Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article investigates the cultural and political significance of Dalit kitchens in Marathwada through the theoretical frameworks of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of the subaltern voice. By examining food practices, culinary labour and modes of sustenance within Dalit households as represented in Shahu Patole’s Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada (2024) and related Dalit testimonial writings, the study articulates how gastronomy becomes a site of resistance and identity formation against caste-based exclusion. The Dalit kitchen, often marked by socio-spatial segregation, transforms into a counter-space that challenges the Brahminical politics of purity and pollution. Reading everyday acts of cooking and eating as embodied performances of subaltern agency, the article foregrounds how Dalit foodways disrupt hegemonic cultural capital and reclaim dignity through material and affective practices. Drawing on textual and cultural representations from Marathwada, this analysis situates Dalit gastronomy as both an archive of historical oppression and a living testimony of resilience, memory and reclamation.

Keywords

Dalit kitchens Marathwada subaltern gastronomy habitus caste and food cultural resistance

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Appadurai

(1981). Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist, 8(3), 494–511.

Bama. (1992). Karukku ( Holmström

, Trans.). Macmillan.

Baviskar

(1995). In the belly of the river: Tribal conflicts over development in the Narmada Valley (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Baviskar

(2011). Cows, cars and cycle-rickshaws: Bourgeois environmentalism and the battle for Delhi’s streets. In Baviskar

& Ray

(Eds.), Elite and everyman: The cultural politics of the Indian middle classes (pp. 391–418). Routledge.

bell

hooks

. (1990). Yearning: Race, gender, and cultural politics. South End Press.

Bourdieu

(1972). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu

(1996). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University Press.

Butler

(1997). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford University Press.

Chakravarti

(2002). Gendering caste: Through a feminist lens. Stree.

10.

Connerton

(1989). How societies remember. Cambridge University Press.

11.

de Certeau

(1984). The practice of everyday life. University of California Press.

12.

Dirks

N. B.

(2001). Castes of mind: Colonialism and the making of modern India. Princeton University Press.

13.

Federici

(2004). Caliban and the witch: Women, the body, and primitive accumulation. Autonomedia.

14.

Guha

(1983). Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India. Oxford University Press.

15.

Guru

(1995). Dalit women talk differently. Economic & Political Weekly, 30(41/42), 2548–2550.

16.

Guru

(2009). Archaeology of untouchability. In Guru

(Ed.), Humiliation: Claims and context (pp. 94–112). Oxford University Press.

17.

Kamble

(2008). The prisons we broke ( Pandit

, Trans.). Orient BlackSwan.

18.

Khare

R. S.

(1992). The eternal food: Gastronomic ideas and experiences of Hindus and Buddhists. State University of New York Press.

19.

Kumar

(1993). The artisans of Banaras: Popular culture and identity, 1880–1986. Princeton University Press.

20.

Mbembe

(2001). On the postcolony. University of California Press.

21.

Narayan

& Sood

U. D.

(1997). Mondays on the dark night of the moon: Himalayan foothill folktales. Oxford University Press.

22.

Narayan

(1995). Eating cultures: Incorporation, identity and Indian food. Social Identities, 1(1), 63–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.1995.9959426

23.

Patole

(2024). Dalit kitchens of Marathwada. HarperCollins India.

24.

Rao

(2009). The caste question: Dalits and the politics of modern India. University of California Press.

25.

Ray

(2016). The ethnic restaurateur. Bloomsbury.

26.

Rege

(2006). Writing caste/writing gender: Narrating Dalit women’s testimonios. Zubaan.

27.

Rege

(2013). Against the madness of Manu: B. R. Ambedkar’s writings on Brahminical patriarchy. Navayana.

28.

Scott

J. C.

(1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. Yale University Press.

29.

Spivak

G. C.

(1988). Can the subaltern speak? In Nelson

& Grossberg

(Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). University of Illinois Press.

30.

Spivak

G. C.

(1999). A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present. Harvard University Press.

31.

Taylor

(2003). The archive and the repertoire: Performing cultural memory in the Americas. Duke University Press.

Subaltern Gastronomy: A Cultural Reading of Shahu Patole’s Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References