Beyond Curry: Decolonising the Way We Talk About Indian Food

[Saregama]

A thoughtful article about how the vast portfolio of Indian food is discussed, 78 years after independence and with 1.4 billion native eaters.

.

Beyond Curry: Decolonising the Way We Talk About Indian Food — GOYA

.

[The author] unpacks the imperialist history and racialised convenience of the term ‘curry,’ examining its role in erasing the diversity of Indian cuisine.

The West’s creation of the ‘curry’ has done more than just produce a narrow and ignorant view of Indian cuisine. It has also restricted the vocabulary of Indian food.

What began as a long history of contempt against Indian food, with the practice of calling it “filthy” and “smelly”; became an arc of appropriation when up-scale restaurants in London started using the imagery of the Empire in its royal existence to serve, market and orientalise Indian cuisine… This gave curries an “exotic otherness”, that ultimately helped reduce the stigma around Indian food within upper-class British society. It became only a matter of time until the curry got appropriated entirely.

…The curry is an invention of racist convenience. Reducing complex dishes like korma, rogan josh, vindaloo and moilee into the ambiguous ‘curry’ is nothing short of an imperialist masterstroke… The implication of the Curry therefore stretches far beyond plain oversimplification. It is, at the core of it, massively racist.

It is also an insult to centuries’ worth of culinary knowledge… Not only does it erase or leave out India’s impeccably rich culinary diversity, but also hegemonises the Indian food market and its global perception.

…Appreciation comes at the cost of erasing historic knowledge, skills, identities and experiences. At the cost of pandering to the orientalist gaze, and at the cost of forever remaining the empire’s subjects.

What does it mean, really, to decolonise food, and to decolonise curry? … When it comes to Indian food, perhaps we need to begin by letting dishes be explained by the name of the dish itself.

.

Stop calling all Indian food "curry"

.

If colonialism is a system of power, part of that power comes from the ability to name, simplify, and take away complexity.

…Take up space—tell your stories. It’s imperative to talk about where specific culinary techniques and cuisines originate to give credit and respect to the cultures they derive from.

[Harters (John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)]

Oh, good subject.

My first discussion about Indian restaurants was in the mid 1960s, when I was in my mid teen. My late older cousin used to visit London for work a couple of times a year and would always have a meal at Veeraswamy - opened in 1926 and the UK’s oldest Indian restaurant still in existence. It all seemed very exotic and there was nothing like it in my area for a number of years.

And , even then, the “Indian” restaurants opening up in the 1970s were, unsurprisingly, first in the areas where the new wave of immigrants came to live. Restaurant owners quickly realised that marketing towards white customers would be more profitable and so the “British curry” developed. Back in those years, the restaurants along Manchester’s “Curry Mile” were in their infancy but all were developing a common cuisine. It was based on having a range of sauces based on chilli heat and customers could order any of the protein with any of the sauces. Most restaurant owners were from the Sylhet province of Bangladesh and probably still have that heritage. These were places for the lads to go after closing time in the pub. And, yes, I was one of them. Of course, by now chicken tikka masala had been invented by a restaurant in Glasgow - and Anglicised version of butter chicken. This was also at a time when large numbers of Britons were starting to holiday abroad and were becoming used to different cuisines. It all made it an ideal time for Asian restaurants.

In due course, the curry house moved from the immigrant areas out into the suburbs. And you would now be hard pushed to find a British village that didnt have its own Asian restaurant - all selling the identical “any protein with any sauce” Anglicised dishes. Folk would talk about a place being “authentic”, when in fact that was complete bollocks.

The change is slowly happening in the 21st century. Restaurants are opening owned by Indians and selling regional food. I eat Mumbai street food, Kashmiri kebabs, Gujarati vegetarian dishes, South Indian dosas.

The change is being brought about by restaurateurs and it is only in this way that we will decolonise the attitude to food. If restaurants keep calling it a curry, customers will call it a curry.