Festive Eating in a Metropolitan City: Caste and Commensality in Delhi

Mohini Mehta

Doctoral Fellow, Uppsala University (Sweden)

Email ID: mohinimehta1@gmail.com

Delhi, often imagined as a cosmopolitan city that thrives on diversity, is also a site where deep-rooted cultural hierarchies seep into quotidian and festive food practices. Food in the city is not simply anchored on taste; it embodies commensality, the practice of eating together that anthropologists such as Arjun Appadurai (1981) describe as a powerful social marker. In South Asia, commensality define and shape who can eat with whom, who serves and who receives, and which foods are deemed pure or polluting. Dalits and other subaltern groups negotiate these hierarchies daily, sometimes subverting and reproducing them simultaneously.

This blog draws on two contrasting ethnographic experiences in Delhi which have been part of my doctoral fieldwork as a social anthropologist – the Ambedkar Jayanti celebrations in Central and South-West Delhi, and the Navratri festivities at the Vaghri Devi temple in the neighbourhoods of West Delhi. Both events involve food offered in a collective setting, but they illuminate how caste and cultural hierarchies persist or are resisted in public life. Together, they show how Dalit and subaltern practices in the city overlap yet diverge, as they move between anti-caste secular celebrations and caste-coded religious rituals. There is also a critical observation of the dynamics of commensality, which refers to the act of sharing food as a social practice that facilitates cultural interaction and reflects the dynamics between different social groups (Appadurai, 1981).

Ambedkar Jayanti: Food as Anti-Caste Assertion

14^th April is celebrated every year as the birth anniversary of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, the chairperson of the drafting committee of the Indian constitution and a champion of Dalit causes in India.

Dr. Ambedkar rejected the Hindu practices and religious ceremonies and adopted Buddhism to politically assert the Dalit identity in 1956. His birth anniversary is an important secular occasion for the Dalits across the country. On 14^th April 2023, I attended Ambedkar Jayanti in Central Delhi.

The one-and-a-half kilometre stretch of the celebrations was dotted with flower-draped stalls, banners of Dalit associations, and stalls serving food.  Aloo-puri, pakoras, pulao, chilled water packets and halwa were distributed by federations of banks, insurance companies, and the Food Corporation of India to ensure that the thousands arriving from neighbouring towns were fed with hospitality and dignity.

The practice here differed starkly from routine Savarna bhandaras (public distribution of food primarily as a religious ritual), where distribution often involves shouting at those queuing, particularly the poor. Here, food was handed out respectfully, no one was yelled at, and everyone – from workers to guests – was treated gently, despite the significant footfall. This practice of food distribution and consumption can be understood in the light of Appadurai’s (1981) concept of ‘gastropolitics’ of commensality, where the act of feeding and being fed reflects larger struggles of hierarchy and power – caste based in this context. Ambedkar Jayanti is seen as a celebration of the anti-caste ideals of self-respect and dignity among Dalits, and by not replicating the Savarna aggression and rude behaviour, the distributors at the celebration could be seen rejecting the emulation of the castiest practice of offering food to the marginalized with a feeling of contempt.

Vegetarianism, Piousness and Inclusion

The traces and influence of Savarna practices was still evident during the celebration. Most stalls served vegetarian food. “Today is a pavitra (pious) day,” one federation member told me, insisting that meat consumption would be inappropriate. Another Ambedkarite Buddhist leader who had flown from Mumbai explained, “In Buddhism, there is no ban on meat, Babasaheb himself never condemned it. But we choose vegetarian food here so everyone, regardless of religious background, can share the meal.”

Given the political tensions over public consumption of meat in Delhi in the past few years, this practice of serving vegetarian meal can be both as inclusive as well as exclusionary. Certain self-proclaimed groups discourage public consumption of meat during the religious celebrations. While Babasaheb Ambedkar himself was an atheist and advocated anti-religious practices, his birth anniversary celebrations are perceived by many Ambedkarite Dalits as a religious event. During my conversation with several Dalit federation volunteers, the term pavitra (piousness, which has a religious connotation in colloquial speak) was used a couple of times to highlight the importance of the celebrations, hinting at the religious and hagiographic parallels being drawn with Ambedkar’s life to emphasize his social efforts. The association of pavitrata transformed the refreshments as prasad for several volunteers, who kindly insisted that I should partake the prasad as a blessing on this ‘auspicious’ day. Many of the visitors were also seen receiving the refreshments in the manner one would receive any consecrated food at a religious gathering. Traditionally, prasad is consecrated food associated with Hindu temples, subject to strict rules of purity and exclusion. For Ambedkarites to call their food prasad was to appropriate a Hindu idiom, while simultaneously secularizing it. Here, this prasad was not limited to caste Hindus but distributed freely to all, probably reinforcing Ambedkarite ideals of equality.

It is ironic that while Ambedkar Jayanti is celebrated as a political event to subvert caste hierarchies, its popular celebration can, at times, also conforms to the dominant narratives of religious piousness. This belief is further advanced and manifested through practices around food preparation, distribution and consumption. In this context, vegetarianism became a strategic choice enabling cross-religious/caste/dietary preference-based commensality. This inclusion however sidelines the Ambedkarite ideals and practices by implicitly reinforcing upper-caste ideals of purity. The perception of meat-based diet as impure and unfit for a “pious” day also excludes the social groups whose diet has primarily comprised of meat due to socio-economic and historical marginalization.

Bhimbhoj: Reclaiming the Feast

One of the most striking aspects was the frequent use of the term Bhimbhoj – literally ‘a feast commissioned by Bhim (Rao Ambedkar)’ – among the festival visitors and volunteers as an alternative to the traditional preetibhoj. Preetibhoj, a communal dining practice in North India, has historically reinforced caste lines, often relegating Dalits to humiliating positions, as seen in Om Prakash Valmiki’s Jhoothan (1997). Bhimbhoj, by contrast, attempts to reverse this logic – Dalits become the providers, distributing food publicly with dignity. As Khare (1992) argues in his notion of ‘gastrosemantics’, the meanings attached to food practices are layered and contextual. The process of meaning making among the marginalized social groups is often derived from (and sometimes dictated by) the dominant narratives and cultural practices, as is the case with preetibhoj. However, by renaming and reframing the feast, Ambedkarites attempt to negotiate with cultural hierarchies and culinary prohibition, while new meanings to commensality and transforming it from a site of humiliation into a site of empowerment.

The practice of Bhimbhoj or communal eating during Ambedkar Jayanti was also extended to several smaller celebrations across the city. In South-West Delhi, I also encountered more intimate neighbourhood celebrations, including a feast with a meat curry, rice, and cream-laden cake. At a nearby Buddhist vihara, by contrast, the celebratory spread was completely vegetarian –dal, poori, raita, and kheer. These variations show the diversity of Dalit commensal practices – while some imbibe Savarna purity rituals, others negotiate, subvert or redefine the discriminatory practices.

The Vaghri Devi Temple: Purity, Prasad, and Caste Hierarchy

If the celebration of Ambedkar Jayanti was about reimagining commensality, the sharad (autumn) Navratri celebrations at the Vaghri Devi temple in West Delhi reveal the endurance of caste hierarchies within religious spaces.

The temple was originally built by members of the Vaghri (Bagadi) community, classified as a de-notified caste, many of whom work as domestic labourers and waste recyclers across Delhi. I live in the vicinity of the neighbourhood and that temple has been around since my childhood. Over three decades, the temple has transformed from a modest cement structure into a marble-clad building with towering spires. Yet its spatial organization reproduces caste hierarchy.

The ground floor houses the subaltern deities like Jog Mata and Khodiyar Mata (local deities worshipped in the Northwestern India). The rituals observed in that temple include bali (animal sacrifice), and Devi aana (being possessed by the “divine”). This space is frequented by Vaghris themselves. The first floor presents a striking contrast as a Savarna temple with polished idols, presided over by a Brahmin priest, where vegetarian hukdi is distributed as prasad. The priest spoke to me about the temple on the ground floor dismissively and refused any association with the rituals performed in those premises. The priest made it clear that “all those things (sacrifices) are done downstairs.” His dismissal reflects the entitlement generated through Sanskritization (Srinivas, 1959), wherein the subaltern practices are marginalized and vilified, while their deities are appropriated into the pantheon of dominant Vedic gods and goddesses.

At this Vaghri temple, the prasad functions very differently than at Ambedkar Jayanti. Though distributed freely, it reinforces purity codes – vegetarian upstairs, sacrificial downstairs. Vaghris, despite being temple founders, remain confined to the ground floor, while Savarna devotees occupy the sanctified first floor. The act of sharing food is thus deeply segmented, illustrating Appadurai’s (1988) point that commensality does not erase hierarchy but often crystallizes it.

Subaltern Negotiations in Delhi

The celebrations at the Ambedkar Jayanti and the Vaghri temple highlight two faces of subaltern commensality in Delhi. Ambedkar Jayanti comes across as a secular, anti-caste celebration where Dalits redistribute food with dignity, redefining feasting as Bhimbhoj. Yet, its conformity to uphold the vegetarian and consecrated aspect of food reflects how even radical spaces negotiate dominant norms. The Vaghri Devi temple, on the other hand, is a religious space where subalterns assert their presence through sacrifice and devotion but are simultaneously disciplined by Brahminical structures that redefine their practices as impure.

Both practices overlap in showing how Dalit and subaltern groups claim visibility in the city through food but diverge in how much they can escape caste-coded hierarchies. One creates a counter-public of equality, the other reveals the limits of subaltern agency and acts of subversion within the dominant institutions.

Conclusion: The Politics of Commensality in Delhi

In South Asia, particularly among Dalits, commensality is shaped by caste and gender norms surrounding the sharing of consecrated, festive, and everyday meals (Appadurai, 1981; Appadurai, 1988; Srinivas, 1959; Kumar & Mishra, 2022). As a key aspect of gastropolitics, commensality unpacks layered social hierarchies and relationships between caste groups. However, its presence does not imply the eradication of caste-based prejudices, which often remain deeply embedded in the social psyche. While commensality cannot alone dismantle these hierarchies, it serves as an important indicator of how caste groups negotiate and traverse prescribed norms of interaction through cultural perceptions of food, a process also described as gastrosemantics (Khare, 1992). Commensality also examines the rituals and refusal of shared eating.

Commensality is never just about eating together. It is a political act that embodies inclusion, exclusion, hierarchy, and resistance. In Delhi, Ambedkar Jayanti and Navratri temple rituals demonstrate how food becomes an arena where caste hierarchies are challenged, reworked, or reaffirmed. Ambedkarite Bhimbhoj challenges the logic of Savarna, upper class feasts, redistributing dignity through food. Yet even here, vegetarian offerings echo dominant purity norms. At the Vaghri temple, subaltern devotion is split between sacrificial rituals and sanitized prasad, exposing how caste infiltrates sacred commensality. Together, these vignettes show Delhi as a city where caste is not erased by cosmopolitanism but constantly reshaped through every day and festive eating. In the city, the multilayered dynamics and connotations of food reveal both the endurance of caste prejudice, and the possibilities of anti-caste solidarity at the table.

References

Appadurai, A. (1981). Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist, Vol 8 (3), 494-511.

Appadurai, A. (1988). How to make a national cuisine: Cookbooks in contemporary India. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30(1), 3–24.

Khare, R. S. (1992). The Eternal Food: Gastronomic Ideas and Experiences of Hindus and Buddhists. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Kumar, V., & Mishra, B. (2022). Environmental Casteism and the Democratisation of Natural Resources: Reimagining Dalit Testimonies. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 45(3), 577–595. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2022.2014157

Srinivas, M. N. (1959). The Dominant Caste in Rampura. American Anthropologist, 61(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1959.61.1.02a00030

Vālmīki, O. (1997). Joothan (Hindi). New Delhi: Vani Prakashan.