A news story about two Indian PhD students in the US receiving a $200,000 settlement over a racist remark about the “smell” of palak paneer quickly took over social media. Looks like news struck a chord with quite a few people, and as it happens in the social media era, people began sharing their own experiences, discussing how certain smells were “unacceptable,” or learning about unspoken rules in shared space.
The news also made me reflect on my own experience of living in the UK, wondering if I had ever faced anything like this. Truth be told, I’ve been fortunate. Living among a very diverse group of people, I haven’t experienced food-based discrimination or microaggressions. Of course, everyone has their preferences. Some friends were genuinely excited about Indian food and would look forward to my cooking, while others simply couldn’t handle spices.
I once met an Italian couple where the wife loved going to Indian restaurants, and the husband felt the spices overpowered the ingredients, so it just wasn’t for him. I’ve also met Europeans who loved dal makhani more passionately than I ever could.
What I realised along the way is that many Europeans are quite honest about what they like and what they don’t. Saying “no” here doesn’t automatically come with the fear of offending someone. Dislike isn’t treated as an insult, and disagreement isn’t always personal. That honesty, in many ways, made sharing food and culture easier. I also felt there is space for me to be honest about my preferences. I can say that sharing Indian food while discovering theirs has mostly been a joyful, warm experience for me.
Similar boundaries in the UK
What struck me as more interesting, though, was something else I noticed within our own communities here in the UK. Many South Indians I met in the UK continued to follow very strict food rules inside their homes. When I first came to the UK as a student, like thousands of other Indian students, I joined WhatsApp groups to find a place to stay. That experience was revealing in ways I hadn’t expected.
Messages would pop up offering rooms for rent, but always with conditions. Some wanted only vegetarians. Some wanted only Muslims who ate halal. Others were uncomfortable with alcohol consumption. Reading those messages, I was surprised, not because people had preferences but because these lines were being drawn so firmly even in a country like the UK. It made me realise that food, purity, and lifestyle policing don’t always come from the outside; sometimes, we carry them with us, recreating the same boundaries wherever we go.
To be fair, I also understand where this comes from. A home is a personal space, and people want it to feel safe, familiar, and comfortable. It’s easier, after all, to share your home with someone whose habits and preferences closely match your own. That instinct isn’t wrong in itself. The problem begins when these preferences quietly turn into barriers—when entire groups of people are excluded, not because of who they are as individuals, but because of assumptions tied to food, faith, or lifestyle. What starts as personal comfort can, over time, become a system where many are denied access to basic things like housing, simply because they don’t fit into someone else’s idea of acceptable living.
While most of the discussion around this news has focused on racism and food, and rightly so, because “curry” has long been used as a racial slur against Indians. Even former US Vice President Kamala Harris herself was targeted by fringe right-wing white supremacists over her food heritage, with American political activist Laura Loomer infamously saying the White House would “smell like curry” if Harris became president. These remarks reveal how food is often weaponised to demean identity.
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Conflict within a multicultural society
But beyond the debate of racism, two other realities stand out to me. First, the legal system in the US is expensive and exhausting. Universities often choose to settle cases outside court, not because they accept wrongdoing openly, but because prolonged litigation costs more financially and reputationally. A university’s reputation within academic circles is really important.
Second, international students actually matter to these institutions. The fear of reputational damage, of losing trust and future enrolments, seems powerful enough to push a settlement rather than a courtroom battle. In that sense, this case is not just about prejudice but about power, money, and how institutions respond when their global image is at stake.
More importantly, this is a case of conflict within a multicultural society. And the question is, how can minority practices that offend majority sensibility coexist in the same place and be reconciled? Some craft victim narratives, oppression in any case, others use such cases to try to claim that different cultures can’t co-exist, and everywhere must be some form of majority dominance where all norms are aligned and differences are erased. India’s rich history of communal co-existence shows that this problem can be resolved with pragmatism and goodwill, which is required for both parties.
Critics of multicultural society try to present them as places where anything goes, any cultural norm and practice has to be given space and not questioned in any way in the name of acceptance, leading to moral relativism and chaos. In reality, co-existence and tolerance are a mindset of openness to difference and reasonable negotiation. No society exists today without norms and dos and don’ts.
Liberalism is simply a mindset that seeks to maximise individual freedom in the context of a functional society where one’s actions don’t harm others. It is trying to find a path where the majority and minority practices can function together. It does not mean a free-for-all where anything and everything goes. The difference between it and majoritarianism is the willingness of the majority and everyone involved to seek reasonable, pragmatic compromise.
Amana Begam Ansari is a columnist and writer. She runs a weekly YouTube show called ‘India This Week by Amana and Khalid’. She tweets @Amana_Ansari. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)