Culinary Marginality and Resistance: Food Practices in Northeast India and the Politics of Purity.

Abstract

Food serves as a potent metaphor for understanding social hierarchies, identity construction and power dynamics, particularly in the context of Northeast India. In Northeast India, fermented foods such as Khorisa (fermented bamboo shoot), xukoti (fermented fish), axone (fermented soyabeans) occupy a central role in local diets and cultural identity. However, these foods are stigmatized as “unpalatable” in mainstream Indian households. This reflects deeper cultural hierarchies that marginalize the region’s traditions. Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital provides lens to analyse how food preferences and practices become markers of social distinction. Similarly, pork, a staple in many northeast Indian communities is frequently deemed “impure”, often relegated to being cooked outside the main household to maintain notions of ritual purity. Mary Douglas work on purity and danger highlights the symbolic boundaries that define what is considered ‘pure’ or ‘impure’ in culinary traditions. And how these classifications perpetuate cultural hierarchies. This paper argues that the rejection of fermented foods and pork is not merely a matter of taste but a manifestation of symbolic violence. Foucault’s theories of power and discourse further illuminate how dominant cultural frameworks devalue the culinary traditions of certain communities often displacing them to the periphery of mainstream Indian gastronomy. This paper argues that food in Northeast India is not merely sustenance but a site of resistance, identity assertion and cultural negotiation.