Haleem is more than a bridge to reach spatial settings that have been projected as constituents of Calcutta's underbelly. The dish is also a marker of the openness fundamental to the Islamic world, a trait that is being threatened with expungement by the rising, global tide of bigotry. Haleem, food historians argue, has evolved from harees/hareesha, a preparation that was popular in the Arab world and, earlier, among Christians in the Levant region as well as among Jews in Spain.


The Telegraph on the haleem -- when a dish is a recipe for both assimilation and exclusion.  Read it here.


Its journey to India was facilitated by two groups: the first, predictably, were the Mughals; next came the Arab soldiers who served in the Nizam's army in Hyderabad. After Independence, haleem reached Calcutta with the help of migrants. These journeys and the receptive Muslim populations that embraced haleem - they added local flavours to the dish - bear evidence of the cosmopolitan underpinnings of Islamic cultural and culinary traditions."