Food is a signpost, maybe not a driver of culture

Between snacking, reading, and wrapping up finals, Disha and I had a train ride discussion about Indian values. We read an article by Chetan Bhagat of the Times of India about “Adding Values to Life”. He argued that India is a collection of princely states which were stitched together by the British and that the resulting society is in a state of confusion about what the values of Indian society are.

We had somewhat of a meandering discussion about the article related to values and culture: what is 

really at the core of any society’s culture. Is culture something as superficial as the food we eat and the clothes we wear? Or is it more about our values that drive how interact with one another? I couldn’t help but wonder whether the physical things were really so superficial.

The day before, we visited a re-enactment of old Rajasthani village. There were traditional dance performances, Rajasthani food served next to bonfires, puppet shows, and elephant rides. I was compelled to think these physical elements of culture went deeper than just the surface.

We talked about the importance of food in society. Why are foods so different from one place to another? One argument I’ve heard before is that the food of a culture represents the natural resources of that region. You eat what grows in that place and your culture is bound to it. Food stands at the base of our hierarchy of needs. Without it, there are very few other things we can accomplish. Societies were largely organized out of our need to grow, harvest, and cook food. How we relate to one another is largely driven by how we are organized. Farming develops villages and customs and religion. This is a large part of where culture comes from.

That begs the question: once our connection to the land is broken, can diverse cultures be sustained in an increasingly global and interdependent world?

Despite the emphasis on eating local foods in the United States, the table setting at dinner rarely represents your local culture. The corn you eat was grown in the Midwest, the oranges grown in Florida, your wine grapes from California – and this was all purchased using money you earned staring into a computer monitor.

I thought about the drive back from the village back to our hostel. We had passed some highly modern glass office towers and I was struck by the obvious dichotomy between these worlds.

How could such poverty exist so close to such displays of wealth? Disha made a point about a boy playing a drum in the village. He could easily be in school, getting an MBA, and traveling on the trip with us in a few years but there he was, playing the drum, living in that neighborhood.

It’s really only a matter of time before people in the village are brought out of poverty through global economic growth. The culture and lifestyle they are living to preserve are likely remain just that – culture to be preserved. As global economic expansion separates the dinner table from the land, the pressures that bound cultures and societies together will fade away.

Then again, I thought about the animals that roamed the streets in India – particularly the cows. They are a clear reminder of India’s strain of vegetarianism. Large segments of Indian society has chosen not to eat animals – a choice that happens by sheer moral force not through necessity or because of the land. For many wealthy Indians and diaspora, this continues even after they have left the land for cities and modern life.

It is an element of Indian culture and values which are truly distinct – and it happens by choice. In that regard, I think there is a chance for India and for the rest of the world to choose their behavior, their values, and their culture, through moral force. The economic pressures that we faced bear on us very heavily, but the choices that we make in societies are our own.