India's caste system and food
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Something as simple as sharing a meal or utensils can carry social stigma for the millions born into the bottom of India’s caste system, a social structure that divides people into different groups.
In this programme Devina Gupta explores the foods of the Dalit community, historically considered at the very bottom of the caste system. She hears how many dishes evolved from necessity, due to low incomes and lack of available food and speaks to people looking to record and share these dishes with future generations.
Devina meets people who identify as Dalit to talk about the discrimination they have experienced in their communities and workplaces as a result of their family’s social status, and how it can be particularly hard to find work in the food industry.
If you’d like to contact the programme you can email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk.
Producer Beatrice Pickup.
(Image: some foraged green leaves being washed in a bowl of water. Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:10.7 | story with these drugs. The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amounts of money |
| 0:15.1 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:20.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to fix. |
| 0:26.2 | The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. |
| 0:29.1 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.6 | Sharing a meal. It's one of the simplest, most human acts of connection. |
| 0:42.3 | But what if you are never invited to the table? |
| 0:49.9 | I can't do work related to food like opening a food card business. |
| 0:54.2 | People won't eat food touched by someone from my caste. |
| 0:57.4 | In India, millions of Dalits lived that reality for a long time. |
| 1:02.3 | Born into the bottom of the caste system, which is a social structure that divided people |
| 1:07.3 | into different groups, they weren't allowed to sit and eat with others or even use |
| 1:12.1 | the same plates or utensils. And caste also shaped what they ate. |
| 1:19.1 | We didn't have clarified butter, curd or oil in our food. Oil was very expensive and we couldn't |
| 1:26.2 | buy it. |
| 1:28.9 | Hello and namaste. |
| 1:31.1 | I'm Divina Gupta in Delhi. |
| 1:34.4 | And on the food chain from the BBC World Service, |
| 1:37.8 | we are discussing the foods of the Dalit community, |
| 1:40.5 | a cuisine born from exclusion. |
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