Are Idlis of Foreign Origin?
Shrikant G. Talageri
Right from my college days, when I was doing research in every single field of culture (natural, ethnic, civilizational) to show the sum-total greatness of Indian culture as encompassing range, variety and every stage of development in every field of culture, I was aware of an insidious trend in the writings of people with an agenda to chip away at the image of India as the source of so many important things, and countering such attempts was always one of the intended aspects of my research.
It is not that I was ever the kind of chauvinist who wanted to show that everything originated in India. Even in my writings on the Rigveda, I have pointed out that while the IE family of languages originated in India, certain very important things even in the religion of the Rigveda, like the Soma ritual, did have an origin outside India, in the mountains of Central Asia, and these rituals were introduced to the Vedic people through the Bhṛgu rishis (originally) the priests of the Anu tribes to the west of the Vedic (Pūru) area, but well within India, who themselves acquired these rituals from further northwest. I do not believe in the principle satyameva jayate (truth always wins), because an honest look at what happens in real life shows that truth very rarely wins; but I do believe in the principle satyameva jayatu (truth should always win, or, let truth always win) and it has always been a guiding principle in my life to stand by the truth as indicated by the facts and data, so I have never belonged to the "everything originated in India" school of thought even though I wanted to prove the greatness of Indian culture.
The number of things believed to be Indian but which are slowly being attributed to outside sources is getting longer and longer, as the Breaking India Forces who are mainly engaged in the main task of trying to break out certain sections of Indian people from the other sections (on the grounds of language, ethnicity, caste, sect, etc) take some time out on minor pursuits like proving that many Indian items of culture (in music, dance, plants, food, etc, etc.) actually originated outside India. It requires just one or two speculative hints in any article or book, to trigger off a regular cycle of citing and re-citing each other, for it to finally be accepted, without many people even being aware of the exercise, that something or the other always thought of as "Indian" is actually not Indian! In my article on Indian music (Musical Scales: Thāṭ and Rāga), I have pointed out many such mischievous misattributions which had commenced during the periods of Islamic rule and later further reinforced during the period of British colonial rule in the field of music. In the years of "Independent" India, post-1947, these trends have continued in many fields, including in the field with which this article deals, the field of cuisine.
In the field of cuisine, there is no doubt whatsoever that Indian cuisine, which is the greatest cuisine in the world with the richest variety of types, does owe many of the most important ingredients in many of its well-known dishes to foreign sources: just consider the fact that potatoes, sweet potatoes, chillies, sago, groundnuts, tomatoes, etc. are products which came from the Americas, as are common fruits like chikkoos/sapotas, pineapples, custard-apples, guavas, etc. Yet no-one doubts that masala-dosas, batatawadas, sabudanawadas, puri-bhaji, etc. are Indian dishes. Any more than any Indian would be able to claim that every dish in every cuisine of the world which uses sugar, pepper, cinnamon, cucumbers, eggplants/brinjals, etc. are "Indian" dishes because these items are Indian (or, in the case of sugar, its first use in food preparation was in India).
But I just came across an article on google (one of the articles that google thrusts on our notice as soon as we enter google search) on the BBC site, titled "Idli: Steamed rice cakes with lentils" by an Indian, Anita Rao Kashi, which I read just out of mild interest until the following sentence hit me in the eye:
"Despite its ubiquity, the dish's origin is hazy. The 920 CE Kannada text, Vaddaradhane, a book of 19 stories of local ascetics, mentions the word iddalige, from which idli is believed to be derived. Similar dishes are described in Lokapakara, a 1025 CE guide for common people, and Manasollasa, a 1130 CE encyclopaedic socio-cultural Sanskrit text. In A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, published in 1998, food historian and nutritionist KT Acharya posits that an Indonesian fermented dish called kedli could be the precursor to idli, having been brought to India between the 8th and 12th Centuries by the cooks of Hindu Indonesian kings who travelled back and forth between the two countries in search of brides."
This is incredible! Idli is one of the most basic dishes in South Indian cuisine, and its two main ingredients, rice and urad dal, are not even of "foreign origin", let alone "Indonesian origin", and yet here is this Indian writer, blatantly quoting another Indian writer (a "food historian and nutritionist", and therefore an expert to cite), to trace its origin to Indonesia!
One "expert" having set the ball rolling, there is the well-orchestrated "snowball-effect":
https://www.axisbank.com/progress-with-us/other/tracing-the-origins-of-idli
There will be many more such slyly insinuating articles doing the rounds of the internet social media jungle building up a "scholarly consensus" on this matter. The simplest question on google gives us the following answer:
"Which country invented idli?
While both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu claim to have invented the recipe, food historian K T Achaya believes the idli probably arrived in India from present-day Indonesia around 800-1200 CE.16-Dec-2019".
This claim, on serious examination (as opposed to what I always call "textbook-citing"), turns out to be worth zero:
1. The whole story is based on wild speculation and not on any recorded data. The expert gives us a choice of a wide range of dates (800-1200 CE) during which the fictional "cooks of Indonesian Hindu kings" "probably" brought the proto-idli into India as they "travelled back and forth between the two countries in search of brides". We have to take the whole story on pure faith ─ faith in the pronouncements of the expert.
2. There is no such Indonesian dish of such prominence, called kedli, that could have been brought to India more than a thousand years ago (by any form of transmission) and become the forerunner of the idli. A diligent search through google could not detect this kedli referred to anywhere, except in the parrot-repetitions of the expert "food historian and nutritionist" KT Acharya. In fact, the second of the three above articles unblushingly tells us "with time, the kedli seems to have disappeared from Indonesian kitchens". So KT Acharya seems to have discovered this proto-idli either through the medium of a crystal ball, a time machine or a divine revelation ─ or perhaps by the simple method (popularized by PN Oak, though in the opposite direction) of searching the whole world for a rice dish (old, extinct or new) which has an arguably similar sounding name (to idli) and which could therefore be postulated as its forerunner.
3. Strangely, the same second article admits: "However, as Acharya would point out, the process of mixing urad dal and rice grains, and fermenting the mixture seems to be a later innovation even though there are no references to this process being invented at any particular time." Then which other part of this simple Indian dish was brought over from Indonesia? This is made all the more mysterious since elsewhere in the article, again quoting this same expert KT Acharya, the evidence for the Indonesian origin is naively claimed to be that "Indonesian cuisine has a long tradition of consuming fermented and steamed foods", although nowhere is any data from some ancient (or even 800-1200 CE) Indonesian text cited for this "long tradition".
4. Interestingly, the desperation to locate the origin of Indian things outside India has no logic. The third of the above articles adds this gem: "Another food historian Lizzie Collingham suggests that the Arab traders introduced the Idlis when they settled in the Southern belt of the country." One assumes rice and urad dal are Arabian ingredients, and, after introducing idlis into Kerala, some Arab potentate banned the product in Arabia (and throughout West Asia), even destroying every reference to this Arabic dish (and the native-to-Arabia-rice-and-Urad-dal) from all written records in West Asia and from the memories of the inhabitants of the area! Or, to do this second "food historian" justice (since we are not reading her original discovery but only its citation in this article), perhaps she actually meant that the "Arab traders" from West Asia brought this dish to India from Indonesia in South-East Asia, thereby making this a unique "All-Asian" dish and not just a measly "Indian" or "South Indian" one?
But, again, the second of the above articles is more explicit: "Using references at the Al-Azhar University Library in Cairo, food historian Lizzie Collingham traces the idli to Arab traders who settled on the South Indian coast in medieval times. According to the Encyclopaedia of Food History, edited by Collingham and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay (Oxford University Press), and Seed To Civilisation – The Story of Food by Heiser Charles B (Harvard University Press), the Arab settlers insisted on consuming only halaal (food and drink permissible by Islamic law) food. They found rice balls a safe option. These rice balls were slightly flattened and eaten with bland coconut gravy". So, we must accept that the idli can be "traced … to Arab traders" because they insisted on eating certain particular local dishes rather than certain other local ones!
5. Idlis are not an isolated dish in India, but part of a large school of similar dishes (including multiple different varieties of dosas) which also include fermented or unfermented rice and urad dal as the main ingredients, or even only one of the two, or other alternate ingredients (like mung or other cereals/lentils), and which are boiled, steamed or fried; and these may again be bland, spicy or sweet. Among Konkani people of Karnataka, we have a dish called u:ṇḍi, where rice semolina (without urad dal) is first cooked with grated coconuts over a slow fire, and then pressed into balls and steamed with mustard seasoning, and I am sure the same dish under different names, is found all over the South. And all these have a long history from the time of the Rigveda: the Rigvedic word apūpa (although there is dispute whether it refers to a rice dish or originally to a barley dish) is certainly the forerunner of the Konkani word ɑ:ppɛṁ or the more general southern word appam.
While more and more Indians are becoming aware of the machinations of the Breaking India Forces in trying to destroy India as a political and cultural unit, few are aware of this insidious "outsource-the-origins-of-Indian-things-to-foreign-locales" campaign. So much so that even strongly pro-Indian scholars sometimes sub-consciously get affected by this bug. With due apologies to Koenraad Elst, who is a very great friend of mine since 30 years, and in fact the greatest friend of India, Hinduism and Indian culture, this awareness is what made me write my earlier article "The Origins of Yoga" (19/7/2022).
It is time a section of Indian scholars devoted a separate organization to uncover all insidious attempts to chip away at the indigenousness of our Indian heritage in every field of culture, always taking care to see that the enterprise is not hijacked by any of the "everything-originated-in-India" proponents. A difficult task ─ to avoid going to either of the two extremes and to maintain a strictly objective attitude, but nevertheless a very necessary one.
Even if fermentation was brought from Indonesia, that still won’t deny Indian origin of the Idli.
ReplyDeleteBesides, for anti west people, it is a better to have borrowed from the east than the west.
Whether fermentation was derived from Indonesia or not, and whether things were borrowed from east or west, documented proof is required not the airy and agenda-driven opinions of "experts".
DeleteIf you read about few ayurveda preparations, it involves fermentation. These ayurvedic texts are very ancient. Infact ayurveda involves anareobic fermentation as well. It's time we dig deep into our scriptures
DeleteShrikantmaam, thank you for this article. This reminded me of the well-known 'biryani is of Turko-Persian origin and was brought to India by the Delhi Sultanate/Mughals' trope. Of course, this is not true - the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute had, in a series of video lectures (in Marathi) on their official YouTube channel, mentioned in passing that biryani itself is of very ancient provenance, and the earliest known references to this dish call it by another name (obviously Sanskrit-like), and that it was made often with quail meat. Then, we have the Twitter thread of True Indology, which comprehensively debunked this oft-quoted but factually inaccurate trope.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the deliberate misattribution of genuinely Indic-origin things to foreign cultures/religions by the Western academia, their Japanese imitators (yes, it's real; Japanese academia doesn't generally have an independent line of thinking in the humanities - crap as they are, even our own post-Independence humanities scholars have contributed more original work and lines of thought than the Japanese) and Indian commentators, I do think the motive here is political. I know you are averse to conspiratorial thinking, but the harsh reality is that the Western academia's anti-Hindu activities are an important (but insidious) part of their respective governments' foreign policy vis-a-vis India. The reason for this is simple - Hindutva poses a threat to the Judeo-Christian cultural hegemony, and this is indicated by the fact that Hindu-Americans are the only immigrants to the USA, to have achieved at least parity with the white man (if not greater success) and yet retaining their cultural identity more or less intact (consider the fact that second- and third-generation Hindu- Americans have Indian names, and then contrast this with their fellow Americans of East Asian heritage).
Also, a small data point which I thought you might find interesting - an internet friend of mine is a professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences department of an American university (can't reveal too much about him for obvious reasons), and he's a strong Hindutva supporter. He's read (and loved) Vikram Sampath's book on Savarkar (both parts), and is also a big fan of your work - he said in an online call that, "Talageri is more academic than professional academics". What he also said is that the number of academics who are sympathetic (or at least not hostile) to Hindutva is significantly more than is commonly believed, but they stay quiet and keep their views private, so as to not fall afoul of the small-but-powerful 'clique' which calls the shots. It would be interesting to see when this clique loses power - a lot of skeletons might come tumbling out of the closet.
Dear Sir., A True Idli Story in Tamilnadu scenorio starting of as Puttu ..(புட்டு)..which is the most important Root Word for Breaking food with fingers and eating... Pittu ..(பிட்டு).. maybe root as this dish is in Tamil SivaPuranam. Puttu became Puttuli... which became ittuli in Tamil.
ReplyDeleteAgricultural communities of Tamilnadu & their related population which is mostly 80 + Percent did not eat fermented foods and used mostly millets. This was till 1970's. Most Tamils Boil well soaked Millets, Add a lot of fine cut vegetables in the last minute with salt and eat them. They will add Curd or Butter Milk if Boring upon large meal. Coconut + Onions are widely used for spicing., but not pepper and other costly spices. My Elders often advice my generation to avoid Chetti Nadu foods which was first to add spices to food, and also ghee sweets and most chilli snacks like vada. They said that these foods will not digest quick and give lazyness. I have seen my rural folk using coconuts, groundnuts & all pulses in green pod stage eaten directly as snacks while working in fields. Cooked Millets with Vegtables are taken in large quantity during Food break with a small 30 minute nap. What they said was true and they will wake up to work like tigers without any remote sign of fatigue, but when spicy meal is taken, you can feel a laziness.
Agri people used Puttu when they have no work, which is Millet flour fried in a Shallow vessel with form like dosa with big bulge in center as shape of shallow vessel. Coconut or Onion Veg Chutney used with it.
Upon long travels., families used to deep fry this Millet Flour Puttu & take with them as it is dry and easy for packing in the Loin cloth and have long life. Dry Chilli + Salt + Pulses Powder was used as support.
But Rice Fermented Puttu was introduced to tamils by Andra Invaders. Agri people discouraged it for creating lot of gas trouble and laziness and time consuming. However it became a big Hit in male dominated arrack liquor or toddy shops as Puttu in form of Modern Dosa., but thicker like oothappam. men loved puttu combo with toddy, but was not allowed into families. Then as women got empowered with british induced education., they got lazy and used idli flour which can be used for three days, but not good and refreshing for Health...
Tamil Madurai Shiva Puranam story says that Madurai was flooded and King ordered one young man from every house to strengthen the River Banks. Families who fail to send young man should pay a tax to meet the expenses.
An Old Lady had no sons, but king forced her to pay the tax. She cried to Lord Shiva for help. Shiva in disguise as rouge young man came to the lady and asked what she would give him if he goes to work for the king on her behalf. lady gave him "Pittu"
Lord shiva went to river bank, ate the Pittu and fell into deep sleep while thousands of men were toiling to repair the Banks. king saw Lord Shiva sleeping and took a whip and beat him. The King and the whole world felt the pain of the whip. The lord woke up laughing. King understood his arrogance. The Lord was name
பிட்டுக்கு மண் சுமந்த பெருமாள்...
Lord who carried Mud for the Pittu
Idli .... came from that word Pittu >>> Puttu >>>> Puttuly >>> Ittuly >>> and Idli by Western Way addicts in tamilnadu...