Earlier this week, famous US ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's launched a new flavour, Pecan Resist, and a campaign. With their new flavour, they urge their fans "to speak out against President Trump’s policies that attack and attempt to roll back decades of progress on racial and gender equity, climate change, LGBTQ rights, and refugee and immigrant rights..."

It is heady to see a brand take such a strong political stand. It is not the first, for a brand to risk its business by openly voicing its political views. In the recent past, global sports brand Nike made a statement using Colin Kaepernick, an outcast American football player and civil rights activist, as the face of its advertising campaign.

While Ben & Jerry have asked their fans to hold up their spoons in solidarity to their campaign, we back home also have seen food used to make a political statement. Though the most remarkable protests in Indian history have been through abstaining from food. The long-drawn fasts accompanied by protest marches, or how food is used to segregate – caste distinctions, banning of meat and giving food a religious tinge. Food is political.

The most literal historical example is the chapati movement of 1857, where the humble chapati spooked the British government. In February 1857, reports began pouring from villages of North India that thousands of chapatis were passing from one hand to another.

No one knew who started this movement, but chapatis would be passed on from one chowkidar to another, who would in turn make more and distribute to guards in nearby villages. It was found that the chapatis were travelling up to 300 km every night. This was possibly the beginning of the uprising. After independence, we still had our own battles with famines and droughts.

Food shortage brought forth the need for a Green Revolution, but the fallout of this is still being reasoned. In Food as a political tool: an analysis of the use of food towards attaining and sustaining Swaraj, Naomi Wente highlights how post-Independence the emergence of the Green Revolution, in fact, made the country more dependent on imported produce. She quotes environmental activist, Vandana Shiva, “Modernising agriculture encouraged a shift in production from food to export crops and paved the way for global corporations to take over the control of food processing”.

In India, food has always been used to mark territory – political, geographical and cultural. The practice of untouchability always used food as a weapon. A marker for pure and impure status. Political parties still use this as bait to lure those who believe in higher castes and lower castes. It is shameful to say the least.

Denied access to nutritional and monetary benefits, the Dalits have through history been questioned about their eating habits as well. Even in Indian recipe books and mainstream media, Dalit cuisine is yet to be acknowledged. Then, of course, you have other minor food related quibbles, like the Geographical Indicators (GI) of which food product belongs to which state.

You have a state chief minister take immense pride when even a sweet like the rosogolla gets identified as a product of West Bengal. It took a three-year sparring against Odisha for the Bengalis to relish their favourite dessert. When it is about food, it goes deep. Ben & Jerry's know this, and they have got a conversation started. The brand does risk losing customers, but it seems to stand out among its peers.

In India, there is no food brand making a hard-hitting political statement. There may never be one for a long, long time. But it would be nice for a new desi ice cream flavor or a laddoo movement to defend gender equality, respect for religious differences, and opportunity for all.

Sharon Fernandes is a journalist based in Delhi.

First Published:Nov 3, 2018 12:01 AM IST