Affiliative Emplacement: Festival Foodwork Among (Im)migrant Kodavathee Mothers

Abstract

Within transnational contexts, ethnic minority Coorg festivals are conducted via the prominence of festival foodwork by Kodavathee immigrant mothers. In the absence of geographical proximity to the homeland of rural Kodagu due to (im)migration, festival food becomes a means to enculturate ‘good’ Coorg diasporic children with appropriate affiliative culinary identification to this ‘vanishing’ community. (Intra)domestic efforts to create emotional emplacement for transnational Coorg children are strategically positioned viz-a-viz other pan-‘Hindu’, Brahmanical religious festivals. Qualitative interviews with 43 Kodavathee (im)migrant mothers from urban, multicultural Sydney (Australia), multiracial Singapore and multi-ethnic Mysore (India), yielded how festival food took on a significant role in firstly: vicarious performances of emplacing Kodagu within the (im)migrant Coorg family context; and secondly in nesting children within an insider food culture which is celebrated in-group yet underplayed in more pan-Hindu contexts. While more publicly lauded performances of enacting ‘appropriate Hinduness’ for pan-Hindu (Diwali) celebrations was conducted, there was an umbilical sustenance sought in Coorg festival foods where in-group intimacies were privately nurtured through the culinary distancing from other non-Coorg Hindus.