I completed a Bachelor of Arts (Triple Major) in Psychology, Sociology, and Literatures in 2014. No, that’s not a typo; I meant to say “Literatures“. One of the first things I learnt during this time was the importance of pluralism, especially of narratives. What I also learnt was that it is easy to politicise almost anything; the risk of sequestering oneself in the academic bubble is the tendency to problematise everything. This can be great in some occasions but it’s a pain at parties. Trust me.
Of all the endeavours I’ve attempted thus far, the one I’ve gained from the most is choosing to study Sociology and Literature simultaneously. Oh yes, it offered me more than the ability of sounding passably erudite on a daily basis. The curriculum was designed to offer bits and pieces of literatures from around the world. The biggest chunks, of course, were British, American, and Indian. I had a whole semester of American Literature, beginning from Whitman and ending with Ginsberg, sandwiching the Harlem Renaissance. This semester was followed by Indian Literature, where we had Mahashweta Devi, Aijaz Ahmed, and a very informative piece by Amartya Sen about India and the so called West.
What I’m trying to illuminate here is that the course went beyond looking at texts as mere texts. It implored the importance of context, history, politics, and culture when analysing a text, because these factors determined whose narrative it was. This led me to Social Anthropology and its unique approach within the pantheon of social sciences. Anthropology gave me a new perspective to how development can be practised and how single words can set the course of history (Person: Truman; Word: “Underdeveloped”).
(It also taught me concepts of “positionality” and “ethnography” which are equivalent to the proverbial “alohamora” and “accio” of the Harry Potter fame, because I do believe it opens doors and summons opportunities)
Anthropology and development should go hand in hand. A multiple narrative approach to understanding and eventually tackling development issues is gaining traction in both academia and practice today. Heterodox (I’m looking at you, economists) seems to be the buzzword and I’m a 100% behind that!
At this point, you the reader might be wondering: What’s this got to do with your millet obsession?
I’m glad you asked.
Understanding the context of an issue opens new channels of solutions. This is one of those instances where it is good to problematise. Applied anthropology is one way of going about this and I thought I’d use this blog space to talk about the connotations of millet consumption in India through my own experiences – fellowship and prior.
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March 2016: Field Site, Karnataka
I’m on a scouting visit by myself to pick potential interviewees from a Kannada farming community to talk about State led land acquisition and how it’s affecting them. I am invited in by a family of three, an elderly gentleman who has spent 40 years growing rice and millet, his wife who has done the same, and his brother.
After offering me some water, they ask if I’d like to have lunch. The staple diet in most South Indian (particularly Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) agricultural households is finger millet (ragi) balls and a spicy curry made of lentil and greens. I politely refuse as I’d had a big breakfast.
The gentleman immediately tells his wife, “She doesn’t look like she eats ragi”. I interject, almost indignant, that my grandmother insists on eating ragi at least once a week and I love it. The family immediately warms to me and we spend almost two hours talking.
For those of you who’ve had the chance to read about the Indian caste system, you might know how food is deeply entrenched in its maintenance and reproduction. Now, I don’t mean to generalise or reduce the practices of a heterogeneous South to one vignette, but finger millet is traditionally associated to farming classes and castes. The so called upper castes (Brahmins) or land owning castes are usually known to consume rice and wheat as it is more expensive to grow (this is before the public distribution system was implemented in India).
The availability of rice to all sections of society is more prevalent and normal today but the caste and class associations to rice and ragi still underlies thought.
This was an interesting positional moment for me. I’m from a Tamil Brahmin family from urban Bangalore.
However, the paternal side is rooted to some extent in agricultural life as most families across castes had some farmland for subsistence. I spent most of my summers as a child in paddy fields with my grandfather. I grew up eating ragi like my family and never once realised that what I ate could have so many connotations to it.
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October 2016: Pokhrar, Uttarakhand
A few weeks before Gene Campaign’s Pahadi Anajon Ka Mela or The Mountain Grain Festival, my colleagues and I visited Pokhrar village to discuss options with local women farmers. The aim of the festival was to illuminate and reinforce the benefits of consuming millet in the hope that it would make an active comeback in their daily diet. This would be done by interactive and informative sessions on millet nutrition value, music, dance, and a real time cooking demonstration session brought to them by yours truly (my Nigella Lawson moment, if you will).
During the initial discussions, I asked some of the women why the popularity of millet had taken a hit, considering how easy it was to grow them and how delicious they were. There were a lot of interesting and practical reasons that surfaced – the Public Distribution System (PDS), cooking time, gas consumption, etc. The one that struck me, however, was when a lady said the children refuse to eat finger millet rotis because it is “black” in colour. They fear that consuming it would turn them dark, taking the “you are what you eat” adage quite literally.
Now, what can I say to that?
My first internal reaction was anger, how can we be so prejudiced about race and towards our own people? Is the colonial hangover so entrenched that we’d imbue it to food, especially at the risk of losing out on precious nutrition for ourselves and our children?
This is where an anthropological approach comes in handy. Understanding my own context and the larger context of a nation in the process of forming its own postcolonial narrative helped me greatly.
I couldn’t very well have a chat with them about race and caste relations in the world and how it is wrong. That would be condescending and insensitive of me, especially when I could also be guilty of implicitly (sometimes explicitly) partaking in this way of thinking. Who am I to step into the reality of others and pontificate my own thoughts, those which have been acquired after years of conditioning and textbooks? I think most fellows fresh out of academia would identify with this.
The theoreticians scoff at this reality but the pragmatist finds a way around it to achieve the goal: getting people to eat millet.
The immediate plan of action for the mela was to pictorially and through theatre establish strong positive associations to finger millet. The power of the arts is long-standing and effective. Another way was to market our beautifully rich dark (and proud) millet sweets as “barfis” or “chocolates” to appeal to the youngsters (refer above about the power of single words).
I am very pleased to say that the 40 thick sweets that I made were polished off in seconds by the mela attendees, race be damned.
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Race and caste are just two contextual aspects of my experiences with millet. These are only some issues we are attempting to navigate.
Now that we are aware of the many contextual nuances of something as seemingly straightforward as millet consumption, we have multiple approaches to tackle issues. This is only one of the facets of my work with Gene Campaign.
Watch out for my next blog post where I write about an issue I’m directly engaged with here: gender and livelihoods.
Till then, here are some Finger Millet Barfis:
