This is actually food for thought

As Indians we have many tiny details ascribed to how we should cook and eat our food. We have been taught to believe in Anna He Poorna Brahma (Food is Brahman — the all-encompassing spirit of the universe). However, Shahu Patole chose to name his cookbook as Anna He Apoorna Brahma, which loosely translated reads ‘An incomplete meal’. Notice the irony here?

With this as her ‘starter’, artist Rajyashri Goody came up with her art project called ‘Food and Caste’. She tells us the story of Dalits and the food they eat, how caste system has been strengthened through the food that people are allowed to grow and eat. “The Dalits had no land of their own. So they couldn’t grow food and had to live on the rations given out by other people (barter system). If you have to control a person, you have to control his stomach. The whole caste system has evolved by controlling the stomach and thereby the food,” says Goody, who has worked on the artwork as a part of TIFA’s Open Studios project.   

Goody, who is a half Dalit (with an English father and a Dalit mother), says that through this project she wants to know about her roots, history and how caste system was perpetuated. 
 
The inter-relation
For most of us, food is something we relish or hate. There is no deeper thought. Oh yes, we are now concerned about how our foodgrains are grown, whether they are produced organically or not, but the underlying politics eludes us. Simply because we haven’t been affected by it. 

Goody, who has graduated in Sociology and has done a Master’s course in Visual Anthropology, says, “I always wanted to speak about caste, but I hadn’t approached it in my Anthropology work. But, I found that in my art practice, I could apply it. In the last two-three years, my work has revolved around caste. I am not creating anything new, but I am exploring and broadening the narrative of Dalit history.”

Through her work and attempts at learning more about her community, the 28-year-old realised that there was a connection between food and history and literature. “Dalit people were not allowed to be educated and nobody wanted to write about their life. When they got access to education, they wrote about their lives and most of it revolved around food or the lack of it. Dalit literature by writers like Daya Pawar or Namdeo Dhasal describes the feeling of going hungry and of shame — when you realise that you are not allowed to eat with upper caste people. These experiences have shaped Dalit literature,” she adds. 

Goody then talks about Laxman  Gaikwad’s Uchalya. “In Uchalya, Gaikwad writes about how his father and he would go and catch rats. They would let them loose in the wheat fields. The rats would dig out the wheat and scraps and store in their holes and then the father and son would dig out food from the holes. In this way, Gaikwad and his father wouldn’t be caught for ‘stealing’. These were the ways of finding food. If nothing came by, they would eat the rats. In Omprakash Valmiki’s Joothan, he talks about standing outside, when upper caste people would be dining at weddings. They would wait for leftover food to be thrown and scrounge it and take it back home. These stories always radiated gratefulness and shame — grateful for food and shame for having to live on someone else’s scraps. You won’t find this writing or experiences in regular Indian cookbooks. In fact, Indian food often indicates Satvik food or Mughlai food. For at least 250 million people who make up the Dalit community in India, there is just one cookbook by Shahu Patole,” she makes a point.

Food in art 
Goody has been working on this project for some time now. Some of it took shape when she was in Europe and some at the TIFA studio and Goody intends to keep adding to the project. “I am not actually cooking the food. But the process is the same. I am making dough for bhakris, shaping it into small balls, patting and instead of roasting on a tawa, I put them in the oven. I have used ceramics as a medium and in some places for authenticity, I use salt, chillies and so on,” she says.

The food that has been laid out has bhakris made of various grains, laddoos and some red shapes. When asked, ‘What’s that?’, Goody says, “It’s Lal Bhaji, only it’s not bhaji or subji. It’s beef. Dalits would call it lal bhaji, so that the upper caste people wouldn’t realise they were eating beef. Beef is not considered pure.”

There are also poems or verses stuck on the walls and doors, most of them being poems and texts from Dalit literature that talked about food. Goody broke the text down, gave it metre and also described the recipe... but it’s just isn’t the typical recipe that you can follow to make a dish. There are also photos of Chavdar tala (Chavdar pond) for which Dr Ambedkar held a satyagraha to allow the Dalit people an access to the water. 

Response and reaction
Goody has exhibited the artworks in Harvard and in London and the response is diametrically opposite to what she gets in India from Indians here and Indians living abroad. “It’s easier for Westerners to be shocked by this. They are more accepting than Indians in our own country. With upper caste people, it’s a struggle. They always start a conversation around reservation. They say, ‘...But it (caste system) doesn’t exist na? But you are different na?’ There are these stereotypes about what a Dalit person should look like. What he should be doing? What his duties should be? It’s expected that I should only be working for my community and not mixing with others. Yesterday a woman came to see my work and we covered the same ground. ‘There are many poor Brahmins also,’ she said. I replied, ‘Yes, there will be. I am not saying they don’t exist’. 

If people don’t accept ‘Caste exists’, then they don’t want to go deeper or learn about Dalit culture. “It’s kind of tiring to be an educator and an artist,” she points out. When asked what response did she get from people of her community, Goody says, “Last week, a girl from Dalit background came by. She is not an artist but she was happy that someone was doing something like this. She found my artwork complicated, more academic, but she was glad that Dalit issues were being given importance,” Goody says.

With that the artist voices her thought of doing a PhD. “I have got data. A PhD will help me go deeper.  It’s just that art gives you freedom to express, and so I will broaden this work as well. I don’t want people to come and see my work and be shocked. I want to show the beauty in it, the whole nature of being a Dalit. Dalits have suffered, but there has also been joy and happiness in our lives. I wanted to portray the whole, the composite whole, of what it means to be a Dalit,” she concludes.

ST Reader Service
Visit TIFA Studio at Hotel Shalimar, Sadhu Vaswani Road, to see Rajyashri Goody’s Food and Caste project