World Refugee Day 2026: How refugees transformed Bengali food

The story of Bengali food is often told through rivers, fish and fertile soil. Less often, it is told through railway platforms, refugee colonies and the ingenuity of people who arrived with almost nothing but a memory.

When millions of people were displaced during the partition of 1947, those crossing from East Bengal to West Bengal did not carry heirloom utensils or sacks of valuable raw materials. Most traveled light because they had no choice. What endured was something far more difficult to confiscate: a culinary memory bank accumulated over generations. The food they cooked in their new homes became a record of loss, adaptation and survival.

Bengali food is based on the cooking traditions of its settlers | Photo credit: Getty Images

“People came with very little. What they carried was a memory and a legacy of food,” says food researcher Amrita Bhattacharya, who runs the Handpicked by Amrita farm-to-table dinner club from their home in Shantiniketan’s Bolpur with her husband, academic Amit Sen. These food legacies have changed Bengali cuisines.

Amrita Bhattacharya | Photo Credit: Selected by Amrita

In the refugee settlements that have sprung up around Kolkata and elsewhere in the state, cooking has become an exercise in survival. Families had to support children despite limited resources and uncertain incomes. Out of these limitations emerged a culinary philosophy that modern food culture later celebrated as sustainable and waste-free.

Vegetable peels have found their way into elaborate preparations. The spinach stalks became one dish, while the leaves became another. Pumpkin brought several recipes from one vegetable. Even the water left after making chhana (curdled milk) was used up. Rice starch, known as fyan, was tempered with spices and served to children as a nutritious broth.

Amrita at work | Photo Credit: Selected by Amrita

“What we call zero-waste cooking today was often the ingenuity of people trying to feed their families with very little. They didn’t think about sustainability. They worked with very little and used creativity to survive,” says Amrita.

Many of these preparations have since become so integrated into Bengali food culture that their origins are easily overlooked. Yet they emerged from a moment when thousands of families were rebuilding their lives from scratch.

Bengali food is an environment of mixed traditions. | Photo Credit: Selected by Amrita

Popular narratives often reduce East Bengal’s culinary heritage to a handful of ingredients, particularly dried fish or Shutki. Amrita believes that such assumptions oversimplify a much wider history.

A deeper influence lies in a cooking style defined by restraint.

Amrita traces this sensibility through her own family history. Her grandparents, who hailed from the Pabna-Rajshahi region of Bangladesh, cooked fresh fish with remarkable minimalism. The fish was fried rare. Instead, it’s lightly simmered with turmeric, salt, green peppers and mild tempering. Shrimp were often boiled and eaten with rice. Delicate river fish appeared in thin broths that allowed the flavor of the fish itself to dominate.

This approach contrasts with many contemporary Bengali cuisines, where richer sauces and heavier spices have become commonplace.

Bengal and the Andamans

After partition, thousands of Bangladeshi refugees were resettled in the Andaman Islands. Among them were many Namasudra families whose agricultural and fishing skills made them suitable candidates for life in the unknown frontier landscape. There they encountered a radically different environment.

Communities used to freshwater fish suddenly had to adapt to seafood. They learned to fish in streams and backwaters, recognize edible leaves, and understand an ecosystem quite different from the one they left behind.

In 1956, 35 farming families comprising 196 members, hailing from several parts of Travancore, left the port of Madras for the Andaman Islands for permanent settlement by SS Maharaja. They were accompanied by GV Kshirasakar, Deputy Commissioner of the Andamans. The picture shows a group of people boarding a vessel. | Photo Credit: Hindu Archives

“It was a different kind of struggle. People had to learn which plants could be eaten, which could be dangerous and how to survive in a completely new landscape,” notes Amrita.

“The food of the Bengali settlers in the Andamans, in many villages, the cooking remains closer to East Bengal from decades ago than what we find in West Bengal today. In isolated settlements, fish curry and prawns are cooked in coconut milk, which often contains just a touch of ‘phoron’ (the five spice of cumin, fenugreek, fennel, black mustard and Menigella mustard, often avoid the tempers.enrichment of yogurts and dairy products that have become commonplace,” explains the food anthropologist.

When refugees from East Bengal settled in West Bengal, their food was mixed with local ingredients and culinary customs. Disparate traditions gradually merged to produce tastes that did not belong fully to either side of the border.

Partition of Punjab

Partition changed food cultures across northern India, particularly in Punjab. Communities migrating from Pakistan’s Rawalpindi and Peshawar brought with them culinary traditions that eventually influenced everything from chicken tikka to roadside dhaba culture.

Amrita points to the evolution of the ‘sanjha chulha’ or community oven once found in villages across undivided Punjab.

Traditional tandoor. | Photo credit: Special arrangement

“It was largely run by women. Families made the dough at home and gathered around a communal oven. After the partition, the community structure changed and eventually evolved into a tandoor culture associated with dhabas,” he says.

In Bengal, Punjabi settlers over time adapted to local raw materials. Community kitchens included regional vegetables and cooking styles. Dishes that once relied on a single set of greens began to appear with Bengali lal shaak (red spinach) and kalmi shaak (water spinach). The culinary exchange flowed both ways.

Bengal Burma connection

In the decades surrounding World War II, many Bengalis returned from Burma in circumstances that closely resembled refugee journeys. They settled in areas like Kolkata’s Barasat and Subhashgram and brought back the culinary traditions learned in the Bay of Bengal.

Mohinga | Photo credit: Getty Images

Their influence lives on in dishes such as mohinga, Myanmar’s beloved fish, and noodle soup. Even today, variations of fish broth can be found in neighborhoods associated with former Burmese settlements. Families continue to prepare khow suey at home, while the ceramic bowls made from Chinese clay that were once used for these dishes remain a treasured heirloom.

Amrita believes another overlooked contribution of refugees lies in ethnobotanical knowledge: an intimate understanding of edible plants, leaves and greens.

The ecology of East Bengal fostered familiarity with a wide variety of leafy vegetables and aquatic plants. This knowledge traveled across borders and influenced how ingredients were used and valued.

Fish scales have become a crunchy snack rich in collagen and calcium. Aging coconuts were turned into fritters rather than discarded. Many types of dal have evolved into delicacies.

Every fish broth, crust fritter, and humble bowl of rice starch bears the imprint of the journey. The trains have long since stopped coming, but the migration that reshaped Bengal still lingers at the dinner table.

Published – 20 Jun 2026 08:00 IST