Food Sovereignty as Anti-Colonial Resistance: Culinary Reappropriation of Poppy Seeds in Bengal

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century, British exploitation of arable Bengali land for exportation of the cash crop opium contributed to famines that displaced staples of pre-colonial Bengali cuisine. From poppy seeds, a residual by-product of opium production, the Bengali people established a new dish, posto, to survive the famine and revitalize their food culture. Through this case study, we elucidate the compelling connection between food and memory. Community collaboration in the recipe making and editing process, an effort spearheaded by Bengali women, transformed posto’s initial memory of historical trauma to one of comfort and nostalgia. To evidence this claim, we conduct a qualitative analysis of the poppy seed’s influence in diverse contemporary Bengali media. In existing literature, culinary decolonization is commonly visualized as the restoration of traditional foodways, but this literature does not account for other modes of overcoming colonial oppression through food. To address this gap, we present a novel mechanism, “culinary reappropriation,” by which indigenous populations, most notably Bengal, appropriated colonial goods into their foodways and repudiated colonial power dynamics.