From Pather Panchali to Zohran Mamdani: Why brown people are eating with their hands, west bad dreams – decoding culture war. world News

Mamdani dispute: rice, rituals, and maga outrage

In this summer, in a viral video, New York politician Joran Mamdani showed Biryani to eat with his hands during an interview. In response, Texas Congress Brandon Gill said that “civilized people in the US do not eat this way. If you refuse to adopt western customs, go back to the third world.“His wife Daniel D’Souza Gill-One India-born Maga Pandit-Ne said,” He never grew up with rice eating [her] Hand “and” always used a fork, “its Indian Christian relatives did the same.Outbreak ignited a social media firstorm. Critics mention hypocrisy: Americans regularly ate burgers, tacos, fries and pizza by hand, yet Gill condemned eating by hand “rude.” Many people said that Arabs eat daily with their hands, label their comments as pure racism. The images of President Trump scored fast to eat pizza with their bare hands, making fun of the idea that eating by hand is somehow barbaric. Finally, people from all over Asia stood for the common practice of eating with someone’s hands, underlining that the rituals of food are run deep in culture and not fixed with delicate sensations by Western MPs.

Ray Pathar panchali And western snobberry

This is not the first time the Western audiences have seen Asians authentically food. When Satyajit Ray Pathar panchali Debut in 1955, some Western critics rebuilt its realism. The story begins with a rural Bengali family eating rice with her own hands, and French filmmaker François Trufot took a pinch, “he did not want to see a film of farmers with his own hands”. The reviewer of the New York Times similarly smelled that the film was very loose and listless, despite its sensible poem. Even in India, some officials feared that the film was “exporting poverty”, former actress to politician Nargis Dutt made the allegation famous.

Ray’s work later became a world classic, but the initial response reflects an old bias: Western gatekeepers found humble, hand-to-sight life unacceptable. Poor brown people did not have food with their hands, who wanted ear sets with their champagne.

Why it feels better to eat with hands

For millions of Indians, eating with someone’s hands is not only a tradition, but happiness. The Act attaches all five senses. You feel the heat of rice and lentils because your fingers mix them together. You mold an ideal bite -shaped mora, adding curry or pickle to balance the taste. The touch tells you whether the bread is still soft, if the rice has cooled enough, if the fish bones have been removed.In Ayurveda, eating with your hands is said to activate the energy centers associated with digestion. Even without mysticism, there is practicality. Indian food – with its gravy, rice, rotis, and layered texture – is designed to mix and balanced cutting from cutting. Thorns and spoon reduce it in strange scooping, such as trying to paint watercolors with a ballpoint pen. The fingers are the original cutlery, which correspond to your own grip, temperature tolerance and touching meaning. Food becomes an object instead of an object, which is a spear and raised to an object.

Development of etiquette: from fingers to thorns

In fact, using hands to eat is an ancient, global tradition. In Asia – and many parts of the Middle East and Africa – food is still usually eaten with the right hand. Indians traditionally wash your hands thoroughly before having food, then use fingers to feel the food temperature and add tastes. Rice and curry are lifted between fingers and thumbs and brought into the mouth. The left hand is kept clean and used only to serve or pass dishes. It is not uneven from local standards; Careful handwashing and using only fingers (not whole hand) is part of practice.In contrast, formal cutlery arrived in Europe relatively late. The forks spread to the west to Italy via the Byzantium, and until only the 1500s, thorns were seen between the European clans. Catherine de ‘Medici was famous for France in 1533, but even then he was a novelty. In Britain, medieval dinner ate with fingers and knives until the forks became fashionable in the 1700–1800s. Grand dinner with silver knives and forks became standard. Earlier, the finger -eater was universal. But with the adoption of the fork, until the 19th century, eating finger in a humble society was vested as a “cannibal” behavior. Therefore, the Western table etiquette, is a recent invention, coded after centuries of changing habits.

Colonial approach and modern double standard

These new Western criteria carried forward the moral overtone in the colonial era. British colonists often separated Indian food customs as primitives. By the middle of the 1800s, there was so much prohibition in a humble society to eat with a finger that the etiquette guide called it a Savez. This historic snobberry resumed in the 1950s with the Pantri Panchali: the farmers were really very unaffected by some western eyes showing the farmers who eat rice by hand.Today, the Mamdani case highlights the indifference of these attitudes. Critics who call hand to eat “rude” easily ignore that Americans and Europeans themselves handle many foods with bare hands. Western people can scoff, yet most American pizza, burgers, sandwiches, fries and chicken wings – eat with their hands. This is pure hypocrisy. Backlash for Mamdani suggests that many people now recognize it: Labeling eating by hand as unequal or rude is slightly greater than prejudice prepared in etiquette.

Bottom Line: Etiquette is cultural

Finally, food etiquette is deeply cultural and ever changing. Whether someone uses a fork or fingers are a matter of upbringing, not of the underlying civilization. For millions of Asians, using hands is as natural and humble as the use of cutlery. Considering the habits of each other’s table, history is misunderstood. The thorns are only a few centuries old, while eating in prehthas before eating by hand. Perhaps true civilization is less about utensils and more about respect – keeping hands clean, sharing food generously, and eating with dignity.In a global world, everyone’s demand is in line with the western -style food. Instead of police, a more gracious etiquette has been identified that many cultures have a completely honorable, time-esteem methods of eating-concerts or hands. Because at the end of the day, if you are angry at touching your rice with someone else’s fingers, it says more about you that it does about them.