From Colonial Kitchens to Cosmopolitan Tables: Food as Cultural Identity in Indian English Fiction

Abstract

This paper examines food as a dynamic signifier of cultural identity in Indian English fiction, tracing its evolution from colonial kitchens, sites of gendered mimicry and resistance, to postcolonial tables embodying hybrid cosmopolitanism. Through gastrocritical analysis of canonical novels including Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, and others, it elucidates cuisine's role in negotiating imperial legacies, caste-class fractures, diasporic nostalgia, and neoliberal fluxes. Drawing on postcolonial theorists like Bhabha, Spivak, and Appadurai, the study posits food as a “third space” of syncretic agency, resisting epistemic violence while affirming fluid ontologies. Ultimately, these culinary narratives reveal identity's tenacity amid globalization, urging expanded gastro-poetics toward subaltern voices.