Food and eating have always been endowed with meanings, and are amongst the most visible and important symbols of identity and difference, uniting the members of a community and segregating them from other communities. This inclusion and exclusion can be observed not only in what such people eat or what they are known to eat, but also in how they eat, how they prepare and serve their food, and what happens after food is consumed. The study of food politics and questions of identity and difference can, therefore, operate as a means of understanding the underlying social relations in any culture and its quiescent philosophy.
This ethnographic work discusses the politics inherent in food among the Garos of Assam, India, and Bangladesh. In these two areas, these people live as a minority, and with and in the peripheries of a dominant non-Garo culture. As such, the book explores the ways in which the Garos conceptualize themselves and the ‘other’ world through the microcosm of food – the most important need of all. One of the main topics of discussion in this is how the concepts of Garo food as opposed to non-Garo food find fruition in social reality and collective memory, as an identity marker.
