Samosas aren't Indian

The idea of stuffing things into dough isn’t that complicated. The Mongols have Khushuur, Georgians Khinkali, Chinese dumplings, Japanese gyoza. Within India, there are stuffed parathas, bondas, kachori and of course…samosas.

The best evidence we have suggests that the samosa came from Uzbekistan. Some say the Arab world. The samosa has spread far and wide - you can get Burmese variants in India and Burma. You can find Thai and Vietnamese versions in those countries respectively. Kenyans and Somalis have a version of the samosa as well (and the Kenyan doughnut - mandazi is also worth further…investigation, nom nom nom).

To many people around the world, Indian food and samosas are synonymous. And that’s fine, but it’s not exactly accurate. India has always been a marketplace full of cultures. The invasions of the landless sons of Afghan kings brought tons of new merchants and workers to India. Tamerlane’s invasions similarly took tens of thousands of Indian slaves to build Samarkhand and Tashkent’s glorious and beautiful mosques. The culinary traditions of South Asia are tied intimately to Bukhara (Mahiwal after all was from Bukhara himself).

We often associate a dish with the culture that introduced it to us. Khao soi is Thai to many people in Singapore and the US, while to me it was Indian. Imagine my surprise, when I learned that it is actually a Burmese dish. Tea is seen as quintessentially English, but it is originally Chinese. Wine is Chinese. Whiskey is Mesopotamian. Beer is Ethiopian.

We can trace almost any element of society back far enough to say “You didn’t make it, the Chinese, Indians or __ made it first”. Census? Mongols. Public service administration? Chinese, enabled by Mongols. Gunpowder. Rice. Mangoes. Etc. etc.

It’s usually China or India and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with the incredible genetic brilliance of the people involved. It has to do with floodplains. The Indus, Ganges, Yellow river have some of the most fertile land in the world and sponsored large populations. Large populations meant large markets and large markets meant a way for humble traders from remote, low population regions to make a lot of money. Traders with new goods, ideas and a lot of labor could set their caravan down anywhere along the Ganges and sell their goods, as Iqbal alludes to in Sare Jahan Se Accha:

Ai āb-i rūd-i Gangā! wuh din haiṉ yād tujh ko?

اے آبِ رودِ گنگا! وہ دن ہیں یاد تجھ کو؟

ऐ आब-ए-रूद-ए-गंगा! वह दिन हैं याद तुझको?

Utrā tire kināre jab kārwāṉ hamārā

اترا ترے کنارے جب کارواں ہمارا

उतरा तिरे किनारे जब कारवाँ हमारा

Which translates to

O the flowing waters of the Ganges, do you remember that day

When our caravan first disembarked on your waterfront?

In a hundred years, people will grow up thinking Pizza and Burgers are American. I think many people already associate these things with America. Yogurt is seen as American when it is Turkish, brought by Armenians to America. The biggest market will absorb influences from all over the world, pick the winners according to the tastes of the most powerful within that market and then advertise it as its own.

It’s the classic “I made this” comic. In this light, cultural appropriation has been around for a very long time and is just a new label on an old phenomenon. Cultural appropriation does cover more ground but the base facts remain: Samosas aren’t Indian, but they might as well be. At this point they’re so enmeshed in the culture, it would be difficult to sway people’s minds. After all, given how many Indians were moved up to Uzbekistan, how many Uzbeks came back down over the years, and the enduring Uzbek love for Bollywood, maybe it was an Uzbek descended from an Indian slave who brought the samosa down to his ancestral land in the first place.