From Hearth to Print: Women Authors and the Cultural Politics of Food in Western India, 1875–1945

This paper examines the pivotal role of women in shaping Marathi culinary discourses from the late nineteenth century onwards in western India. Formal education, although designed to reinforce domesticity, enabled women to step into the public sphere by leveraging food as a potent medium of expression and assertion. This study focuses on the fragmented nature of Marathi cuisine as it emerged through two primary mediums utilised by women: periodicals and cookbooks. Women’s periodicals often depicted an idealised and sanitised vision of Marathi cuisine, heavily influenced by Brahmanical vegetarianism. This narrative sought to project a homogenous cultural identity that aligned with dominant caste norms. In contrast, cookbooks offered a more diverse, albeit equally partial, representation of Marathi culinary traditions. These texts reflected the caste affiliations and community-specific practices of their authors, presenting recipes that celebrated distinct identities while implicitly reinforcing existing social hierarchies. The interplay between these mediums reveals the tensions and negotiations within Marathi culinary politics. While periodicals homogenised cuisine under the guise of cultural purity, cookbooks fragmented it further by emphasising community-specific traditions. Together, these narratives, shaped by women’s contributions, defined the evolving contours of Marathi food culture, underscoring its inherently fragmented and contested nature.