Dosa wins India’s heart

There is this bandied about and much abused term: “the national dish”.  Food and patterns of eating have major sociological and cultural implications and the idea of a national dish assumes greater importance than it did in the past. The Brits, for example, in order to show off their cultural diversity are proud to proclaim the chicken tikka masala as being their national dish, replacing the iconic fish and chips.

In America it will be a close-run between the hamburger and the Southern fried chicken. George Bush was exceedingly proud of serving fried chicken as the essence of American cuisine to state visitors. In Italy, the pizza would vie with pasta. 

I am reminded of these issues when I read about a recent survey published by a leading magazine to find the national dish of India, after conducting a survey in 13 cities. To put it in context, the survey did not include rural areas and cannot be taken as typical. 

However the findings were interesting. National dishes do not mean the great dishes of the country; it would mean the dish most people consume on a regular basis. This, in turn, is a function of several factors, including convenience, availability, ease of preparation and sourcing of ingredients, and, finally, cost. In India we have the additional veg and non-veg divide, the divide between the rice eating and wheat eating populations and other issues. But still it came as some surprise that the masala dosa was voted India’s favourite food.

For those of us who view the growing Punjabisation of India’s cultures and mores with concern, be it the Bollywood and Yash Chopra’s sanitised version of the Indian middle-class family or the universality of the salwar kameez, the fact that the authentically southern dish which — beyond the southern redoubt of Matunga — was unknown to most Mumbaikars in the 1960s has penetrated at a pan-India level is extraordinary and gratifying.

While the Punjabis control the dhabas as they dominate the transport industry, it appears that tandoori chicken, palak paneer and kali dal are not the obvious winners we thought they would be. It brings home the fact that as a country we are beginning to adopt some sense of identity transcending regional and parochial prejudices.

It is entirely possible that the dosa’s popularity may well be a flash in the tawa and that the real blockbuster national integrator, fast gaining acceptance in small towns throughout India — if the booming sales of mozzarella are anything to go by — is the Indian pizza. I say Indian pizza because we like our pizza with a thin crust, oodles of mediocre cheese and copious servings of chillies. Gujarat is the forefront of this trend and pizza parlours are opening all over the state and are hugely successful.

So from a situation in 1947 where local eating habits were entrenched and, other than some vague notion of curry and rice, there was nothing approximating a national dish transcending caste or creed, we have now reached a more definite national passion — the dosa — cheap, easy to make and symbolic of the new India, long on convenience and short on time, cheap and cheerful.  In fact, anyone for a chicken tikka dosa?