From Nehru to Modi: A Peek into the Kitchens and Dining Tables of India’s Prime Ministers
A prime minister’s plate can reveal what a conventional political biography often misses. The private choices of what is eaten, how it is shared, and the small rituals that surround the table offer a quieter, more human window into the lives of those who have occupied India’s highest elected office. A recently published book, The Prime Minister’s Table: Delicacies and Diplomacies from the Era of Nehru to Modi by journalists Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh, sets out to capture exactly that. Published by Manjul Publishing House, the book draws on interviews with family members, friends, staff, chefs and long-time associates to step into the kitchens and dining rooms of successive prime ministers. It traces daily preferences, cherished recipes, modes of entertaining and the relationships that took shape away from the glare of public life.
The narrative spans roughly seven decades, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi. In the process it documents the gradual shift in the food culture surrounding the Prime Minister’s Office—from the more formal and sometimes residual influences of earlier establishments to the everyday, democratic table of the present. The authors make clear that their interest was never merely culinary. They wanted to understand the human side of leaders who are usually reduced to political positions and public performances: their homes, family life, friendships, working relationships and the conversations that unfolded over meals.
Breakfasts, mangoes and measured simplicity under Nehru
At Teen Murti House, the first meal of the day was almost always a family affair. Porridge, cereals, eggs and toast formed the usual fare, occasionally shared with invited guests. Dr Karan Singh, who first met Nehru in 1947, recalled that the prime minister often preferred meeting people he was fond of over breakfast. An official note from the mid-1950s recorded Nehru’s preferences with almost comic precision: he was not used to spice and chillies, ate meat sparingly when he did so at all, preferred a full vegetarian meal, drank coffee with hot milk in the morning and weak tea in the afternoon. The Cambridge-educated leader who could have commanded any table in the world was, in private, relatively austere. That restraint aligned with the larger national project of the time—planning, self-sufficiency and a certain public ethic of simplicity.
One of the most vivid personal details concerns mangoes. Nehru did not cut the fruit neatly into pieces. He would break it in the middle, remove the stone and suck the pulp so that juice ran down his hands. He believed this was the only way to extract the true flavour. Eggs, too, had a distinctive method: he cracked them lightly so that only the surface broke and then placed them in a bowl of hot water to cook. These small habits, preserved in memory and anecdote, humanise a figure often remembered primarily for high policy and statesmanship.
Indira Gandhi: Adaptability, Kashmiri flavours and quiet evenings
Indira Gandhi emerges in the book as adaptable and largely unfussy about food. On tours and flights she ate what others ate. A typical early breakfast might consist of one idli, some seasonal fruit and South Indian filter coffee. Once a cabinet colleague, seeing the modest breakfast provided for her, reportedly lost his temper and demanded to know why the prime minister was not being served something more substantial. She also ate comfortably in local styles. In Hyderabad in 1968 she sat on the floor and ate from a banana leaf, thoroughly enjoying the meal.
Kashmiri cuisine held a special place. Even when a full wazwan was not on the table, dishes such as yakhni and goshtaba often appeared when she entertained. She had a Kashmiri housekeeper, and family memories record her sitting cross-legged after guests had left and eating with her hands, savouring the delicate flavours. An anecdote from the late diplomat Satinder Kumar Lambah describes a night in Moscow in 1967 when she taught a young third secretary how to eat caviar properly—with minced onions, boiled egg and a squeeze of lemon. She is also remembered for playing antakshari with her doctor, a lighter, more domestic image of evenings at home. The contrast between the formidable public figure and these private moments of ordinary pleasure is one of the book’s quiet strengths.
Frugality, memory and regional roots
Other prime ministers bring different registers to the table. Charan Singh’s meals were notably frugal. According to family accounts, his regular food consisted of dal, roti and one vegetable. He rarely ate more than one or two rotis. Lunch might include buttermilk seasoned with cumin and rock salt; dinner was light, often a watery vegetable such as bottle gourd. The only dessert made at home was a simple kheer with raisins. There was nothing exotic and little that required complicated recipes. The kitchen reflected both personal temperament and the economic realities of the households from which many leaders of that generation had emerged.
Partition memories also surface repeatedly. I.K. Gujral, born in Jhelum, kept a Punjabi table that often began with brunch rather than a formal breakfast—“they never had breakfast.” Manmohan Singh, born in Gah in what became Pakistan, carried a lost world with him. One recipe for a masaledar chicken was said to have been “lost with uncle.” These details remind the reader that the tables of independent India’s leaders continued to carry the tastes, absences and longings of an earlier, undivided geography.
Manmohan Singh is also remembered for a more intimate domestic image: during the couple’s early years overseas he helped his wife with the dishes. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s preferences included golden fried prawns at the Taj Mahal Hotel and chaat in Lucknow—pleasures that sat alongside the more formal demands of office. Across these accounts the authors show how ordinary dishes and family recipes became part of the personal histories of those who later occupied the country’s most powerful position.
Modi’s table: Simplicity, teaching and eating as understanding
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s food habits reflect a preference for simple, largely Gujarati vegetarian fare—khichdi, dhokla, thepla, sabudana khichdi and everyday thalis. One widely reported story involves him teaching a local BJP worker’s wife how to perfect sabudana khichdi after an earlier attempt did not meet his standards. He has been seen eating a regular vegetarian thali—palak, rajma, dal, rice and tandoori roti—for ₹29 at the Parliament canteen. At a 2015 banquet in the UAE, while an elaborate Indo-Arabic spread crowned by a royal Gujarati thali was laid out, he chose the plain local vegetarian dishes instead, remarking that to know a country one must eat its food.
Chef Sanjeev Kapoor, who has cooked for him on official occasions, has described the prime minister as not fussy, respectful of food and inclined toward simplicity. The emphasis on everyday Indian vegetarian food, the willingness to eat what is local, and the small act of instructing someone in a favourite recipe all contribute to an image of deliberate ordinariness that sits alongside the high demands of the office.
Food, power and the human side of leadership
What the book ultimately demonstrates is that the distance between the public persona and private table is often smaller, and more revealing, than expected. The evolution of the prime ministerial kitchen mirrors larger changes in Indian society: the move from residual formalities of the early post-Independence years toward more everyday democratic practices; the persistence of regional and familial tastes even at the highest levels of power; and the way food continues to function as both memory and diplomacy.
The authors have been careful to note that their subject was never simply what the prime ministers ate. It was the homes they returned to, the friendships sustained over meals, the working relationships that sometimes began or ended at the table, and the quiet choices that revealed character. In documenting seven decades of these choices they have also written a partial history of Indian food culture itself—its regional depth, its capacity to carry personal and historical memory, and its role in the daily life of those who lead.
A plate, in the end, can hold restraint, memory, pleasure, instruction and a certain philosophy of how one meets the world. From Nehru breaking a mango so that the juice ran freely to Modi insisting on understanding a foreign country through its everyday food, the tables of India’s prime ministers have quietly recorded more than most official records. The Prime Minister’s Table brings those moments into view, offering readers a different and more intimate perspective on the country’s leaders and the institution they have inhabited since Independence.
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