Transforming Millets: Strategies and Struggles in Changing Taste in Madurai

Abstract

Indian food systems are famously intricate, but the southern state of Tamil Nadu has a single foundation for its cuisine: rice. A few generations ago, other grains collectively called “millets” were the daily staple for many Tamil people. Then, they almost totally eschewed millets in favor of polished, white rice, as the latter became more accessible. Yet in the past few years, public health and development professionals have launched efforts to re-popularize millets as neglected and underutilized species that have the potential to positively affect consumer nutrition, use of environmental resources, and livelihood stability. Drawing on ethnographic evidence collected through field research in and around the city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, this paper explores how the particularities of Tamil history and cultural values shape the current confused status of millets there. By emphasizing the interplay of structure and change over time, the paper considers how a denigrated food from the past can be made “good” and “right” in the present. It brings to the foreground unresolved challenges that could impede the goals of millet promotion efforts. These challenges will likely need to be addressed if millets are to have a place in future Tamil food culture.

Keywords:

• traditional food
• heritage
• revitalization
• history
• Tamil
• Indian cuisine
• rice
• millet

Acknowledgements

The author extends gratitude to all Tamil interlocutors who shared perspectives and facilitated research. Particularly, the Department of Home Sciences with Food Biotechnology at Fatima College, Madurai, and Professor Vasantha Esther Rani deserve acknowledgement for their hospitality as host institution and mentor. Many thanks are extended also to the issue and journal editors and anonymous reviewers, as well as to Professor Richard Wilk, for their valuable feedback.

Notes

1. “Sub-caste” is used in the sense of jati or what is now usually politely called “community.”

2. Tamil words have been transliterated simply so that long vowels are indicated with a diacritical mark.

3. As with all mammoth development goals, improving public health and ensuring environmental sustainability and economic stability requires multiple strategies. This applies even within the circumscribed objectives pertaining to NUS. Introducing more solutions is outside this paper’s scope; instead the following examination of the millet reclamation/transformation project aims to describe work currently being done in Madurai.

4. Pulses are often specified separately as parappu, but in Tamil cuisine the functional distinction between pulses and cereals is relatively less prominent than in many Euro-American cuisines. Often both types of grain are mashed or ground together, as in doughs and batters.

5. The Vijayanagara Empire ruling during this time was based in present-day Karnataka state, but extended through much of South India, including contemporary Tamil Nadu.

6. Simulation is like the form of creolization Wilk (2006, 116) discusses as “substitution,” in which a plentiful, low-status food is snuck into dishes copied from high-status colonizers. In the case at hand, simulation attempts to increase demand for a currently less common but traditional, precolonial ingredient by inserting it into an already common format.