Food of trauma – eating ‘non-food’ during the Bengal Famine of 1943 in Hindi narratives

Abstract

The famine of 1943 was one of the deadliest tragedies to befall South Asia under colonial rule. Many survived for months by gathering, stealing, and trading, thus demonstrating the resilience of rural people in Bengal. In direct response to the popular imperial narratives of the time, Hindi fiction writers published during and in the immediate aftermath of the famine. These narratives depicted food scarcity, particularly rice, the staple in the Bengali diet and the archetypical ‘food.’ Confronted with this lack, many resorted to consuming objects not traditionally considered food for religious, caste, emotional, or hygiene reasons. The rejection of some non-foods was attributed to factors such as preparation (raw rice or meat, roots or leaves), origin (beef, human flesh, dog meat), state (old, dirty, rotten, covered in blood), or ontological status (left-overs, intended for a deity), type of serving (inappropriate container, from the floor, thrown at), it being a result of a shameful act (stolen or result of prostitution), or undesired due to religious reasons (served by people of different religion, not suitable for women or widows). The present paper investigates such examples from Hindi texts Viṣad-maṭh, Bhūkh, Sāgar, Saritā aur akāl, and Bhūkhā Baṅgāl, and probe their emotive perspective – the feelings of disgust, pity, and fear demonstrated by the protagonists, symbolising the total collapse of ethics and degeneration of life into a purely biological survival.