FOOD IN INDIA by A. L.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 6, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 14.

FOOD IN INDIA.

By A. L.

I SUPPOSE that in no other country in the world does religion have so much to do with food as in India. One day at Benares, on the Ganges, happening to approach a very sacred temple, I was greeted with shouts of dismay, and much protesting with outstretched arms, on the part of a number of natives engaged in cooking dinner. To all assurances of my peaceful disposition they gave no heed, but were evidently most strongly prejudiced against any nearer approach. I asked a missionary a little later what this meant, and he said they were afraid that my shadow would fall upon their little pots of rice, then being cooked in the open air. Had that calamity occurred, they would have been obliged, despite their great poverty, to throw away not only their food, but also the vessel in which it was being prepared. Fortunately, my shadow did not fall that way.

While visiting various great prisons in India I was told that the principal difficulty was the preparation of food. Mohammedans would touch nothing prepared by the native Christians, while the Hindoo not only scorned the food of Christian and Mohammedan, but would not eat even that prepared by his co-religionists, if they were of a lower caste. The solution of the problem was quite clever. Two kitchens were established in each prison. A Mohammedan presides over one, and cooks for Christians and the members of his own faith; while the Hindoo cooks are always Brahmins of the highest caste, who sanctify by their touch everything in the way of food. Doubtless the poor convict Pariah esteems imprisonment rather good fortune than otherwise, since thus he may always obtain his food from holy hands.—A. L., in Laws of Life.