Odouring foodscapes, ordering gender: Mapping women and caste in Samskara and The Weave of My Life

abstract

The article locates the caste-spaces in India through the sensoriality of smell emitted by food in different gastronomical zones and its influence on the socio-political condition of Dalit women. It focuses on the embedded olfactory value of food to inform the contested nature of the Indian caste system and enables an understanding of the gendered aspect of the caste-spaces. By examining caste as spatial, sensorial and corporeal, the article confronts the crucial gaps in caste and food studies by deconstructing the order and odour of foodways in U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara (1976) and Urmila Pawar’s The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs (2008). While critiquing the caste system narrative, the selected texts map different olfactory zones in intercultural culinary landscapes. The article argues how the caste society is built on the gastronomic idea of ‘we are/smell what we eat’ by mapping the ways in which the two texts explore the physical and sensorial consumption of food in different socio-cultural spaces. It is argued that gendered meanings around smell are invariably connected to the caste system, and that Dalit women’s relationships to food and smells should be foregrounded in the olfactory politics of caste. The article traces the ways in which smellscapes highlighted in the selected texts create invisible boundaries of spatial and moral stratification (order) through the invisible medium of smell (odour). It also situates the praxis of deodorisation as a tool of dissent by Dalits, and especially Dalit women. The article raises critical inquiry into how the olfactory effect of food is not just a chemical by-product, but rather a symbolic agent which can work both to oppress − through spatial and corporeal discourses − or be opened up to rigorous inquiry.

keywords:

• food
• smell
• caste-space
• deodorisation, Dalit women

Notes

1 The article couples the terms caste and space together as “caste-space” to emphasise the intricately woven nature of the entities and how they reinforce each other’s position.

2 Harikrishnan (2022) uses the term “lowered” over “lower” to imply the forced position of caste hierarchies rather than it being natural.

3 Jhoothan refers to morsels of left-over food chanced upon by animals or thrown to waste. In India, the lowered caste people known as untouchables have been forced to eat jhoothan for centuries. So, jhoothan encapsulates the plight, humiliation and economic depravity of untouchables in the hands of upper castes. See more, Omprakash Valmiki’s Jhoothan (1997) and Mulk Raj Anand’s The Untouchable (1935).

4 Agrahara is typically a land granted to the Brahmin community by noble families for religious purposes to maintain temples and live with their families.

5 Dalitwada, as the name suggests, implies the locality where Dalits live and are forced to live exclusively outside the pure caste-spaces.

6 Satyavati is the daughter of a fisherman in the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata who is also known as Matsyagandhi (meaning: fish-smelling female). It is believed that Sage Parashara impregnated the fisherwoman and thereby “bless[ed] her body with perpetual fragrance” (Ananthamurthy 1976, p.144)

7 Manu is one of the ancient sages of India who has written the Hindu Dharmic-code text, Manusmriti. The text provides laws on a range of issues, including the appropriate diet of upper castes and lowered castes.

8 Ambeel is a kind of thickened sour gruel made from rice grains. Due to economic constraints in Dalit households, it is cooked in boiling water with a bit of salt only.

9 The term “twice-born” in Hinduism refers to the initiation of upper-caste Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas during adolescence which is perceived as a spiritual rebirth. See, for example, Aatish Taseer’s The Twice-Born (2018)

10 Kaat is a thick soup-like sauce made from boiling fish stock, then stored in a bottle. It is mostly consumed by women in Dalit households.

11 Saar, on the other hand, is kaat cooked in a soupy form with chilli powder, salt and raw mango. Both are consumed by lowered caste women folk when their men are away from home.

12 Brahmanical tradition is an established cultural and epistemological system which is created and perpetuated by Brahmins to maintain the caste hierarchy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thiyagaraj Gurunathan

G. THIYAGARAJ is a research scholar currently pursuing his PhD in the discipline of English at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, India. He is conducting his doctoral research in the domain of epidemic narratives produced in Indian literature and culture. His areas of interest include health humanities, historiographic metafictions and critical sensory studies. He has experience presenting papers at various national and international conferences on different fields of interdisciplinarity. E-mail: [email protected]

Rajbir Samal

RAJBIR SAMAL is a Ph.D. Research Scholar at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, India. He is currently working on literary food studies for his doctoral thesis, and his areas of research interest comprise critical sensory studies, Popular Culture, and Indian Writing in English. He has presented research papers at many national and international conferences organised by Nottingham Trent University, IIT Mandi, and the University of Delhi, amongst others. Email: [email protected]

Binod Mishra

BINOD MISHRA, presently a professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, has been teaching English for more than two decades at various levels. He has to his credit 25 books and more than a hundred articles published in different reputed journals and books. He has also addressed the participants in around a hundred invited talks at various conferences and symposiums. Email: [email protected]