Abstract
The 1947 Partition of India made an incision dividing the British Indian Bengal Province into ‘epar’ (this side) Bangla and ‘opar’ (that side) Bangla. The residues of this impacted identity disintegration coupled with the migration of women as brides from that side to this from the rural to urban centres, carrying with them their regional knowledge of food. This paper takes interest in this historical moment and attempts to study the futures of food and the culinary landscapes it carved for West Bengal in India, influencing both the food consumed in private and in public. Through ethnographic engagements with pice hotels in Kolkata city and a parallel close reading of visual material that imagines post-partition domesticities shaped by food, the paper deciphers the gastropolitics (Appadurai 1981) that surfaced through the movement of sustainable palates from ‘opar’ to ‘epar.’ The paper, therefore, treats food as a carrier of memory that mourns the shifting landscapes of home, ‘heritagizing’ experiences in its intangibility. Placing our qualitative data in the context of the ambiguity of identity implicit in the experience of migrants from East Bengal who negotiated their sense of belonging through the route of food, this paper will contend that this repository of experience can uncover the narrative tensions and traditions that shape the ‘Bengal’ identity in South Asia. The paper also addresses the ways the regional film industry increasingly utilizes the virtuosity of food in popular culture to visualize this epoch— especially through the OTT series Indubala Bhaater Hotel (Indubala’s Rice Hotel).
Presenters
Aayushi ChatterjeePh.D Scholar, Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, India, Madhya Pradesh, India Dishari Chattaraj
Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Food And Memory, Food and Partition, Gastropolitics, South Asia
