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Indian Express
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
What racists don't understand about Zohran Mamdani, biryani and the West's ‘uncivilised' culinary history
Award-winning film director Mira Nair's son, 33-year-old progressive Zohran Mamdani, is shaking up Trump's America as few could. He swept the Democratic Party's primary nomination process, defeating the redoubtable Andrew Cuomo and is contesting the New York city mayoral elections. This is historic, as he keeps shattering at least three of Donald Trump's most aggressive planks — toxic anti-immigration hounding, his belligerent (Islamophobic) support to the Benjamin Netanyahu government as it kills thousands of people in Gaza and the devastation of welfarism and minimal equity for the needy. So stung is Trump with the young challenger that he has inflicted the most vitriolic McCarthyistic abuse on him, calling him a 'communist lunatic'. What is more worrisome is the avalanche of racial censure that Mamdani invited — for eating his biriyani with his fingers. This is exactly the way it should be and is eaten by all south Asians and many others. Republican member of Congress, Brandon Gill and professional India-baiter, far-right activist Laura Loomer, called this 'uncivilised'. The fact that most Americans eat their pizza slices and burgers by hand and dream of 'finger licking good' Kentucky Fried Chicken was conveniently forgotten. Forgotten also was the fact that for some 15 centuries after Christ, commoners in the west ate from wooden plates and bowls and used pieces of bread to pick up the sauce or gravy that remained, even after their knives had poked and picked whatever food they could. Till the late medieval period, water in Europe was not only repellingly cold but rather hazardous to drink, especially from contaminated rivers and pools. It was more so in crowded, unsanitary urban areas, though the poor hardly had any choice. Those who could afford it drank only beer, ale, wine or other spirits and many hardly ever came in contact with water — even for cleansing or hygienic purposes. Undergarments were stitched on to bare bodies for several months a year right up to recent times, which explains the western craze for perfumes and sweet-smelling flowers. In fact, those who are convinced that using fingers to eat is uncivilised would baulk at the very idea that the civilised fork was unknown to the west, until an eastern Byzantine princess brought it to Venice in the medieval period. She was married to the city's Doge — the duke or the ruler, who has nothing to do with Elon Musk's whirlwind slaughter of public posts and welfare schemes. More interesting is the fact that the princess carried this quaint piece of cutlery, a two-tined gold fork, from the Byzantine Empire, basically to pick fruits that were preserved in syrup and sugar, known as suckets. The pretty lady felt it was logically the most efficient and clean method of eating a sticky sweetmeat, but the Church was scandalised. Sarah Coffin explained in the Scientific American (touché) that 'The fork was associated with the life of luxury and sweets. This somehow got translated by the Church as being a negative form of decadence. It wasn't associated with Christian values on the grounds that it wasn't essential to life. Instead, it was perceived as something that would be used by a seductress of the East.' By the way, Coffin has authored six award-winning cookbooks and is the founding editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, that was named the 2012 Publication of the Year. Most recently she was named Editor-in-Chief of the digital resource Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Food Studies. Coffin goes on to explain that the fork was late to join the knife and spoon to complete the West's cutlery trio. 'The fork started its existence as a utensil to hold a piece of meat or to hold something while you carved it. Its entrance into individual usage comes really as a dessert object.' Sweets from the Byzantine and the very-Muslim Ottoman empires; there were several other foods from the Orient that left their mark on the cuisine of Europe — from which arrived Trump's legit Americans. Noodles came from China and was loved by Italians, leading to further development as different delicious pasta preparations of Italy. Coffin suspects, however, that 'instead of learning how to use chopsticks, Italians preferred to repurpose an implement they already had. In order to eat long noodles, they used a toothpick-like utensil called a punteruolo. It was made more efficient by the addition of another prong.' It was not before the 15th century that the wealthy merchant class in Italy and the upper crust of Europe started using forks regularly, even though the less fortunate looked at it as ridiculous and lampooned its use by the rich. In fact, northern Europe refused to use this cutlery for centuries and accepted it only in the eighteenth century. This was when the Industrial Revolution produced forks in bulk and at affordable prices. Even so, Europeans carried their own cutlery set for personal use to dinners and invitations. South Asians and people of the Middle East considered water-cleaned hands to be purer to pick up their food which invariably had more variety and came with their own gravy. This necessitated the use of fingers that are far more adroit in picking up dispersed food on plates on or clean leaves than knives or forks. The high-gluten and low amylose (high amylopectin) wheat of China and Southeast Asia was more elastic and sticky and led naturally to their noodles (lamian) and dumplings. These are/were best held and picked up by chopsticks. Similarly, their glutinous rice (nuòmi) or Japonica rice (jingmi) have almost no amylose and are naturally so sticky and cohesive that chopsticks are indispensable. On the other hand, most South Asian rice varieties fall under Oryza Sativa subspecies Indica that have some 30 per cent amylose. They are thus less, sticky and more fluffy, lending themselves to fingers for picking up and eating. So, what uninformed racialists need to understand is that different people use their best-suited methods to navigate through their specific bounties of nature and their own methods of cooking. The writer is a former Rajya Sabha MP
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First Post
28-04-2025
- Business
- First Post
How India's MAHASAGAR seeks to counter China's BRI in Indian Ocean Region
The shift from SAGAR to MAHASAGAR doctrine marks not just a change in terminology but a shift in ambition: from a South Asia-centric approach to a wider, cross-regional leadership role, signalling India's readiness to shoulder greater responsibility and counter China's assertive presence in the region read more Modi's 2015 abbreviation SAGAR stood for 'Security and Growth for All in the Region', meaning South Asia. After this, MAHASAGAR, ten years later in 2025, expands to read thus: 'Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions'. Representational image: X/@MEAIndia Two visits to two southern neighbourhood nations in just over a month, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rewritten India's script for the future in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). In Mauritius in mid-March, the Prime Minister upgraded his SAGAR initiative from an earlier innings into MAHASAGAR. This he followed with the first-ever defence MoU in Sri Lanka in early April, that too with the long-time India-baiter, the centre-left JVP and its President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in power, that too with full control of the 225-member Parliament. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD For the uninitiated, SAGAR in many Indian languages means 'sea' and MAHASAGAR, 'ocean'. Modi's 2015 abbreviation SAGAR stood for 'Security and Growth for All in the Region', meaning South Asia. After this, MAHASAGAR, ten years later in 2025, expands to read thus: 'Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions'. While the spirit of the two terminologies is more or less the same, the noticeable change or upgrading relates to the terms 'Region' in the first and 'Regions' in the second. Both implied that India was taking the initiative and responsibility for shared growth and security. But in the ten years that had passed by, the Indian side was signalling preparedness to take greater responsibility, from the immediate South Asian region to a larger geopolitical space, or 'regions'. Opportunities, challenges The reasons for such preparedness are not far to seek. First and foremost, the ground realities over the past decade showed that India's formalisation of what it had always been doing in the region through the SAGAR initiative served the purpose to a greater degree and faster than may have been expected. India did not seek out those opportunities, but when the Covid pandemic crisis and the consequent economic doom hit the world hard in the face, India was possibly the only one that was ready to help out not only neighbours but also distant friends, with medical kits first and vaccines next. When better-placed and purportedly better-equipped nations saw challenges in opportunities – though not is not the right phrase – to help out brother nations when the human crisis blew out of proportions, India alone saw opportunities in the challenges that the pandemic posed. No, India was not playing geopolitical games with the pandemic, as many others were wont to do, if only they had risen to the occasion. Instead, for India, it was a translated action of the centuries-old national ethos of 'Vasudeva Kudumbam' in Sanskrit and 'Yaadum Oore, Yavarum Kelir' in Tamil. Both mean that the 'world is only a large family'. It also implied that everyone has to help everyone else. And here was India living by the very national ethos, in the real world, in real time and really so. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD It's all in the Indian grain. Remember the 'Asian tsunami' of the end of 2004. First and foremost, India did not expect it, and two, it had no recorded history of a tsunami strike, unlike some of the South Asian nations and other countries elsewhere. Yet, when the natural calamity occurred, India voluntarily offered assistance and rushed it, too, to IOR neighbours Sri Lanka and Maldives – all within hours. In fact, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the heads of the two nations and volunteered assistance if they were ready to accept it. They accepted it, and that's how it happened. Of course, India had also extended aid and assistance to Nepal and Myanmar, the latter earlier this year, when massive earthquakes hit those nations. Keeping historic adversity aside, not very long ago, New Delhi offered similar assistance to Pakistan when hit by a huge earthquake, but Islamabad did not have the stomach to accept it. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Not a wordplay Apart from further boosting bilateral relations, both in terms of developmental aid and strategic cooperation, Prime Minister Modi's visit to Mauritius as the chief guest at the National Day celebrations on March 12 will ever be remembered for his larger declaration. Much thought seems to have gone into the re-christening of India's 'holistic' approach to bilateral and, now, multilateral cooperation, which includes development and security together. Rather, it's India's response to China's BRI, so to say. At launch, the BRI was claimed to be representing China's global developmental cooperation intent. However, without identifying BRI, China's chequebook diplomacy on white elephant projects, especially in Third World nations that are driven to debt and economic collapse, has involved strategic forays that the latter couldn't resist. Worse still, owing to a patently flawed design, the BRI failed to destroy national economies. It created massive assets that did not serve any great purpose and involved a huge Chinese credit line, with a relatively higher interest rate and stiff repayment schedules. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The famous example in the region is that of Sri Lanka's Hambantota experience. The original deal obviously led to Sri Lanka surrendering a part of its territory for non-payment of the Chinese debt. The Hambantota lease purportedly runs (only) for 99 years, but it does not mean anything. What's more, a decade and more of Chinese investments (?) created no jobs for the locals, no incomes for families and no revenues for the Sri Lankan state. Familiarity, but more But the outcome of such Chinese funding is first familiarity with the host nations and an understanding of their institutional weaknesses, the likes of which the Cold War-era adversaries had played upon. The intention seems to choke the host nations, likewise. This has since been followed by more recent Indian Ocean forays of the so-called Chinese research vessels. Despite denials to the contrary, India, among the IOR nations in the immediate neighbourhood, sees the research ships serving twin purposes for China. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD One, of course, is obvious. To help host nations to identify and locate deep-sea mineral beds and then use such information to exploit the host nations into signing a partnership agreement on joint exploitation of those minerals, supposedly for the common good. What has, however, turned out over the past years is China's unjustifiable and insatiable appetite for such minerals and its intention to control the global market for them over the medium and long terms. It is the Chinese way of acquiring superpower status, not by sharing but by denying. Nations like India see dual components, including a spy element. Needless to say, the BRI was at one time hailed as the largest global gathering of nations outside of the UN system – 149 members against the latter's 193. However, it is already floundering, as host governments are unable to stomach Beijing's attempts to browbeat them into signing up or making space otherwise. In the immediate Indian Ocean Region, Maldives is another country where China's aid-turned-strategic intent has caused avoidable disquiet internally. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Indo-Pacific, Quad In a way, the same applies to the US-initiated 'Indo-Pacific' or the 'Quad'. India is a founding member of both. Since then, the very term Indo-Pacific has taken multiple avatars at the hands of multiple nations. There is one by the European Union (EU); Germany was said to be having one of its own. Then there is the distant Canada, at least as far as the Indian Ocean part of the 'Indo-Pacific' goes. The nation too has joined the club of floating an idea of its own. This one predates President Donald Trump declaring his intent to 'merge' Canada, Mexico, and Panama, apart from purchasing Greenland. Trump's call or proposal might have got lost in his subsequent 'tariff war', but the nations named by him still are concerned. It cannot be otherwise. The same applies to Quad, which thankfully does not see any competition, at least as of now. Yet, in the crucial area of military cooperation, India has already declared its intent not to participate for its own reasons and justification. India seems to have concluded, strategic cooperation, yes, but military cooperation, no. The US has since created AUKUS for this purpose. Grow and share Both the US as the sole superpower, whether failing or not, and China as the wannabe superpower have both since stirred the Indo-Pacific more than what the region and regional nations can take. This has conferred a greater responsibility on 'middle powers' like India to do what others should be doing but are not doing. The ASEAN grouping in the extended neighbourhood is not up to it, nor is it cut out for the same. From elsewhere, the EU might or has the capacity to be there but lacks both focus and intention. Nothing explains the way the EU and member nations like Germany, France and earlier the UK were speaking about a multipolar world. At some point, nations like Australia that are sitting at the crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans also said such things, but their initiative and energy are tardy at best. That way, only India, from the days of the unprecedented fiscal crisis of the early nineties, has risen from the dust to be where it is. When India talks, others have begun hearing/listening. Prime Minister Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin that this is 'not an era of war' and has multiple messages. One, of course, is to Russia and also Ukraine, the other nation at war with the former – whoever commenced it, how and why, notwithstanding. The other is about India's peaceful intent to grow and share, rephrasing and reworking India's historic intent at promoting non-alignment, and this time from a position of strength and not weakness. Though no specifics are available at present, indications are that India has given itself enough time. India has laid out its intent in clear terms – to share, grow and secure. Of course, Indian strategic thinkers would have also known that historic adversaries like China and Pakistan are not going to jump at the idea, not certainly the former. Beijing's intent and efforts since before the days of the BRI's inception to box India in South Asia. Pakistan's DNA is to oppose whatever India proposes, bilaterally, regionally or globally. Both nations are also working together against India and Indian initiatives in the region and outside – yet, they are not doing enough to win over the trust of host nations that they otherwise 'pamper' or what they believe to be pampered. The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@ Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
