Readers’ comments: Don’t use cookbooks to besmirch Indian culture

This is a judgement passed by the author to throw mud on Indian culture (“How early vernacular cookbooks set the template for domesticity, caste purity”). Gender inequality was everywhere in the world and is still prevailing. Also, as if, she is specially entitled, she is calling the old practices as backward. As such,this is a garbage thrown at general public in the name of history, with a narrow minded and deeply biases.

Does this authority not expect purity from the kitchen of a five-star hotel?.We conveniently forget the fundamentals, that quality and purity are often inter-changeable. If she is not expecting quality from star hotels where she dined, then what in those texts could be called purity of caste?

Olden day versions of today’s modern science is mostly absurd and outdated. But it evolved every day. Similarly, the texts have carried some documentation of what was thought of as a good practice at that time. We should filter the good aspects if it that can be applied to modern life rather than making this thoughtless commentary about gender, caste and religion.

The takeaway for me in this article is the list of original works. I will find time to read them to make my own judgement. – Raghuramam B

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I quite enjoyed Sohel Sarkar's essay on vernacular cookbooks. She is spot-on in her reading and analysis of the world view created and cemented by these cookbooks. I now read the fading pages of my mother's go-to kitchen guide, the Tamil Brahmin cooking Bible Samaythu Paar (in three volumes translated and now available in many languages as Cook and See), as ethnographic sites because the descriptions and contexts for each recipe create a certain world.

In this world every festival meal is preceded by specific rituals for young women, young unmarried women in particular, foregrounding the anxiety and tension about them. It also lays out how the elder males of the family must be fed on these festivals. These books were surrogates in time when letters took months and mothers/mother-in-law were miles away from the young bride/mother/housewife.

Customs, traditions and taboos are laid out precisely and in easy to replicate steps. They epitomise Sarkar's analysis. I also appreciate Sarkar's extensive references and links. Ffollowing up on them! –Mahalakshmi Jayaram

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Not even once does the author hint that vegetarianism is egalitarian (every meat eater tacitly endorses animal cruelty) and frames the issue as dominant caste (read brahminical) usurpation of culinary narrative. Meat eaters are morally inferior. – Bob Marlay

Eggless brownies

Lovely article (“The eggless brownie and the conundrum of cultural purity”). As a home baker I'm defeated regularly – for the sake of business.

They say money is in the eggless game and I'm selling bakes I just don’t want to taste myself, like eggless brownies add eggless chocolate sponge. However, I simply put my foot down if I’m asked for eggless plum cakes or macaroons.

Even if one of my clients enjoys egg in the bakes and orders a celebration cake, there is a possibility that 60% of the guests at a gathering will want an eggless dessert. So the story never ends and we are denying ourselves of good bakes. – Shalini Thomas

Kerala poverty debate

They have a point in asking the government to publish data-based evidence in the public domain (“Professors, economists question Kerala’s claims about eradicating ‘extreme poverty’”). Without doing so first, it was rather silly on the part of the administration to announce that Kerala had eradicated “extreme poverty”. Chief secretaries should have raised this matter. Bureaucrats officers should be professional, proficient and impartial. – Arunkumar Holla

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In the book Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next, written by John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay, experts on reducing costs, space and time, Kasarda mentions that his favourite book is Toffler’s Powershift (“Rejoinder: Why superhighways risk derailing the ‘Kerala model’ of development”). Kasarda boils down Powershift to three words, speed, speed and speed, and the motto, the survival of the fastest. Our vain votaries of velocity too seem to be genuflecting at this altar of hubris. It will also be instructive to read The Routes of Man by Ted Conover, to realise, among other things, how these greed breeds congestion and pollution, and propels avoidable competition for increasingly scarce and exorbitant fuel. – Sudhir Devadas

Kerala needs to change from the romanticised idea of its old model and move towards development. Highways are a step in the right direction. If not, the present trend of youngsters migrating out of Kerala in large numbers will continue and the state will be reduced into an old age home of the elderly recollecting past glory. Already there are several villages and towns with not enough youngsters to even take care of the elders. Upper-middle-class girls are reluctant to marry men who have no plans to migrate. Praising the old Kerala model makes little sense today, as the biggest problem now is retaining youth, whose priorities are clear: migrate to regions of the world where there is material progress, professionalism and infrastructure. The article completely ignores this social reality. – KM Krishnan

Rohingya refugees

I fully share Harsh Mander's extraordinary views published in Scroll, of which I am proud to be a member (“‘We heard about India’s insaniyat. How wrong we were’: Testimony of the Rohingya thrown into the sea”). I congratulate Mander as a great writer, social activist and a former bureaucrat. – Shamsul Alam

Writing about India

I really enjoyed reading this and thank you for publishing such essays (“‘Heat and Dust’ at 50: The ideas of India in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Booker Prize-winning novel”). But I think, while talking about a patronising attitude towards India, an important book has been missed: VS Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness published in 1964. An Area of Darkness was equally patronising towards India, a forebearer to Heat and Dust which came out nine years later.

Of course, the two books are very different – one is fiction and the other a travelogue – but similar in their worldview if a little separated in literary merit; Naipaul’s book is still treated as a classic. This attitude was disrupted by Midnight’s Children leading to Vikram Seth and Amitava Ghosh and more authors who not only presented the insiders’ view of India but also dealt with it in much more detail and sensitivity. Not mentioning An Area of Darkness localises the essay to a short period of the ’70s, denying it a much larger narrative arc. – Indrasish Banerjee

Love for animals

This is a brilliant, logical and objective take on the love and compassion shown to voiceless street dogs, by us, the liberal middle class and especially the Hindu liberal middle class (“What the outrage over stray dogs says about the moral compass of middle-class Indians”). The truth is that Hindus see in the abandoned dog in the street the face of a human who is born again to suffer for “bad karma” and they can restore the soul to its elevated human state through acts of goodness and compassion. But then what about the same love and kindness to our kind, whom we brush shoulders every day in this very life? Is that not central to human existence? – Annie Joseph.

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The loving spirit of Ratan Tata endures in the universe, showering his love and kindness on all his animal friends, known and unknown (“A new book remembers industrialist Ratan Tata’s love for animals”). – Sunity

Persian poetry

Thank you for introducing the wonders of the Persian language to the world (“‘Discard your ego-self. Begin the journey’: Read 12th-century Persian poet Attar in English”). – Saeed Sadeghpour

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This was absolutely soul-touching, beautiful and wondrous. – GK Ramachandra

Queer desire

Why is this intellectual honesty not shown when we discuss wars in India involving Muslims? (“‘Forbidden Desire’: Indian queer history cannot be decolonised by ignoring the violence of caste.”) The answer is we don't want to put that baggage on today’s Indian Muslims. So why is the same baggage put on Indians belonging to the general castes even though we have moved miles away from the caste system?

How many Hindus from the privileged castes have the Manusmriti or any radical caste books at home? The answer is none. If we want a modern balanced society, we need to discuss in every religion Hindus are a non-stop evolving society. – Rahul Raj Singh

Mental health

The article on the Ride for Mental Health deeply moved me "(“Weary, wary and alone: From Delhi to Kerala, the mental distress Indians struggle with”). Thank you Istikhar Ali for this profound listening journey across India's emotional landscape.

As an elderly person from Kerala, I see the crisis you describe intensifying among our youth. While the entire piece resonated, your segment on "Political Priorities" was particularly vital. You perfectly articulated that mental health is not an individual failing, but a barometer of structural forces – economic precarity, social solitude, and political fear.

Here, the pressure on young people is palpable, masked by high literacy yet fueled by competition and digital isolation. Your call for a “politics of care” is the necessary conclusion. We cannot treat this in clinics alone; policy must address the roots in employment, education, and our social fabric.

Your work has amplified a crucial truth: our distress is shared, and so must be our healing. – John Kurien