FOOD FOR IMPERIAL THOUGHT: MILITARY DIET, NUTRITION, AND IMPERIAL IDEOLOGIES IN COLONIAL INDIA IN 18TH AND 19TH CENTURY

Abstract

This article tries to explore the features of British imperial ideology, which sought to interact, incorporate and eventually influence the gastronomic sphere of its military machine and further argues that the periodic notions of non-interventionism, reformism, and racism could be found in the military authorities’ policy regarding military diet and nutrition. The nutritive aspect of diet primarily influenced the authority to re-examine its policies, more specifically since the middle of the nineteenth century, but, not without hindrance. Colonial existence had been learning about the colonial culinary world at first for practical reasons and soon, with the growth of power, started to breed out an infused version of colonial cuisine to survive. On the other hand, learning from its operational experiences, the colonial military system incorporated local knowledge about food cultures to balance its multicultural native army and imbibed stereotypes into its knowledge system, which eventually influenced their other policies like recruitment. This article further argues that along with colonial reality, global influences, and independent initiatives, negative variables like indigenous rituals acted as predicaments which coexisted within the system. So, far from being a space of difference, the colonial state's keen eye to balance opposite interests, made the colonial military platter a space of hybridity.