Edible Prejudice

A recent controversy involving Indian doctoral students Aditya Prakash and Urmi Bhattacheryya at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the United States has reopened an uncomfortable conversation about how discrimination often operates in its most socially acceptable form ~ through food. At first glance, disputes over smell or shared microwaves appear trivial, even petty.

Yet such moments carry deeper meaning because food is never merely about taste. It is culture rendered daily, memory reheated, identity made visible in ordinary spaces. When certain foods are marked as disruptive or inappropriate, it is rarely the dish that is being judged. It is the person behind it. Food-based bias thrives precisely because it hides behind politeness. Objections are framed as concern for “common comfort” or “professional environment,” allowing exclusion to appear reasonable rather than prejudiced. The rules that emerge are often unwritten and selectively applied ~ familiar foods pass unnoticed, while others like Palak Paneer are labelled pungent or intrusive. This distinction is not neutral; it reflects whose presence is considered standard and whose must constantly justify itself. For international students and migrants, such encounters unfold within deeply unequal power structures.

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Universities control visas, funding, academic progress, and professional futures. In these settings, even minor acts of cultural assertion can invite disproportionate consequences. The everyday becomes political because silence is often the safest option available. What makes food such an effective tool of exclusion is its deniability. Neither race nor nationality need be mentioned or targeted openly. The discomfort around “foreign” food also exposes how deeply subjective our senses are. Smell is not an objective truth; it is learned through upbringing and familiarity. What feels comforting to one group may feel unfamiliar to another, but unfamiliarity is not harmful.

When dominant groups treat their sensory preferences as universal, personal taste hardens into social hierarchy. This debate should resonate strongly in India as well. Food policing is hardly unfamiliar here – from restrictions on what students may eat in hostels to moral judgments attached to meat, caste, and community. Across societies, the same mechanism repeats itself: food becomes shorthand for purity, control and belonging. The irony is that multiculturalism is often celebrated symbolically while being resisted materially. Diversity is welcomed in speeches and brochures but tested in lunchrooms and pantries. True inclusion is not proven by how enthusiastically difference is praised, but by how calmly it is accommodated when it is ordinary and inconvenient.

Shared spaces demand more than tolerance in theory. They require an acceptance that coexistence will not always be comfortable, aesthetic, or familiar. Equality cannot depend on how easily someone blends in. When people are asked to dilute their food to secure their place, the demand is not for harmony – it is for erasure. And when something as intimate as a meal becomes grounds for exclusion, the problem is no longer about food at all. It is about who gets to belong without apology.