Samosa came from Persia, jalebi from Arabia, and barfi from India. They
share space on our plates, our festivals, and our cravings. They are not
concerned with the politics of origin, the purity of culture, or the identity
of their makers. Yet, in the same land where these delicacies coexist without
quarrel, people continue to divide themselves in the name of religion, race,
and faith. It is an irony as rich as the syrup of a jalebi and as bitter as
burnt sugar.
History has always been a patient teacher, but we remain stubborn students.
Long before the borders of modern nations, trade routes carried spices, sweets,
and stories across civilisations. The samosa travelled with Persian merchants
to Central Asia and then to the Indian subcontinent. The jalebi, known as
zalabiya in Arabic, came with traders and soldiers who made India their home.
Barfi, though born in India, carries a Persian name that means snow. Together,
they reveal a simple truth — our culture has always been a fusion, not a
fortress.
Yet today, we stand in a time when fusion is suspect, and purity is
preached. Where once caravans brought recipes, now ideologues bring resentment.
We debate who belongs, who does not, and who came first — forgetting that every
civilisation worth its salt has been shaped by those who came from elsewhere.
The kitchen, that humble laboratory of coexistence, tells a story far wiser
than any sermon from a political pulpit.
Look at a plate of snacks in any Indian home during a festival. You will
find samosas beside jalebis, barfi beside seviyan, and gulab jamuns alongside
sheer khurma. The diversity on the plate mocks the division on the street.
Food, like faith, is meant to nourish, not to divide. It does not ask whether
your hands folded in prayer before touching it, or which god you invoked before
the first bite. It asks only if you are hungry — and hunger, mercifully, has no
religion.
Our ancestors understood this better than we do. The same civilisation that
wrote the Upanishads also welcomed the Quran and preserved the Gospels. Ancient
India was not afraid of ideas from abroad. It absorbed them, debated them,
refined them, and made them its own. The samosa and jalebi are small edible
monuments to that same spirit of assimilation. They prove that borrowing is not
betrayal; it is civilisation itself.
But modern politics thrives not on unity, but on fear. It weaponises
difference and sells division. It tells you that your neighbour is your enemy
because his name sounds different, or his prayer is said in another language.
It tells you that your past was pure until someone came and polluted it. Such
narratives may fetch votes, but they rob us of dignity. They make us suspicious
of the very richness that defines us.
It is time to step back and take lessons from the plate before us. The
samosa does not reject the jalebi because it was born elsewhere. The barfi does
not protest because its name came from another tongue. Together they make the
meal complete. Should people be any different?
Every culture, like every kitchen, is a conversation between old and new.
To deny that is to deny evolution itself. When we accept that our food, our
language, our art, and our festivals are the products of mingling minds, we
become less fearful and more human. The more we mix, the more flavour we create
— in taste, in thought, in life.
Perhaps it is time we learn from our snacks what our politics refuses to
teach. Civilisation is not about drawing lines on maps or guarding temples of
memory. It is about celebrating the beauty of exchange — of ideas, of
ingredients, of hearts.
Next time you bite into a samosa or swirl a jalebi in syrup, remember the
journey it made to reach your plate. Remember that it crossed borders,
religions, and centuries to bring joy to you. And then ask yourself — if food
can unite us so effortlessly, what stops us from doing the same?
Because in the end, hatred has never fed a nation. But a shared meal always
has.
— Siddhartha Shankar Mishra
Advocate, Supreme Court of India
✉️ ssmishra33@gmail.com
He writes on law, politics, and society with a touch of satire and
conscience.
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