Food as Text and Data: Bhadralok Identity Across Literary and Digital Spaces using Mixed-methods
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https://doi.org/10.66871/ihj.v1i1.006##semicolon##
foodways##common.commaListSeparator## diaspora##common.commaListSeparator## digital culture##common.commaListSeparator## bhadralok##common.commaListSeparator## class distinctionसार
In Indian English literature, food has often been labelled as a stable marker of cultural identity, memory and belonging. By focusing particularly on the bhadralok–an educated, urban middle class formation emerged during the British colonial era, historically associated with cultural refinement, restraint and social reforms. The paper argues that food increasingly unravels the true identity of the bhadralok subjectivity under such conditions like diaspora, global circulation and digital mediation.
Drawing on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, and Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies and The Shadow Lines, the paper demonstrates how food in literary narratives moves beyond domestic threshold into transnational and imperial circuits of trade, migration and labour. In these texts, culinary practices no longer function as a cultural continuity, instead, they represent emotional distance, class anxiety and the instability of elite subject positions. The literary analysis is extended through a curated corpus of bengali food blogs and instagram posts, where bhadralok food is visually curated, branded and algorithmically circulated by shifting it from lived experience.
Moreover, the proposed chapter intends to combine mixed-methods as a part of its research methodologies. By combining close-reading with digital humanities tools such as Voyant and thematic analysis, this ensures not only the computational involvement but also the traditional process. Both of these promise to trace patterns of food-related language, space and affect across literary and digital corpora. The theoretical framework relies on diaspora studies, postcolonial class analysis and theories of circulation to conceptualise food as a commodified entity.
By situating food at the intersection of literature, digital culture and class, the paper contributes to discussions on digital marginality by showing how elite subjectivities themselves become fractured and destabilized, generating plural, unsettling modes of belonging.
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