Isn't chili South American in origin? An example of the cuisine of an entire sub-continent being based on an 'alien' ingredient.

Isn't chili South American in origin

yes. most brown people do not know this and are quite shocked when told. note that PTC tasting tends to bias toward non-sensitivity in south asia, and this is considered a good proxy for sensitivity to capsaicin. in other words, the spread of chili pepper into indian cuisine might be a function of a biocultural preadaptation. but this is a weak argument i suspect because africans tend to be sensitive to PTC but many of them are also heavy on spice in their cuisine...this is probably more geographically determined, ie, the latitude correlation with use of spicy herbs.

Have you read _Seeing Like a State_ by James C. Scott? It's got more than a little about governments wanting to limit people's choices to make them easier to govern (the author got started as a result of researching government opposition to nomadism.

A good post. No other comments.

One other. Martha Nussbaum wrote in "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism

To give support to nationalist [or ethnic] sentiments subverts, ultimately, even the values that hold a nation together, because it substitutes a colourful idol for the substantive universal values of justice and right.

You may find it interesting.

(Nussbaum's essay starts off with a quote from Rabindranath Tagore. I never understood why until now.)

Kazi Nazrul Islam is the national poet of Bangldesh, not Rabindranath Tagore.
http://www.citechco.net/nazrul/a...zrul/ about.html

Please do your homework before writing these kind of post.

i did not mean 'national poet' as a title, the term was meant as a phrase to reflect tagore's importance in bangladeshi culture (eg, national anthem). please do your english homework before writing these kinds of comments.

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