Caste on the Menu, Caste on Your Plate: Food, Purity and the Silent Divide in India’s Historical, Legal and Cultural Landscapes

Food in India is not merely a matter of sustenance, but a deeply social, cultural and political act through which caste is both perpetuated and contested. This article critically examines how food operates as a medium of caste-based exclusion and assertion across India’s historical, legal and everyday landscapes. Drawing on ancient religious texts, colonial policy, post-independence legal frameworks and contemporary ethnographic accounts, the study reveals how purity and pollution norms continue to shape food practices, access and commensality. It explores how the Manusmriti codified food-based hierarchies, how colonial administration entrenched them institutionally and how post-colonial India struggles to undo them despite constitutional guarantees. Through case studies of tea shops, wedding feasts and school meal schemes, and through analyses of Ambedkarite food politics and digital activism, this article argues that the politics of the plate remains central to India’s caste question. The study concludes with recommendations for policy reform and calls for further research into caste and food in diasporic and ecological contexts.