ABSTRACT
This article traces how food cultures in India reiterate social hierarches and caste logics of cleanliness and purity. Religious, intellectual and aesthetics battles about food preferences underline how the upper caste sensibilities justify and regulate everyday consumption and dietary practices. An integral part of Brahminical power is based on regulating and upholding dietary taboos grounded on caste ideology. Drawing from my ethnographic research on racism, migration, impunity in India over the last two decades, I examine key debates on racism and casteism, and illustrate how the rise of food-based discrimination against migrants from Northeast India is founded on an upper caste practice and logic of contamination, filth, and hygiene. I offer the concept of ganda (dirty) food to highlight how casteism and racism are informed by an upper caste reasoning of superiority, contamination, and privilege in India.
