Archive · 4 Oct 2026
Book Explores Prime Ministers’ Tables and Political Lives
This book tells stories about the food served to India’s prime ministers.
Its authors spoke with people who knew some of the leaders and their households.
The book also describes family relationships and personal habits.
The reviewer enjoyed many of these details.
But the reviewer says prime ministers are not really “just like us” because they have great power.
Their decisions affect many people.
The reviewer also finds it hard to read about leaders’ home lives without thinking about their political actions.
So the book’s personal stories are interesting, but its political history remains important.
Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh’s book examines the food and private lives of Indian prime ministers from Nehru to Modi.
The authors draw on interviews with relatives, staff, and some living former prime ministers.
The reviewer finds the accounts of family life and personal habits interesting, insightful, and sometimes heartwarming.
The review questions the book’s suggestion that prime ministers were “just like us,” given their power and political impact.
The reviewer says the leaders’ political legacies, including Rajiv Gandhi’s and the book’s Israel chapter, overshadow its domestic portraits.
- Who
- Authors Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh, and the Indian prime ministers whose lives and meals the book discusses.
- What
- A review of The Prime Minister’s Table, a book about prime ministers’ food, personal lives, and political legacies.
- When
- The book covers the era from Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi.
- Where
- India; the book also discusses Israel in the context of a visit.
- Why
- The book uses meals and kitchen-table stories to explore prime ministers’ personal lives, while the review argues that their political power and actions cannot be separated from those portraits.
Personal portraits
Political legacies
How to understand prime ministers
Personal portraits
The book’s accounts of meals, family life, and personal habits offer interesting and sometimes heartwarming portraits.
Political legacies
The reviewer argues that prime ministers’ power and political actions make the idea that they were “just like us” untenable and overshadow their domestic lives.
The Israel chapter
Personal portraits
The chapter discusses Israel in a culinary context connected to an Indian visitor.
Political legacies
The reviewer says the chapter’s focus on food is difficult to separate from the ongoing genocide referenced in the review.
- Book
- The Prime Minister’s Table: Delicacies & Diplomacies from the Era of Nehru to Modi
- Authors
- Purabi Shridhar and Sanghita Singh
- Publisher
- Amaryllis
- Length
- 322 pages
- Price
- Rs 1,499
- Subject
- Food and the personal lives of Indian prime ministers
- Reviewer's central criticism
- The leaders’ political power and legacies make it difficult to view them only through their private lives.