Food and cultural resilience, a study of Tibetan immigrants in Odisha, India

Abstract (English)

Brownislaw Malinowski's need theory (1944) asserts that the need to eat is driven by the impulse of hunger. Governed by procurement, processing, preservation, and presentation, food from plant or animal sources becomes palatable and satiates hunger, providing energy to the individual. However, collectively performing these actions fuels ethnic cohesion, strengthens social bonding, and preserves cultural identity across generations.
Since the invasion of Tibet in 1969 and subsequent migration of the majority of Tibetans into India, they have still firmly held and successfully preserved their ethnic and national identity in times when culturicide is common and ethnocide is rampant in parts of the world, especially in present day Chinese-occupied Tibet. Fredrich Ratzel's environmental deterministic and Julian Steward's cultural ecology (1955) suggest that the Tibetan plate has been shaped by the harsh and extreme environment of Tibet, but what and how to prepare and consume food has equally been determined by the culture, as outlined by Uri Franz Boa's cultural determinism and Marvin Harris's seminal work The Cultural Ecology of India's Sacred Cattle (1966). Food, essentially a biofuel but also symbolically a cultural glue, has greatly contributed to maintaining the intangible feelings of ethnic identity and a free homeland that has transcended across generations among the migrant Tibetans in exile.
This article is an honest reflection of the fieldwork conducted among the Tibetans who immigrated to Odisha in 1963. It brings forth the prevailing food consumption patterns have kept the sentiments of being a Tibetan alive. It also draws attention to the shifting food habits in the preview of household temporal organisation, by citing an instance of Guthuk, a traditional Tibetan supper consumed on Nyi-Shu-Gu the day before Loshar- tibetan new year.