Foodie BLASTED for wanting word ‘curry’ to be cancelled
Chaheti Bansal (inset) has called for the word ‘curry’ to be cancelled.
Chaheti Bansal (inset) has called for the word ‘curry’ to be cancelled. Credit: Instagram/Rooted In Spice
Staff writer
PerthNow
A Californian food blogger has sparked huge debate after calling for the word curry to be banned because of its links to British colonialism.
Chaheti Bansal, whose online cooking show Rooted In Spice has earned her close to a million social media followers, went on the divisive rant while showing how to cook an Indian dish.
Bansal was demonstrating how to make gatte ki sabji — a popular curry-style dish from Rajasthan — when she fumed over the history of the term and called for it to be cancelled.
“I’m not even going to bother with the recipe in this voice over because I have more important things to discuss like cancelling the word ‘curry’,” she tells her fans.
Bansal tells how the word was not inappropriate “in all cultures” but for Indian food she doesn’t “understand what that word means”.
“Like there’s a saying that the food in India changes every 100km and yet we’re still using this umbrella term popularised by white people who couldn't be bothered to learn the actual names of our dishes,” she said.
Chaheti Bansal spoke over her cooking video to fume about the term ‘curry’.
Chaheti Bansal spoke over her cooking video to fume about the term ‘curry’. Credit: Instagram/Rooted In Spice
Bansal calls for people to “unlearn” the term, pointing her fans to a NBC story about South Asian American chefs calling for the term to disappear.
In the clip, which has been viewed more than 3.6 million times, she says the term has long been misused by foreigners to describe any dish made on the Asian subcontinent.
But her opinions have caused huge division among her fans, outraging many who were furious they were being asked to stop using the term.
“Does anyone think of colonialism when ordering a curry. Let not forget, we we not the only colonial power,” asked one Twitter user.
“That’s like cancelling people for saying pasta instead of linguine,” wrote another.
British news reader Simon McCoy from GB News also weighed in: “What is it about people in California? It’s a curry! Indian people call them curries... it is ridiculous,” he said.
But many have also backed Bansal, saying they too wish the word would be phased out.
“Y’all can learn every pasta shape but won’t learn the difference between dals? k,” wrote one Twitter user.
“Omg sick of repeating myself to people who call everything Indian food curry,” wrote a fan on Instagram.
The backlash, which included many cruel racist comments, has seemingly prompted Bansal to disable many of her social media accounts.
