Chitransha Singh- Week 9

IS FOOD DIFFERENT FOR SAVARNA AND DALIT?

Every culture is defined by the food they eat, Brahmin or Jain food like the majority votes, and popular cinema has been capitalized enough to form a major part of the mainstream movies and media but similar to the Dalit culture, Dalits and Dalit history; Dalit food has also been neglected and never taken in to form a part of the India which is seen daily by the people to increase its popularity and prevent their neglect as an outcaste.

In Caste on your plate, Manjiri Indurkar has briefly assessed how the Indian cinema has always shied away from depicting and exploring Dalit food, even when they focus completely on the lives and culture of Dalits, there is never enough discourse on the nature of the food. Dalits are also a part of the Hindu religion, yet, against the popular belief, aren’t vegetarians as the world is made to believe, ruining the sanctity of their religion but only 33% of the Indians are vegetarians, as opposed to the common belief. In one of the books on Dalit autobiographies, it was stated that the Savarna’s would visit Dalit homes at night, hiding from everyone only to taste their fish and other non-vegetarian food. These are the similar people who would not even touch the Dalits in the daylight, their food is far away from the picture. As explained in the movie Newton, even meat can be differentiated into acceptable and expensive and cheap meat.

There are different kinds of food leftovers that Dalit eat, than any particular Dalit food. Much like Savaranas, Dalit food was also dependent on their leftovers, like the Mahars would eat dead animals and Masuhari’s rats. This food has been called dirty  by the savarnas but the reason for the same is the upper class itself.