ABSTRACT
This chapter examines four major instantiations of cooking, eating, abstention, and commensality in the South Asian diaspora: (i) the practice of vegetarianism and the encounter with normative carnivory outside the subcontinent; (ii) the emergence of “curry” as a global signifier of South Asian cuisines, and the mobilisation of the romance of spices as an icon of authenticity; (iii) new forms of cooking and eating as a result of the experience of indenture; and (iv) the gastronomic accommodations and fictions of working-class as well as late capitalist diasporas in North America.
