International Journal of Development in Social Sciences and Humanities

Food practices in India are deeply embedded in caste hierarchies and function as markers of ritual purity, moral worth, and social status. Classical sociological accounts identify food as a central mechanism through which caste boundaries are maintained and reproduced. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among the Thigalas, an intermediary caste community in urban Bangalore. This paper examines contemporary transformations in food practices, with a particular focus on the increasing adoption of vegetarianism. It argues that these changes cannot be adequately explained through the classical model of Sanskritization as a bottom-up process of imitation. Instead, the paper conceptualises Sanskritization as a two-way hegemonic process, in which dominant caste norms are actively maintained and disseminated through electronic media. Using in-depth interviews and qualitative media content analysis, the study demonstrates how television and social media function as ritual infrastructures that normalise upper-caste food morality, producing consent rather than coercion. The paper contributes to debates on caste, food politics, and media by foregrounding ritual hegemony as a key mechanism through which caste power is reproduced in contemporary urban India.