Beyond sattvik: Purity, caste and the politics of the Indian kitchen

By Rajiv Shah 

A few week ago, I was forwarded an article that appeared in the British weekly The Economist. Titled “Caste and cuisine: From honeycomb curry to blood fry: India’s ‘untouchable’ cooking”, it took me back to what I had blogged about what was called a “sattvik food festival”, an annual event organised by former Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta.

In my blog, written more than a year ago, I had wondered why only vegetarian food should be considered sattvik, and why organic non-vegetarian food — available widely across all continents — should not be included in that category. What I did not realise then was that there appears to be a clear caste angle to calling food sattvik.

While not disputing Prof Gupta’s erudite defence of vegetarian food as healthier, The Economist piece insists on what it calls “the hidden joys of a cuisine shaped by cruelty”, quoting a “handful of historians and Dalit activists” who are “trying to bring these foods from the margins to the mainstream.”

The article offers the example of one such dish — among many others — which it says belongs to “another India”: a cuisine that is “one of the world’s richest, yet practically invisible.” Its recipes, the magazine notes, are “shaped by cruelty, scarcity and shame. This is the food of Dalits, once called ‘untouchables’. It is widely shunned—yet fabulous.”

How is such cuisine cooked? One example it cites is striking: “Smoke a hive of wild kagadi bees. They flee, leaving behind a honeycomb packed with eggs and larvae. Chopped, spiced and simmered, it makes a dish with a sweet and spicy kick.”

Suggesting that there is also a caste angle even to the non-vegetarian food widely available in upscale restaurants, the weekly remarks that for many foreigners “Indian food” means safe, reliable dishes such as butter chicken, onion bhaji and naan. However, the food cooked by Dalits — who form roughly a fifth of India’s 1.4 billion people and occupy the bottom rung of its ancient hierarchy — is something quite different, allegedly shaped by the constraints of the caste system.

The magazine then states what is widely known: “For thousands of years the caste system has divided people into hereditary groups. At the top were Brahmins, or priests; below them came kings and warriors; then traders and farmers. Beneath all were the Dalits, born to do jobs deemed degrading, such as cleaning latrines or disposing of carcasses. Hindu texts explained these divisions through divine anatomy: Brahmins emerged from the head of God, warriors from the arms, traders from the thighs — and Dalits from the feet.”

It adds that Dalits were historically shut out from much of society; even their touch was considered polluting. Their homes were pushed to the edges of villages, and they were barred from using wells from which higher castes drew water. Although caste discrimination was outlawed in 1950, it remains widespread. Many higher-caste Hindus, the article notes, would never eat with Dalits, let alone treat them as equals.

The article then draws a parallel with food hierarchies. “In Hindu scripture food has a hierarchy, too. At the top is sattvic (‘pure’) fare — rice, fruit and fresh vegetables meant to calm the mind. Below is rajasik (‘fit for kings’) food — meat, fish and heavily spiced dishes thought to excite body and spirit. At the bottom lies tamasic (‘sinful’) food — beef, offal and other ‘impure’ meats said to dull the senses and sap energy.”

Claiming that “Dalit cuisine is widely shunned — yet fabulous,” the article suggests that Dalits are less picky about food than many other Indians. Ironically, caste taboos have produced a culinary upside. Food that others avoid tends to be cheaper. Thus skin, intestines, tongues, feet and ears all find their way into Dalit pots. Leftovers from upper-caste homes where Dalits work are seldom wasted. When cows die naturally, no Brahmin would touch their flesh — but for Dalits it becomes an affordable source of protein.

Here the article quotes Dalit historian Shahu Patole, who says the Dalit diet is “dictated by scarcity”. Ingredients taken for granted in upper-caste kitchens, such as ghee (clarified butter) and asafoetida, are often beyond reach. Dalit women, who are more likely than other Indian women to work outside the home, also have little time to cook. As a result, they have devised recipes that are often quick, simple and intensely flavourful.

The Economist goes on to list several dishes from Patole’s book "Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada", pointing out the obstacles Dalit cooks face, including hostility from “violent mobs who object to their ingredients.”

The article notes that many pious Hindus revere cows, so tasks relating to bovine butchery often fall to Muslims or Dalits. This can be hazardous. Cow slaughter is banned in most Indian states. While disposing of cows that have died naturally is not illegal, cow vigilantes sometimes fail to make that distinction.

The magazine also cites Sri Vamsi Matta — known simply as Vamsi — a Bangalore-based theatre and visual artist whose performances explore the history of Dalit food. In a solo show titled “Come Eat With Me”, he weaves personal stories with traditional narratives before inviting the audience to share a meal he has prepared. He finds the rhetoric of “purity” baffling. Speaking of cows, he asks: “How can something so pure when alive become impure the moment it dies?”

Vamsi further argues that upper-caste notions of what counts as “pure” food have seeped into the mainstream, setting standards that others are expected to follow. This can have serious consequences. Landlords, he says, often refuse to rent homes to Dalits or Muslims, insisting that tenants be “pure vegetarian”.

After reading The Economist piece, I searched online to see what more might be available on Dalit cuisine. I found that Patole first published his recipe book in Marathi in 2015. Initially, many Dalits rebuked him for drawing attention to food habits they feared would be ridiculed. However, an English translation published in 2024 drew the interest of food writers and sparked discussions on social media.

According to Patole, based on food culture and dietary patterns, Marathwada society can be divided into five categories.

The first is “special pure vegetarian” (vishesh shuddha shakahari), whose daily diet excludes ingredients such as garlic, onions and ginger because these grow underground and harvesting them kills the plant, which is considered contrary to the principle of non-violence.

The second is the vegetarian category (shakahari), which abstains from items like onions, garlic and brinjal during Chaturmas but uses them during the rest of the year.

The third category is the mixed diet (mishrahari), whose adherents generally practise vegetarianism but may eat eggs and occasionally even meat stock.

The fourth category is non-vegetarian (mansahari), where some groups turn vegetarian during the entire Chaturmas period while others do so only during the month of Shravana.

Finally, Patole identifies a fifth category — culture-compliant non-vegetarians (sanskruti-palak mansahari). Although classical Hindu texts recognise only four categories, Patole notes that there existed a fifth group: the Shudratishudra, or those considered the lowest of the low.

This group, he says, was relegated outside formal Hindu society. As a result, while it formed part of the social structure, there were no dietary restrictions on its members. However, strict rules governed their social behaviour. Alongside the foods consumed by the other four categories, their diet also included beef and buff (buffalo meat).

“No religious gurus ever cared whether people of this category observed sacred days of non-vegetarian abstinence,” Patole writes. “Their food customs were despised and looked down upon by all other categories. The upper classes had neither time nor interest to find out what this category ate.”

Patole wonders why dominant media and food writers remain silent about this fifth category. “Do they feel that the cuisine of a region is defined and limited by the food culture of the upper classes? Or do they pretend that they have no knowledge about the food history of this fifth category?” he asks.

He therefore seeks to explore what people outside the elite sphere eat every day: their nourishment, delicacies, snacks and desserts. What festivals do they celebrate? What special meals are prepared for those occasions? What do they serve their guests? And why, he asks, do writers, bloggers, columnists and filmmakers rarely ask such simple questions?

Meanwhile, the book has been welcomed by Suraj Yengde, author and activist known for his work on caste and race, and currently Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies and a Ford Foundation Presidential Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

In a review, Yengde calls Patole’s work an “excellent and very engaging book for gourmands”. He says it is a must-read for anyone interested in the culinary history of India beyond the practices of Brahminical communities that regulate food and dietary habits.

He argues that the book challenges “violent vegetarians” who regard their own tastes as superior and treat meat-eaters as impure. Meat and vegetables, he suggests, should be seen as complementary sources of nourishment.

“However,” he adds, India’s history of Brahmanism and Jainism has meant that meat is condemned and those who consume it are considered inferior. Patole’s book, Yengde writes, looks at everyday Dalit life, where sustainability has long been embedded in practice — not the kind of sustainability discussed in the glass towers of New York or Geneva.

Another academic, Krishnendu Ray, professor of food studies at New York University, asks: “How many people think about Indian food when they think about mashed blood?” In a review, he describes Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada as “arguably the most important cookbook to come out of South Asia.”

Ray argues that we know very little about Dalit cooking because the dominant idea of Indian cuisine largely comes from upper-caste Hindus — particularly Brahmins — who historically occupy the top of the caste hierarchy and are largely vegetarian.

He notes that upper-caste Hindus dominate publishing houses that commission cookbooks as well as media organisations that produce cooking shows. In that context, Ray says, Patole’s book is “dynamite that explodes the idea of Indian food from the bottom up.”

The same theme appears in the autobiographical book Coming Out as Dalit by Indian-American journalist and writer Yashica Dutt, which discusses, among other things, the dilemma Dalits face regarding food habits.

Dutt writes: “You grow up eating a certain kind of animal, a certain type of meat or just meat in general, and you are associated with being lower caste or being impure.”

Growing up, her Dalit family often pretended to be upper-caste. Her mother did not want her to grow up carrying the stigma of belonging to the Bhangi sub-caste, whose members were historically forced to remove excrement from latrine pits.

According to Dutt, some Dalit sub-castes were expected to dispose of animal carcasses because corpses were seen as impure. Living in poverty, these same Dalits sometimes stripped and ate the flesh of those animals for survival. That stigma lingers. More than that, she writes, “because our entire being is considered impure, the food we eat is also considered impure.”

Thus, for many Dalits, their food evokes mixed emotions — comfort, but also shame. As Dutt puts it: “Joy cannot be separated from the oppression that we experience. It’s always going to be congealed together.”