Introduction
Recent cultural scholarship on food systems has convincingly demonstrated that human foods not only convey wide-ranging socio-cultural connotations and perspectives, but also assist in explicating different relationships across the semantic, nutritional, and economic domains (Khare, 1992).
As acknowledged by this author, food systems explain and interpret interrelationships between nature and culture, not mentioning that they concurrently implicate the symbolic and material conditions of a society. In this light, the present paper uses the Hindu as a case example to discuss why traditional food culture is perceived as so important in the Indian religion.
Why the Choice of India
As noted by Khare (1992), “India provides us with virtually an inexhaustible repository of instances where food loads itself with mundane and profound meanings” (p. 27).
The Hindu food, for example, is loaded with meanings and messages that could be understood within the socio-cultural and religious contexts, not mentioning that food in Indian settings is not viewed as an edible product but rather as a category of thought (Olivelle, 2011). The Indian population, therefore, provides a good basis for the discussion and illumination of the topic as food is thought to acquire a cosmological significance, particularly in the Hindu socio-cultural and religious contexts.
Importance of Traditional Food Culture in Indian Religion
Available literature demonstrates that food has”language-like” properties of signification and communication for such issues as self and cosmic order, implying that it can become a major component of the medium addressing critical issues of ontology, emotion, faith, and personal experience (Khare, 1992; McClymond, 2006).
This view is reinforced by Olivelle (2011), who argues that due to the cosmological principle vested in various food items that are characteristic of the Hindu culture, food is often perceived as playing a significant role in several creation myths in ancient India. Prajapati, the creator god of the Brahmanas, is often illustrated both as the creator and food for his creatures, implying that both the creator and creatures are threatened by death in the absence of food and the cosmological importance attached to it (Olivelle, 2011).
According to Khare (1992), “food conveys a range of meanings and experiences that conjoin the worldly to the otherworldly, and the microcosm (i.e., affairs of Jiva) to the macrocosmic (i.e., matters of srsti and ultimate reality, Atman or Brahman)” (p. 28).
As demonstrated by this particular author, the traditional food culture is important in the Hindu religion because of the fact that food “speaks” a language that conjoins the gross and the subtle, body and spirit, the seen and the unseen, outside and inside, as well as the particular and the general through the representation of widespread interrelationships involving the three corners of the gastrosemantic triangle (self, food, and body) and by becoming the principle of the eternal moral order (dharma).
In such an orientation, the “language” demonstrated by food affects individuals according to their life-stage (asrama) and their path of spiritual pursuit (marga) through a set of universal principles that include formulations such as “you eat what you are” and “you are what you eat” (Khare, 1992 p. 29).
These formulations arising from the Hindu appear to underscore that an individual’s food preferences to a large extent reflect their internalized moral temperaments (gunas) and that people ascribing to this faith should always select, regulate, control, and enhance their food in the pursuit of both health and spiritual objectives.
Available literature demonstrates that traditional food culture is remarkably important in the Indian religion as “food becomes a reflexive medium for conceiving and experiencing interpretations of food, mind, and breadth, most often by the yogic control of one’s body and what one eats” (Khare, 1992 p. 28). King (2012) acknowledges that “food, one of the great joys of life, symbolizes communion and community, and as such feasting and fasting are important in many religious traditions of the world” (p. 442).
This author further affirms that for devotees food is an extremely powerful facet of the divine-human experience in the Hindu culture, and that deprivation of food as practiced in ascetic traditions is perceived as the definitive test of devotion to God.
By preparing, consuming and distributing food items together, devotees in the Hindu religion demonstrate the prospect of generating loving relationships with the faithful, directing and supporting each other in spiritual activities, and spearheading the message of Krishna (King, 2012; McClymond, 2006). Indeed, as postulated by these authors, the partaking of sanctified food items in the Hindu culture heightens and solidifies the bond between the devotee and the supernatural being, as well as between the devotee and the faithful.
Additionally, it is demonstrated in the literature that the “the Hindu renders the moral, economic, and political spheres of food interdependent, even as each may contextually vary in its domination and control of life” (Khare, 1992 p. 29). In the sociocultural and religious contexts, “food is offered to the gods at sacrifices, to the forefathers at sraddhas, to various beings (bhuta) at balis, and other humans at hospitality rites and as alms” (Olivelle, 2011 p. 76).
Elsewhere, it is reported that “food, a material substance, becomes the sacramental vehicle of cosmic, societal, and individual transformation, and one of the most powerful means of celebrating the embodied divine and transmitting belief in God’s relational nature” (King, 2012 p. 443).
In the narrative about Mrs. Sens, Lahiri (1999) demonstrates the power that physical objects such as food have over the human experience, implying that food can shift the perceptions of people not only on sociocultural contexts but also on religious grounds as witnessed in the Hindu culture and religion. Such orientations, in my view, demonstrate the centrality of food in the Indian religion.
It is reported in the literature that “the Hindu holy person handles food to serve designated moral and spiritual purposes, including efforts to alleviate human sorrow and suffering and to bring one nearer to liberation (moksa)” (Khare, 1992 p. 30).
Indeed, in the Hindu culture and religion, food items are not traded to earn a profit as the holy person must regulate and control food only on the grounds of cultivating his or her spiritual power. It is further acknowledged that a Hindu holy person masters his desires and senses by fasting and minimal eating to achieve enhanced self-control and austerities that in turn function to make food express special powers and messages in ceremonies aimed at conveying blessings and curses to the faithful (Khare, 1992; McClymond, 2006).
This view of fasting is reinforced by Counihan (1999), who argues that abstinence from food has been valued in the ideology of Western culture as it demonstrates self-control, the dominance of mind over body, and regulation of the permeable boundaries that symbolizes the threatened self.
The religiously-connected people in India believe that such a holy person may (1) use food to heal, uplift and trigger good fortunes to the faithful, (2) use leftovers to guide disciples toward spiritual experiences and divine immanence, (3) fast with the intention of resolving moral dilemmas, and (4) recommend special diets, herbs (jaribooti), and fasts with the intention of treating ailments, undesirable psychological dispositions, and mental tardiness (Khare, 1992).
Ramanujan (1992) thinks that food in the Indian culture can be used as a sacrifice to free good people from their every taint, not mentioning that it is often used to appease the gods.
On her part, Counihan (1999) acknowledges that refusal to take food “signifies rejecting the passage of any object, contact, or relationship across the margins of the self; it is a desperate attempt to close the boundaries to the ego and complete the self” (p. 74). All these assertions and acknowledgments, in my view, reinforce the importance of food in Indian culture and religion.
Ramanujan (1992) uses poetry to demonstrate that people from the Hindu culture and religion believe the world is food (annamayam Jagat), hence acknowledge that “food is Brahman because food is what circulates in the universe through bodies which in turn are food made [of] flesh and bone” (p. 223).
On his part, Olivelle (2011) acknowledges that the creation myths of the Brahmanas make a clear and coherent connection between creation, world, food, and sacrifice in explaining how sacrifices re-enact the creative acts and thereby guarantee the continuance of food. This author further argues that man and the world he lives in are formed from the essence of food and that one should not belittle or reject food as everything is food.
However Counihan (1999) is of the view that the penetration of the body through food or copulation, while fundamental to life and growth of people from diverse cultural settings, can also involve challenges to the personal integrity particularly when it comes to a society’s beliefs about men’s and women’s relationships, autonomy and vulnerability.
Lastly, Olivelle (2011) cites a popular doctrine from the Hindu religion to demonstrate that “in the beginning, humans and the sacrifice were created together so that humans would sustain the gods through sacrifice; and gods, in their turn, would sustain them by providing rain that produces food” (p. 76).
Consequently, the importance of traditional food culture in the Hindu religion is demonstrated by the relationships that (1) from food do human beings derive, (2) the food used to feed humans is derived from rain, and (3) rain is derived from sacrifice to provide food.
This view is reinforced by Counihan (1999) in her earlier research on traditional societies in Papua New Guinea and the Amazon when she suggests that women provide men with food to make semen that is, in turn, returned to the women through sexual penetration to create the fetus and hence progress the procreation agenda. These relationships demonstrate that, in its entirety, food in the Indian socio-cultural and religious contexts should be worshiped.
Conclusion
Overall, this paper has demonstrated that traditional food culture is perceived as critically important in the Indian religion, particularly in the context of its capacity for:
- loading mundane and profound religious meanings,
- signification, communion and communication,
- serving as an extremely powerful facet of the divine-human experience,
- solidifying the bond between the devotee and God as well as between the devotee and the faithful,
- cosmic transformations,
- sustenance of life.
Drawing from the discussion, it is safe to conclude that the traditional food cultures of the Indian people cannot be divorced from their religious beliefs.
References
Counihan, C. M. (1999). The anthropology of food and body: Gender, meaning and power. New York, NY: Routledge.
Khare, R. S. (1992). Food with saints: An aspect of Hindu gastrosemantics. In R.S. Khare (Eds.), The eternal food: Gastronomic ideas and experiences of Hindus and Buddhists (pp. 27-43). New York, NY: State University of New York Press.
King, A. S. (2012). Krishna’s prasadam: “Eating our way back to godhead.” Material Religion, 8(4), 440-465.
Lahiri, J. (1999). Interpreter of maladies. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
McClymond, K. (2006). You are where you eat: Negotiating Hindu utopias in Atlanta. In E.M. Madden & M.L. Finch (Eds.), Eating in Eden: Food and American utopias (pp. 89-103). Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Olivelle, P. (2011). Ascetics and Brahmins: Studies in ideologies and institutions (cultural, historical and textual studies of religions). London and New York: Anthem Press.
Ramanujan, A. K. (1992). Food for thought: Toward an anthology of Hindu food-images. In R.S. Khare (Eds.), The eternal food: Gastronomic ideas and experiences of Hindus and Buddhists (pp. 221-249). New York, NY: State University of New York Press.