This paper explores the inter-linkages between the culinary practices, household and the state in the early modern period as represented in the Indo-Persian sources. In drawing out these intricate connections the sources of the period reveal, in rich details, the political significance of gift-exchanges (in particular, the exchange of fruits and food delicacies), feasts and festivities and supper invitations. These events served to reinforce political alliances, and were a part of a symbolic economy of exchange that legitimated imperial rule, and organized social and political arrangements in the imperial court culture.

The interconnections between feast/food habits and the Mughal ‘political economy’ help us understand the social and political identities and the self-perception of communities. These inter connections, though very significant, have often been ignored especially in the context of early Modern South Asian history. By making gastronomy and food practices the centre point of my study, I seek to argue that the domestic site was as much a political domain involved in the structuring of Mughal sovereignty and forging significant socio-political alliances.

This paper focuses primarily on food imagery in nineteenth century printed Urdu literary works, and how it shows the uneasiness towards or accommodation of modern culture. A diverse selection of sources is examined, including memoirs of the Persianate Mughal Court and durbar in Lucknow, letters by Urdu poet Ghālib (1797-1869), religious opinions issued by the Deobandi school, and a novel by Nadhīr Aḥmad (1836-1912). These writings concerning courtly food culture give the impression of a strong nostalgia for a refined past and discomfiture regarding modernization. Although the sophisticated food culture described was only for nobles, it serves as a symbol of Indo-Muslim culture, allowing readers of the memoirs to share in the nostalgia. However, the literature also reveals a friction between the ‘traditional’ Muslim society and the new society brought by the British, as portrayed by the protagonist in Aḥmad’s novel. Crucially, matters of faith are shown as a source of uneasiness in these food writings, leading us to connect such checkered feelings with the development of religious consciousness among Indo-Muslims.

This paper examines Japanese travellers’ narratives of food in early twentieth-century colonial India. It focuses on three travellers’ journeys in and around the 1920s and explores their eating experiences in detail along with their analyses of ‘native’ dietary habits in local society. These travellers utilised ‘modern’ facilities for dining that had been developed for the British and other Europeans in colonial India, and tasted food that was the product of interaction and negotiation between the ‘coloniser’ and the ‘colonised’. They also observed the often-contrasting food habits and taboos of people from different classes, castes, and religious communities, which significantly influenced their views of India.

This essay is an ethnography of ‘Cadbury Mishti’¹ – a new taxonomic category generated by the promotional campaign jointly run by a Chocolate giant and the Branding Solutions Team owned by Eastern India’s largest Media house. Since 2011, sweetshops from Kolkata and other districts had been invited to participate in a three to four-month long competition to create chocolate-based delicacies. Sweets in Bengal are primarily made from chhana (coagulated milk separated from whey water) and kheer (desiccated milk). Through an ethnographic engagement with the process of making of ‘Cadbury Mishti’ I demonstrate how ‘inter-referentiality’ of place, and cultural sameness created through kin-ties go into the making of ‘fusion food’ in today’s India. This process is remarkably unique. Here the technology remains local and the core narrative of ‘authenticity’ is hinged on the celebration of craftsmanship.