What India serves its guests at official tables has drawn fresh interest since the all-vegetarian fare at the Brics Summit this month triggered controversy. A new book on prime ministers’ tables shows the menu has reflected each leader’s tastes and politics since Jawaharlal Nehru began to Indianise state banquets in the late 1940s.
“Why cannot you give them biryani? The kitchen obliged. Journalists Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh’s ‘The Prime Minister’s Table: Delicacies and Diplomacies from the Era of Nehru to Modi’ draws on over seven years of interviews with families, friends, staff and chefs. The book quotes Prime Minister Narendra Modi as preferring very simple meals. Post-Independence, Nehru changed the form of state banquets. Garlands replaced bouquets, and Indian dishes entered the menu. Toasts were raised in orange juice, artist Anjolie Ela Menon wrote in an account the book cites. Her aunt Tara Ali Baig, wife of Nehru’s chief of protocol, helped Indira Gandhi draw up the new pattern. Indira Gandhi finalised menus and guest lists. She circulated small scissors for grapes, and sent young lawmakers to a dining etiquette class. I K Gujral had two menus. The Ashok Hotel presented both versions.
Indira Gandhi asked when a turkey roast appeared on the draft menu for the 1983 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), recalls chef Sudhir Sibal in the book. A 1956 office note said Nehru was “not used to spice and chillies at all.
The authors say they “entered the homes and hearths of the prime ministers” for the book’s 14 chapters. In 1962, when Uttar Pradesh chief minister Chandra Bhanu Gupta asked for a wholly vegetarian menu for a Lucknow reception, chef Imtiaz Qureshi built one from bottle gourd “fish,” jackfruit “murgh musallam” and brinjal as chicken legs. Nehru teased Gupta about the names, then told the chef: “Imtiaz, you truly broke the record. “…she was a great host,” says former Union minister Margaret Alva. At a Kerala chief minister or governor’s dinner, Lal Bahadur Shastri, then a union minister and a strict vegetarian, said his son Anil Shastri “will enjoy his meal if he eats with his hand”. His wife Sheila, a noted hostess, wanted less ghee and oil, but at state banquets it was “rich food for the guests,” MS Gupta says, with lighter meals for the prime minister.
