 1960, vol. 69: nos. 2, 3–4, p. 141. Cited in Chowdhury, Indira, The Frail Hero and Virile History. Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 23Google Scholar. For an examination of colonial thinking on the role of diet in producing physical strength, martial valour, and such other ‘manly virtues’ among particular Indian communities—and the ‘debilitating’ effect of a rice-based diet on Bengalis in this respect—see Arnold, David, ‘The ‘Discovery’ of Malnutrition and Diet in Colonial India,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review (1994), 31 (1): 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Both rice and physical exercise were major topics in contemporary Bengali texts on healthcare. See, for instance, Mukhopadhyay, Jadunath, Sarir Palan [‘The Care of our body’] (Chinsurah, 1868)Google Scholar; Mukhopadhyay, Radhika Prasanna, Swasthya Raksha [‘Health Care’] (Calcutta, 1868)Google Scholar; Bandyopadhyay, Bharatchandra, Swasthyakaumudi: Arthat Sarbasadharaner Abashya Gyatabya Bishayak Nutanbidha Grantha [‘A Manual of health: The new essential guide for the common man’] (Dacca, 1872)Google Scholar. Interestingly, in the early-twentieth century, as the Bengali bhadralok became increasingly concerned with the dwindling opportunities of an urban colonial-commercial economy and the rising influence of non-Bengali business communities, the earlier anxieties about the ‘enfeebling’ characteristic of rice were reconstituted in late-colonial bhadralok discourses on food into a defiant cultural stance about the ‘desirability’ of rice in comparison with the north Indian staple of wheat, which became a synecdoche for a number of non-Bengali communities. For an interesting discussion of this discursive transformation, see Srirupa Prasad, ‘Social Production of Hygiene: Domesticity, Gender, and Nationalism in Late Colonial Bengal and India,’ Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006, pp. 78–81.

22 Basu, Rajnarayan, Se Kal ar E Kal [‘Those days and these days’] (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, 1873), pp. 28–40passimGoogle Scholar, cited in Chatterjee, Partha, ‘Our modernity’, in The Present History of West Bengal. Essays in Political Criticism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 196–197Google Scholar.

23 The increasing importance of this theme is attested to by the space that diet and nutrition regularly commanded in medical journals like Chikitsa Sammilani, Bhishak Darpan, and Swasthya. Between 1885 and 1935, more than 600 Bengali-language books, pamphlets and periodicals dealt with issues related to health and hygiene. See Prasad, Srirupa, ‘Sanitising the Domestic: Gender, Hygiene and Health in Bengal/India, 1885–1935,’ Wellcome History (2005), 28: 6Google Scholar. For representative late-nineteenth century samples of the treatment of diet in such periodicals, see Bose, Pradip Kumar, ed., Health and Society in Bengal: A Selection from Late 19th-Century Bengali Periodicals (Delhi: Thousand Oaks and London: Sage, 2006), esp. pp 120–133Google Scholar.

24 Bose, Chunilal, Food (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1930), pp. 93–94Google Scholar. Emphasis added.

25 Ibid., p. 109. Emphasis in original.

26 For an account of this, see Sarkar, Tanika, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001)Google Scholar; Chatterjee, Partha, ‘The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question,’ in Sangari, Kumkum and Vaid, Sudesh (eds), Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989), pp. 233–253Google Scholar; Chakrabarty, Dipesh, ‘The Difference-Deferral of (A) Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Domesticity in British Bengal’, in Arnold, David and Hardiman, David (eds), Subaltern Studies VIII: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 50–88Google Scholar; Walsh, Judith, Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When Men Gave Them Advice (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, especially Chapters 4 and 6.

27 The role of vernacular print culture in the creation of such public spheres in colonial India is particularly well-documented. For five representative examples, see Naregal, Veena, Language Politics, Elites, and the Public Sphere: Western India under Colonialism (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001) for BombayGoogle Scholar; Orsini, Francesca, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002) for northern IndiaGoogle Scholar; Gupta, Charu, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002) for the United ProvincesGoogle Scholar; Ghosh, Anindita, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture in a Colonial Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006) for BengalGoogle Scholar; and Mitchell, Lisa, Language, Emotion and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009) for MadrasGoogle Scholar. For additional accounts of how these vernacular literatures treated the theme of domesticity and women's relationship with it, see Hancock, Mary, ‘Home Science and the Nationalization of Domesticity in Colonial India,’ Modern Asian Studies, (2001), 35 (4): 871–903CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hancock, Mary, Womanhood in the Making: Domestic Ritual and Public Culture in Urban South India (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Joshi, Sanjay, Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), Chapter 2Google Scholar; Sreenivas, Mytheli, Wives, Widows, Concubines: The Conjugal Family Idea in Colonial India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Donner, Heinrike, Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-Class Identity in Contemporary India (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), Chapter 1Google Scholar.

28 See for instance, the articles contained in the anthology of women's writings from Bamabodhini Patrika. Ray, Bharati (ed.), Nari o Paribar: Bamabodhini Patrika (1270–1328 Bangabda) [‘Women and the family: selections from Bamabodhini Patrika, 1863–1921’] (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 2002)Google Scholar.

29 Somprakash, 25 July, 1887 in Report on Native Newspapers in Bengal, 30 July 1887.

30 Ghose, G.C., ‘Female occupations’, in Bela Dutt Gupta, Sociology in India: An Enquiry into Sociological Thinking and Empirical Social Research in the Nineteenth Century, with Special Reference to Bengal (Calcutta: Centre for Sociological Research, 1972), pp. 58–59Google Scholar.

31 ‘Garhasthya darpan’ [‘The mirror of the household’], Bamabodhini Patrika (June 1874), 10: 130; ‘Grihasthalir katha’[‘Tales of the household’], Antahpur, 5: 5–6.

32 For an in-depth discussion of this theme, see Banerjee, Swapna M., Men, Women, and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in Colonial Bengal (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), Chapters 2, 5Google Scholar.

33 ‘Sripantha’ [pseudonym of Nikhil Sarkar], ed., Bangla Bhashar Pratham Duti Rannar Boi: Pakrajeswar o Byanjan Ratnakar [‘The first two cookbooks in the Bengali language: Pakrajeswar and Byanjan Ratnakar’] (Calcutta: Subarnarekha, 2004).

34 For a discussion of the increasing importance that food and cooking commanded in Bengali vernacular publications in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, see Borthwick, Meredith, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal, 1849–1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 The original editions of the book replaced ‘spoonfuls’ with tolas (11.66 grams approx.) and chhataks (58 grams approx.) as units of measurement. Metric measurements, however, were only used as late as in the 1995 reprint, and at the behest of the editor, Prajnasundari's granddaughter.

36 Debi, Prajnasudari, Amish o Niramish Ahar [‘Non-vegetarian and vegetarian cuisine’], vol. I (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1995; first published 1900), Foreword, pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., Publisher's Preface, p. 17.

38 ‘Vegetarianism’, in Achaya, K.T., A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 263Google Scholar.

39 Kshirode Chandra Raychaudhuri, ‘Foreword’, to Prajnasundari Devi, Amish o Niramish Ahar, vol. I, p. 17.

40 Mukhopadhyay, Bipradas, Pak-pranali [‘Recipes’] (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1987Google Scholar; originally published 1885–1902), p. 29.

41 Prajnasundari Devi, Amish o Niramish Ahar, vol. I, pp. 51–53 passim.

42 Swami Vivekananda, letter to the Editor of Bharati, dated Darjeeling, 24 April 1897, in Vivekananda, Swami, Patrabali [‘Letters’] (Calcutta: Udbodhan, 5th edition, 1987), p. 537Google Scholar.