Palak Paneer and ‘Food Racism’ in America
- Independent Ink
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
An incident involving two Indian researchers, because of the “pungent-smelling” desi dish they heated in their microwave has sparked debate in the US and in India.
By American Kahani News Bureau
What began as a routine lunch break—reheating palak paneer in a shared microwave—ended in a courtroom victory, a $200,000 settlement, and a hard-won affirmation of dignity for two Indian doctoral students at the University of Colorado Boulder. However, for Aditya Prakash and Urmi Bhattacharyya, the fight was never just about money. It was about challenging what they call “food racism” and asserting that their culture doesn’t need permission to exist.
The incident dates back to September 5, 2023. Prakash, now 34 and a PhD student in anthropology at the time, was heating his lunch in a departmental microwave when a female staff member approached him and objected to the “smell” of his food. She told him not to use the microwave to heat his lunch. “The smell was pungent, she said,” Prakash later recalled.
According to Complex magazine, Prakash claims he responded calmly, saying he was just heating up the food and leaving. However, the incident, which they called “an experience of racial and ethnic micro-aggressions by department staff,” marked the start of a series of conflicts that escalated over the next two years.
What happened next transformed a simple lunch into an institutional crisis. According to The Independent, Prakash responded that it was just food and returned to his desk to eat, “feeling othered and saddened”. What he understood as a racialised slight soon became an institutional dispute.
Escalating Retaliation
The couple alleges that the university’s response went far beyond the initial confrontation. According to Complex, the student, who came to the United States on a student visa to pursue a doctoral degree, then said he was repeatedly summoned to meetings with senior faculty and accused of making staff members “feel unsafe.” He was later reported to the Office of Student Conduct.
The magazine reported that the couple, who are now engaged, received support from 29 fellow students after a chairperson sent a department-wide email about kitchen use policy and how members of the community are asked “to refrain from preparing foods with strong or lingering smells in the main office.” The students criticised the department’s “harmful response” and their “discriminatory food policies,” citing the department’s Statement on Systemic Racism and Violence.
Bhattacharyya’s experience was equally troubling. According to The Independent, “I went to my laptop to access the class roster, and suddenly I was locked out,” she said. “There was no warning. No conversation.” This happened after the department circulated an email reinstating restrictions on the use of the main office kitchen and discouraging the preparation of food with “strong or lingering smells.”
The consequences intensified. In January 2024, the couple’s PhD advisory committees resigned without warning, and the department reassigned them to advisers outside their fields of research, a decision they said stalled their doctoral projects. The university made them ineligible for teaching roles and funding, putting their immigration status at risk. Together, the couple said, these decisions dismantled the academic and financial structures required to continue their studies.
According to Gulf News, “That’s when we knew this was no longer about a microwave,” Prakash said. “We decided to seek legal recourse.”
The Legal Victory—and Its Costs
The couple filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the US District Court for Colorado in May 2025. The Indian duo raised concerns about “discriminatory treatment,” and how the university “engaged in a pattern of escalating retaliation.”
The departmental kitchen policy had a “disproportionate and discriminatory impact on ethnic groups like South Asians,” they contended, making many Indians wary of opening their lunches in shared spaces. The “discriminatory treatment and ongoing retaliation,” Prakash and Bhattacharyya said, caused them “emotional distress, mental anguish, and pain and suffering.”
In September 2025, the university reached a settlement. According to The Federal, the University of Colorado Boulder agreed to pay $200,000 to Prakash and Bhattacharyya to settle the case and conferred their master’s degrees. However, the settlement also bars them from future enrolment or employment at the university.
The university maintained its position throughout. According to Yahoo News, “When these allegations arose in 2023, we took them seriously and adhered to established, robust processes to address them, as we do with all claims of discrimination and harassment. We reached an agreement with the students in September [2025] and deny any liability in this case,” the university said.
But for Prakash and Bhattacharyya, the settlement came at a profound personal cost. Both have left the United States and returned to India. “There is a hardening, a kind of narrowing of empathy,” Bhattacharyya told The Indian Express. “Institutions talk a lot about inclusion, but there is less patience for discomfort, especially if that discomfort comes from immigrants or people of colour.”
According to Complex, “I don’t see myself going back,” Prakash also told the newspaper. “If this case can send out a message that this [food racism] cannot be practised with impunity, that we, as Indians, will fight back, that would be the real victory.”
Prakash said, for them, the point of the lawsuit was not the money. “It was about making a point – that there are consequences to discriminating against Indians for their ‘Indianness.”
The Phenomenon of ‘Food Racism’
The Colorado case has exposed what many are calling “food racism”—discrimination based on the smells, ingredients, or eating practices associated with particular cultural or ethnic groups. The case has received significant media coverage in India since it was first reported last week, with many Indians recounting incidents of facing ridicule over their food habits abroad. Communities from Africa, Latin America and other parts of Asia have also shared their own stories of being shamed over their dietary practices.
Curry is used to signal the overwhelming presence of Indian Americans in the workplace, a presence that persists despite being unwelcome. This is not a new phenomenon. Scholar Madhavi Mallapragada of the University of Texas at Austin has documented how curry functions as a racialised marker in American workplaces. According to her analysis in the Flow Journal, curry invariably enters into a conversation about work visas, immigrant workers, Indian technology experts, outsourcing and the job market in the IT sector. As opposed to the taste, look, colour or texture of the food, it is the smell of curry that is frequently brought up in these workplace confrontations and tensions.
Mallapragada cites a revealing example: in a 2010 thread on dice.com, a conversation about dwindling jobs in the IT sector very quickly veers into a rant about a co-worker heating curry in the office microwave, feeling trapped by the lingering smell and by the Indian presence in the office.
The targeting of food smells as a proxy for racial resentment has deep historical roots. “Curryheads” was a racist and pejorative reference in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
More recently, when Nina Davuluri became the first Indian American Miss America in 2013, the racism became more focused on Indian American stereotypes and the predictable ‘curry’ reference made its way in innumerable forums and comments sections of online news—of Davuluri constantly smelling of spices, of being a “curry-muncher” and of curry during Thanksgiving being an absolutely revolting idea.
The Etiquette Debate
The Colorado case raises complex questions about workplace food etiquette and where the line falls between reasonable accommodation and discriminatory enforcement.
Workplace advice columns and HR professionals have long grappled with food smell complaints. A 2019 Houston Press article listed curry as one of “The 5 Smelliest Foods You Should Never Bring to the Office.” According to it, “Maybe you don’t live in an area with a high concentration of curry fans. But if you live in, say, the United Kingdom or Houston — where we have lots of curry eaters — you know the aroma of a freshly-microwaved bowl of Indian food. It’s delicious…to the person eating it. To everyone else, the strong scent of the curry punches you in the face with a force that makes your eyes water and your nose run. Worse — like the burnt popcorn smell — the overwhelming aroma lingers for days, making your entire workplace smell like the line cook’s clothes at Bombay Brasserie after pulling a double.”
Such advice frames the issue as one of courtesy and consideration for co-workers. But critics argue that these guidelines often single out foods associated with immigrant communities while giving a pass to equally pungent foods from dominant cultures.
The same Houston Press article, for instance, ranked Mexican food as the number one office offence, noting: “No other cuisine captures as many strong and offensive aromas as Tex-Mex. Stinky onions? Check. Acrid salsa? Check. Greasy cheese and chips and chile con carne gravy? Check. Malodorous beans? Check.” Yet complaints about tacos or burritos rarely escalate to the level of institutional policies or civil rights lawsuits.
The question of when smell-based policies become discriminatory is nuanced. According to discussions on Ask a Manager, a popular workplace advice blog, the key distinction lies in how policies are enforced. One commenter noted: “If they specifically said, ‘You’re no longer allowed to bring in Indian food, ' that could be discriminatory, but if they listed ingredients, and the co-worker determined that he couldn’t bring in his leftovers anymore, that’s not.”
Fish presents a particularly instructive parallel. While reheating fish in office microwaves is widely discouraged, one Ask a Manager commenter raised an important equity concern: “I know people are super harsh over fish in offices, and it’s so surprising to me that banning it is not seen as racist, especially since it tends to be just disliking the smell and not an allergy.
There are parts of the country where fish is a large part of subsistence diets for Native American people (I’m thinking specifically of Alaska Natives) and rural-living people. Telling them not to have that at work is not only telling them to cut out a significant part of their diet but also probably increasing their food budget, as fish is essentially free.”
Courtesy American Kahani
The article first appeared in americankahani.com
This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.