Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia

3. Cosmopolitan Kitchens: Cooking for Princely Zenanas in Late Colonial India

49 Three Cosmopolitan Kitchens Cooking for Princely Zenanas in Late Colonial India Angma D. Jhala A state banquet at the palace of an Indian prince during the late nineteenth or early twentieth century would have presented a “hybrid mélange of Hindu, Mughal and English court customs” (Dwivedi 1999: 28). Highly spiced and scented Mughal delicacies, perfected at the kitchens in Awadh, would be presented alongside Anglo-Indian staples such as Mulligatawny soup or Christmas pudding. Just like dress or religion, food had become a signifier of cultural accommodation as well as divergence. While an aesthetic pleasure, it was also innately connected with the larger political and economic climate of the era. In this manner, local, regional, or national (culinary) histories became inherently interwoven with global narratives of sociopolitical change long before the current temporal frame for globalization (Bayly 2004; also see chapter 2 in this volume). In this chapter , I will argue that the courtly women of princely India were particularly important players in the transmission and cultivation of different culinary styles and food appreciation in colonial India. Royal and aristocratic Indian women resided in the zenana, which literally means the “women’s quarters” of the palace or home in Persian, and many practiced the traditions of pardah (literally, “veil” or “seclusion”), whether they were from Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist ruling dynasties. The zenana refers not only to a separate, gendered architectural space, but also to a separate sociopolitical entity, controlled and inhabited by women, distinct from a male arena of power within the ruler’s court.1 Zenana women were invariably the producers, patrons, or transmitters of food in the royal household , and through the act of dynastic marriage they further spread different cuisines and recipes across the diverse regions of the subcontinent. They were also crucial in creating new ideas of fusion cooking during the colonial 50 • The Princely-Colonial Encounter period, both in hybridizing the exchange between European and Indian traditions of cooking as well as through the merging of different regional culinary systems across India, which had more limited interaction before Pax Britannica. I suggest that this cultural cross-pollination makes the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century zenana uniquely cosmopolitan (see Appiah 2006; Breckenridge 2002; Dharwadker 2000; Cheah and Robbins 1998). Mongrel and hybrid institutions, these female courts adopted aspects from different Indic practices across religious, class, regional, and culinary lines, as well as from European, American, and other non-Indian cultural points of reference (see Rushdie 1991; Bhabha 1994). Historically, royal Indian kitchens were connected to a vibrant system of global trade, which saw the introduction of foreign ingredients, cooking techniques, and recipes. From 100 b.c.e. to the fifteenth century c.e., the Silk Road linked China to the Mediterranean via India and Persia, leading to a continuous movement of foodstuffs alongside the flow of religious movements and pilgrims (such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Islam) (Findley & Rothney 1998). A lively maritime trade economy from the fifth century c.e. further facilitated the transport of spices, rice, sugar cane, oranges, lemons, limes, bananas, and melons, among other ingredients, across the known world (Cohn 1996; Gupta [chapter 2] in this volume). With the ascent of the Mughal Empire in sixteenth-century India, Turkic, Persian, and Afghan traditions of dress, architecture, and cuisine were adopted by non-Muslim indigenous elites in South Asia (Lal 2005; L. Collingham 2006). In this manner, Central Asian cooking merged with older traditions within the subcontinent to create such signature dishes as biriyani (a fusion of the Persian pulao and the spice-laden dishes of Hindustan), and the Kashmiri meat stew of Rogan Josh (L. Collingham 2006). It not only generated new dishes and entire cuisines, but also fostered novel modes of eating. Such newer trends included the consumption of Persian condiments, which relied heavily on almonds, pastries , and quince jams, alongside Indian achars made from sweet limes, green vegetables, and curds as side relishes during Mughlai meals (L. Collingham 2006: 30). Much of this culinary innovation occurred through social interactions between different ruling elites, often fostered through political marriage and the transmission of women between dynastic families. Non-Muslim rulers, such as the Hindu Rajputs of western India, married their daughters to Mughal emperors, and they in turn influenced the development of Mughlai Cosmopolitan Kitchens • 51 cooking (Lal 2005: 167–175). These women brought their own cultural practices—religious worship, vernacular language...