Food is one republic that should be free of politics. And if its democratic citizens are crowning the chef for nothing but skill and merit, then the chef has to be a wise king. India’s Michelin-starred chef Atul Kochar has just learnt that lesson the hard way. The JW Marriott Marquis Hotel, which employed him for running the Rang Mahal restaurant, has fired him for his controversial tweet against Priyanka Chopra for enacting a plot in the TV series Quantico that showed Hindu terrorists plundering Manhattan to frame Pakistanis. While both the producers and Priyanka apologised for hurting Indians — the non-resident ones in particular who have won over the West with their industriousness and enterprise — Kochar, who is as much loved in Dubai as in london, made an Islamophobic tweet, saying Islam had terrorised Hindus for 2,000 years. However, he did realise his mistake and issued profound apologies almost instantaneously but the damage had already been done.
His customers worldwide threatened a boycott. The worth of a Michelin chef draws heavily on a multi-cultural appreciation of customers as well as a multi-cultural infusion of ingredients presented in an international format. One would have thought that Kochar, who has many Muslims among his loyalists, would have been a little more astute. While nobody is defending the plotline — Indians have always been positive lobbyists in the West — it is true that civilisationally Muslim invasion came much later and has never been able to completely colonise the idea of Indic culture. Rather, the invaders too got coopted by it. Otherwise, they would not have grown roots or regimes. Kochar, the food diplomat, could have carried on that Indic legacy in a much more palatable manner. The chilli just got to his brain.