Food, memory, community: Kerala as both 'Indian Ocean' zone and as agricultural homeland

South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 170-198

  Osella, Caroline ^a   Osella, Filippo ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CASTE; CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY; CULTURAL IDENTITY; CULTURAL INFLUENCE; CULTURAL TRADITION; FOOD PREFERENCE;

ASIA; EURASIA; INDIA; KERALA; SOUTH ASIA;

EID: 40949121620     PISSN: 00856401     EISSN: 14790270     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00856400701877232     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. The slaughter of cows for beef is outlawed across India, with the exceptions of Kerala, West Bengal and the north-eastern states.
2. We are grateful to our friend Chandrasekhar Thampy, who has brought his Kerala culinary knowledge to a close reading of this ethnography; and to Sraddha Chigateri, Amit Desai, Scott Reese, James Staples and Caroline Wilson for their helpful comments on earlier versions. We thank the ESRC, the AHRC and the Nu.eld foundation for supporting various periods of research; and Kai Kresse, Scott Reese and Edward Simpson for giving us the opportunity to present the paper at their workshop 'Shifting the Meaning: Connectivity and Its Challenges in the Western Indian Ocean', held at Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin) on 22 May 2007, where workshop participants gave invaluable feedback.
3. Thus, we have explored elsewhere (in press) ways in which people across Kerala are interested in and oriented towards three imagined zones: firstly, the 'homeland' of Kerala, almost inevitably romanticised and super-saturated with positive cultural meaning even as it also becomes, among Kerala's Gulf migrants, the subject of negative comparisons with potential destination states; secondly, the migration destination of West Asian Gulf states, actually very distinct and nuanced in migrant accounts of preferences and di.erences between Gulf states, but generalised into cultural imagining and when spoken of among migrants in opposition to Kerala as a generic Gulf; and thirdly, Europe/USA, another zone which is highly di.erentiated but from which di.erence is popularly elided in discourse in order to make it stand at a third point of a rhetorical 'cultural di.erence triangle' against the Gulf and Kerala. See C. Osella and F. Osella, '"Where's Best for My Children" "Home", "Gulf" or "the West"? What Family Migration Strategies from Kerala, India Tell Us About Transnationalism', in Susan Koshy and Tariq Modood (eds), South Asian Diasporas (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming Spring 2008).
4. 'Hindu' here is shorthand for Kerala's middle-ranking and majoritarian Hindu castes, mainly Nayars, Tiyyas and Izhavas. 'Muslim' denotes a wider group.
5. F. Osella and C. Osella, Social Mobility in Kerala (London: Pluto, 2000).
6. P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (trans. R. Nice) (London: Routledge, 1984).
7. Such as P. Connerton, How Societies Remember (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
8. or P. Stoller, Embodying Colonial Memories (New York: Routledge, 1995).
9. David E. Sutton, Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory (Oxford: Berg, 2001).
10. K.T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994).
11. K.T. Achaya, The Food Industries of British India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994).
12. and A. Nandy, 'The Changing Popular Culture of Indian Food: Preliminary Notes', in South Asia Research, Vol.24, no.1 (2004), pp.9 - 19.
13. F. Osella and C. Osella, 'Migration and the Commoditisation of Ritual: Sacrifice, Spectacle and Contestations in Kerala, India', in Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol.37, nos.1 - 2 (2003), pp.109 - 39 [http://cis.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/37/1-2/109, accessed 19 Dec. 2007].
14. See Chigateri (this issue) for details of the outlawing of cow slaughter and the marginality of beef consumption across India.
15. Sutton, Remembrance of Repasts.
16. Cf. N. Green, 'Breathing in India, c.1890', in Modern Asian Studies (Oct. 2007) [http://journals. cambridge.org/
17. Sutton, Remembrance of Repasts, p.17.
18. R. Schechner, 'Rasaesthetics', in TDR: The Drama Review, Vol.45, no.3 (2001), pp.27 - 50.
19. While the Natyasastra is a Sanskrit text and the rasa tradition thus has a Hindu lineage, we can, along the lines taken by Nile Green (see for example 'Breathing in India'), understand that this tradition may well form part of a shared precolonial aesthetics.
20. 'Snout-to-belly-to-bowel', the line of the gut and of eating and digestion, is also the line followed by the enteric nervous system (ENS), an independent nervous system in the gut containing 100 million neurons and connected to the central nervous system (CNS) via the vagus nerve but acting independently of the brain. See Schechner, 'Rasaesthetics'.
21. A. Appadurai, 'Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia,' in American Ethnologist, Vol.8, no.3 (Aug. 1981), pp.494 - 511.
22. Kerala Christians also have certain food items quite speci.c to them and cannot in any way be posited as 'mediating' between the other two groups. Issues of prohibition-notably pork-are also raised by consideration of Christian diets; for lack of space we cannot discuss these issues here.
23. See Green, 'Breathing in India'.
24. T. Hansen, Wages of Violence. Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (New York: Princeton, 2001).
25. T. Hansen, 'The India That Does Not Shine', in ISIM Review, Vol.19 (Spring 2007), pp.50 - 1 [http://www.isim.nl/.les/Review_19/ Review_19-50.pdf, accessed 13 Dec. 2007].
26. and E. Simpson, Muslim Society and the Western Indian Ocean: The Seafarers of Kachchh (London: Routledge, 2006).
27. The usual caveats regarding the use of labels such as 'Hindu' or 'SC' apply here. Contemporary groupings, whether they are spoken of locally as jati or sammudayam, may not correspond to early nineteenth-century groupings and may not even have existed before modern state classi.cations. For details of how religious communities formed and the very category 'Hindu' came into being in Kerala, see M. Muralidharan, 'Hindu Community Formation in Kerala: Processes and Structures under Colonial Modernity', in South Indian Studies, No.2 (1996), pp.234 - 59.
28. For discussions of how caste and communal identities became solidi.ed and objecti.ed from the late nineteenth century onwards, see for example N. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
29. and C. Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, and Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002).
30. F. Osella and C. Osella, 'Articulation of Physical and Social Bodies in Kerala', in Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.), Vol.30, no.1 (1996), pp.37 - 68.
31. C. Osella and F. Osella, 'Quelques Points de Vue Malayalis sur l'Inne' et l'Acquis au Kerala, Inde du Sud', in V. Bouiller and G. Tarabout (eds), Images du Corps dans le Monde Hindou (Paris: CNRS Publications, 2003), Chap. 16 [http://www.cnrseditions.fr/Doc/Depliants/ D2271060605.pdf, accessed 18 Dec. 2007].
32. We have found that Muslims, unsurprisingly, do not speak in terms of the tri gunas system. While some do recognise a hot:cOld distinction, the benefits of coolness are downplayed. Indeed, the hot:cOld framework is often given a reverse slant. Muslims often argued to us that meat and other 'hot' foods are necessary in order to keep the body and blood warm and moist, whereas Hindu food logics insist upon heatedness as a potentially dangerous value, and prefer the 'cool' end of the register. See Osella and Osella, 'Articulation of Physical and Social Bodies in Kerala', pp.37 - 68. This diference in evaluation of 'heat' is clear if we compare how they appear in Ayurvedic and Unani medicine respectively: while Ayurveda seeks to maximise coolness in the body, Unani works to produce warmth. For the most part, however, Kerala Muslims seem to be much less rooted in the logics of Unani thought than are their Hindu counterparts in Ayurveda.
33. Meritxell Martin-i-Pardo, 'Colombo Cabri or Vegetarian Meal: Wherein Lies the Power?', in Anthropology of Food, Vol.5 (May 2006) [http://aof.revues.org/document89.html, accessed 13 Dec. 2007].
34. As recently as the 1980s, we found lengthy initiation rituals routinely conducted for Namboodiri boys, in contrast to most other Indian Brahman communities, which have dispensed with formal initiation and resorted to collapsing a thread-taking ceremony into marriage rites. See C. and F. Osella, Men and Masculinities in South India (London, New York: Anthem Press, 2007), p.29.
35. See also E. Gallo, 'From Gods to Human Beings: Comparative Analysis of the Social Transformations of the Nambuthiri Brahmins of Central Kerala', unpublished PhD thesis, University of Siena, 2003.
36. To recap, sattvikwhite, pure; rajasikred, heating; tamasikblack, polluted and sluggish.
37. Ada itself is a modern industrially-manufactured substitute for beaten rice.our fried cakes.
38. Osella and Osella, 'Quelques Points de Vue Malayalis sur l'Inne' et l'Acquis', Chap. 16.
39. Brenda Beck, 'Colour and Heat in a South Indian Ritual', in Man (n.s.), Vol.4, no.4 (Dec. 1969), pp.553 - 72.
40. Cf. McKim Marriott (ed.), India Through Hindu Categories (New Delhi: Sage, 1990).
41. F. Osella and C. Osella, 'From Transience to Immanence: Consumption, Life-Cycle and Social Mobility in Kerala, South India', in Modern Asian Studies, Vol.33, no.4 (1999), pp.989 - 1020.
42. Gallo, 'From Gods to Human Beings'.
43. We put 'non-violence' into inverted commas since, as clearly shown by Chigateri (this issue) cow worship and a discourse of vegetarianism as non-violence or respect for life is in reality wedded to several forms of caste-Hindu extreme violence (physical, structural, symbolic) against Dalits and others.
44. We have discussed and argued this point with Amit Desai but none of us are convinced by each other's position. The tension between our (and Sraddha Chigateri's paper) and Amit Desai's paper is one of the interesting debates thrown up by the workshop and this collection.
45. See for example Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay; E. Simpson. '"Hindutva" as a Rural Planning Paradigm in Post-Earthquake Gujarat', in J. Zavos, A. Wyatt and V. Hewitt (eds), Cultural Mobilization and the Fragmentation of the Nation in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp.135 - 65.
46. Adrian Mayer is almost alone in being able to document details of some shifts over time in eating practices from the 1950s to the 1970s. See A. Mayer, 'Caste in an Indian Village: Change and Continuity 1954 - 1992', in C.J. Fuller (ed.), Caste Today (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp.32 - 64.
47. F. Osella and C. Osella, 'The Return of King Mahabali: The Politics of Morality in South India', in C.J. Fuller and V. Benei (eds), The Everyday State and Society in India (Delhi: Social Science Press, 2006).
48. See F. and C. Osella, 'Islamism and Social Reform in Kerala, South India', in Modern Asian Studies (Nov. 2007) [http://journals.cambridge.org/ download.php?.le~%2FASS%2FS0026749X07003198a.pdf&code~ 5def4abac2a0341f28e851f47f408cbf, accessed 13 Dec. 2007].
49. As discussed in Mayer, 'Caste in an Indian Village', pp.32-64.
50. See for example discussions in Pat Caplan, 'Food in Middle-Class Madras Households from the 1970s to the 1990s', in K. Cwiertka and B. Walraven (eds), Asian Food: The Global and the Local (Richmond: Curzon, 2002), pp.46 - 62.
51. As outlined in Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
52. Called so after the then Soviet town where an Indian foreign minister died unexpectedly during a visit.
53. See for example Connerton, How Societies Remember'.
54. P. Stoller, Sensuous Scholarship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
55. Stoller, Embodying Colonial Memories.
56. C. Classen, 'Foundations for an Anthropology of the Senses', in International Social Sciences Journal, Vol.153 (1997), pp.401 - 12.
57. and C. Classen, Worlds of Senses: Exploring Senses in History and Across Cultures (London: Routledge, 1993).
58. F. and C. Osella, '"I am Gulf!" The Production of Cosmopolitanism among the Koyas of Kozhikode, Kerala', in E. Simpson and K. Kresse (eds), Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean (London: Hurst, 2007), pp.323 - 57.
59. High-status Thangals-Hadrami su. saints; or from alliances between Arab sailors/traders and local women.
60. P. Sloane-White, 'The "Hospitable Home" in Urban Malay Life: A Sociable Site of Political and Economic Action', unpublished conference paper presented at panel no. 287, International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), Kuala Lumpur, August 2007.
61. Here we draw upon ideas about the imperative in modernity of undertaking cultural works of purification. See for example B. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).
62. and Z. Baumann, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993).
63. J. Parry, 'The Gift, the Indian Gift and the "Indian Gift"', in Man (n.s.), Vol.21, no.3 (Sept. 1986), pp.453 - 73.
64. and G. Raheja, The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, Prestation, and the Dominant Caste in a North Indian Village (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
65. We do not imply here that such attitudes are found among all Kerala Hindus: As noted above, city-dwelling Communist activists, for example, are keen to dissociate themselves from concerns about food pollution. Yet still, we maintain that food anxieties and caste pollution anxieties do remain widespread.
66. Time which women are willing and expected to spend on food preparation is here another issue deserving of comment. When hosting a salkaram, women will marshal female relatives to help; helpers frequently come to stay overnight as preparation begins the day before the dinner. Thus, 'kitchen work' can typically occupy a group of around four to seven women for two days; it thereby becomes a site for female homosociality in its own right.
67. Cf. Simpson, Muslim Society and the Western Indian Ocean: The Seafarers of Kachchh. It is, then, like the paddy fields discussed above, a place where low-status people and pollution are considered to lurk.
68. Osella and Osella, 'From Transience to Immanence: Consumption, Life-Cycle and Social Mobility in Kerala, South India', pp.989 - 1020.
69. Osella and Osella, '"I am Gulf!"', pp.323 - 57.
70. One Calicut Muslim noted how a 'progressive' relative had decided to break the monotony of biryanieating for days on end at a succession of family post-wedding feasts by serving up something different -a vegetarian sadhya. Guests were outraged rather than relieved! While food-crossings do occur, as in the transgressive Onam feast above, there is no place for them on occasions like weddings, where community is being objectified, produced and celebrated.
71. Sutton, Remembrance of Repasts.
72. For details of how important black pepper has been, see discussions, passim, in K.N. Chaudhury, Asia Before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
73. Rice with fish curry is eaten right across Indian Ocean coastal societies.
74. For example Sri Lanka's (justi.ably!) famous 'string hoppers' are the same as Kerala's 'iddiyappam' (southside) or 'nool puthu' (north-side).
75. See for example B. Cohn, 'The Census, Social Structure and Objecti.cation', in B. Cohn, An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (New York and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp.224 - 54.
76. R. Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
77. and Dirks, Castes of Mind.
78. For interesting explorations of some issues raised here, see for example P. Roy, Indian Traffic: Identities in Question in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
79. and Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, and Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India.