Back to Search
Start Over
Nation on a Platter: the Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial Bengal.
- Source :
-
Modern Asian Studies . Jan2010, Vol. 44 Issue 1, p81-98. 18p. - Publication Year :
- 2010
-
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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- *FOOD
*COOKING
*DIET
*NATIONALISM
*IMPERIALISM
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0026749X
- Volume :
- 44
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Modern Asian Studies
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 56618465
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X09990072