Food, contrary to the mythologising by TV shows, social media and food magazines, is not something that necessarily brings people together. It can also be divisive – much like love or marriage.
Most people have strong ideas of what constitutes good food or the cuisine they like. The term “comfort food” denotes how food memories from childhood are coded into us. Food is elemental to how we live and celebrate our lives (and even mourn deaths). In most cultures and religions around the world, certain foods are proscribed on specific occasions or conversely are considered celebratory on others.
Until economic liberalisation in the 1990s, the culture of eating out was restricted to a small cosmopolitan elite in India and the working classes. Most people did not have the kind of disposable income seen today.
There were fine-dining establishments, five-star hotels and clubs that were restricted to particular members from the upper classes.
Then there were roadside eateries, clustered around government offices, railway stations, hospitals and marketplaces, that largely served the working classes and office workers.
Caste practices that proscribed certain foods ensured that if Indians did eat out, it was only in establishments that catered to their particular caste-based preferences – the Udupi chains with their origins in Karnataka are one such example.
This is still evident to anyone who does road trips across North India. Most highway dhabas and eateries prominently display names that reflect caste or region: among them are Vaishno dhabas, Yadav dhabas, Jain dhabas, Gujarati dhabas and Bengali dhabas. In fact, a new phenomenon is the emergence on the Rampur-Bareilly-Moradabad stretch of many eateries that prominently proclaimed their Muslim origins.
The proprietors know who their potential customers are and who they wish to cater to and, therefore, the names of roadside eateries explicitly declare where they stand. The customers, in turn, know that the place they pick to eat from will cater to their dietary (and religious) needs.
The caste-based nature of Indian society and the food taboos built into this have ensured this unspoken contract – it is in the interests of the proprietors that they adhere to it.
In pre-liberalisation India, Indian street food stalls (chaat, samosas and the like) and mithai shops were largely run by specific upper-caste groups, ensuring that the food adhered to notions of “purity”. Lower caste employees in these shops only did menial jobs such as washing dishes, or cleaning – never the preparation of food.
The coffee shops that existed were run by government agencies, such as the Coffee Board, or as cooperatives supported by the board. These older coffee shops were frequented by a mix of left-leaning political activists, writers, poets and artists and students. North India did not have a coffee-drinking culture but Indian Coffee Houses could be found across all metros and some the other cities.
In the 1980s, Nirulas in Delhi was among the exceptions. The Indian chain, modelled on McDonalds, was one of the few outlets that catered to urban, well-to-do youth, serving up a version of indigenous fast food.
The rapid changes in the Indian economy after liberalisation saw the rise of newer groups who entered the middle class as well as greater disposable incomes. With this emerged a rising new trend of dining out. Patterns of food consumption began slowly shifting.
Soon after liberalisation, chains such as Cafe Coffee Day (fondly called CCD), Barista and Haldirams emerged, along with a few transnational fast food companies such as McDonalds and Pizza Hut and TGIF. Modelled on European- and American-style coffee shops, Cafe Coffee Day and Barista were relatively affordable and found an eager consumer base with high schoolers and young adults. This cohort had grown up watching American sitcoms such as Friends and Seinfeld.
These cafes provided cheap, safe and secure spaces for the affluent, urban middle-class young to meet and socialise and introduced a whole new generation to a cafe culture that differed from the earlier Indian Coffee Houses, which were not upmarket or located in residential market areas. This was also the time when malls emerged in Indian cities, coinciding with the rise and expansion of mobile telephone and the internet.
Transnational chains such as Starbucks, Costa Coffee, Dunkin Donuts (and most recently, Canadian chain Tim Hortons, UK chain Pret A Manger and French chain Paul) were soon to follow. As Barista and Cafe Coffee Day lost their first-mover advantage, other homegrown chains emerged, such as Third Wave and Blue Tokai, where the affluent young flock with their laptops to take advantage of free WiFi.
Transnational chains price their food and beverages at rates aligned to prices elsewhere in the world, despite having localised menus to suit Indian consumers’ tastes. But home grown brands provide similar fare at lower prices – the Indian market is big enough to encompass all price points.
Now, affluent Indians can choose from a variety of cuisines and fast food: from instant noodles to pasta, pizza as well as butter chicken, momos, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, sourdough bread, French-style patisseries, to biryani and kababs, dosas or even daal makhani and naan/tandoori roti, and notably – especially in the larger cities – the rising trend of regional Indian cuisines.
Food trends that start in one part of the world can quickly become viral in others. Ideas around food have changed and people are changing their eating habits, experimenting with foods from different regions in India and even other countries.
Unlike Cafe Coffee Day and Barista, which started off as brick and mortar stores, a number of the newer chains such as Blue Tokai and Suchali (an artisanal bakery) first began as online delivery outlets. Word of mouth via social media are now important advertising sites.
Eating out in India was largely gendered. It was men who frequented roadside eateries and other such places. It was rare for a lone woman to be seen frequenting a dhaba by herself or even at the Indian Coffee House. Men who ate out could break their caste and religious taboos, for example, and consume meat if they came from groups that were vegetarian. However, when home, they reverted to their caste and religious proscriptions.
Even among the wealthy, cosmopolitan elite in pre-liberalisation India, it was families who dined out together and couples or a group of friends – mixed or single-gendered groups.
This has changed today, notably in the larger cities. It is now possible for women to dine out freely, albeit in certain types of establishments and spaces, or be seen consuming chaat or momos and other roadside snacks alone.
The rapid changes in patterns of food consumption have given rise to anxieties and are perceived as destabilising and as a loss of culture. A few years ago, for instance, one community leader in Haryana blamed the prevalence of rape on the consumption of chow mein. “Chowmein leads to hormonal imbalance evoking an urge to indulge in such acts,” he said.
With the advent of contemporary capitalism, global fast food chains as well as indigenous homegrown Indian chains such as Haldiram’s and Sagar Ratna can be found across the country.
Something that was not available in a particular season can be flown in or even imported – if you can afford it, of course. Food delivery apps such as Zomato and Swiggy, along with the digital payment options have brought about further changes in the way Indians eat.
But with a unique Indian twist, filters inbuilt in the apps allow customers the option of blocking non-vegetarian food items from menus. In April, Zomato proposed a “pure veg mode”, with agents in special green uniforms who would deliver only vegetarian fare to ensure that “purity” was maintained. The plan was rolled back after a social media backlash.
Indians seem to want the culture of the new economy, but not the cultures of food that go with it. The Zomato incident demonstrated how technology-based solutions and advances are not necessarily without bias and corporations (like the small dhabas and roadside eateries) are invested in keeping customers happy – even if it comes with a tablespoon of bigotry. The end game, after all, is profit not altruism.
Culture is fluid. In an attempt to preserve the status quo, imagined enemies are constructed. Among the strategies to scare away change are controversies manufactured around food and contamination, targeting groups that are claimed to be intent on the annihilation of Indian culture – which is always assumed to be Hindu culture.
India’s new, post-liberalisation cultures of food, perhaps do bring people together in ways that the older culture did not. But underlying the glitz, is an anxiety that periodically manifests in different ways: the aim is as much to keep Hindus in check as it is to demonise Muslims.
Radha Khan worked as a development professional and now occasionally writes on socio-cultural and development issues which interest her.