Urmi Bhattacherya
Urmi Bhattacherya and Aditya Prakash
At issue is a university’s refusal to let the Indian couple heat food in the microwave due to the smell.
An argument that started over a plate of food in the microwave ended with two Indian students winning a $200,000 settlement from a university in the United States.
Aditya Prakash and his fiancée, Urmi Bhattacheryya, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the University of Colorado Boulder after they faced an series of “microaggressions and retaliations” after the microwave incident.
According to the lawsuit, the harassment began after a university employee objected to Prakash heating his lunch of palak paneer — one of the most popular dishes in northern India, made from pureed spinach and paneer (the equivalent of cottage cheese) — in a microwave on campus, because of the smell of the food.
In response to questions from the BBC, the university said it would not comment on the “specific circumstances” surrounding the allegations of discrimination and harassment made by students, due to privacy laws, but that it is “committed to promote an inclusive environment to all students, faculty, and staff regardless of origin, religion, culture, and other categories protected by U.S. law and university policies.”
“When these allegations surfaced in 2023, we took them seriously and adhered to established, robust processes for addressing them, as we do with all reports of discrimination and harassment. We reached a settlement with the students in September [de 2025] e we deny any responsibility in this case,” the university said.
Prakash says that for him, the legal action was never about getting money. “It was about showing that There are consequences for those who discriminate Indians because of their ‘Indianness’”, he declared.
The lawsuit has received widespread press coverage in India since it was reported last week, sparking a debate over what many have described as “food racism” in Western countries.
On social media, many Indians shared their own experiences of being ridiculed for their eating habits abroad.
Some have also pointed out that food-related discrimination is widespread in India itself, where non-vegetarian foods are banned in many schools and colleges as they are seen as unclean or dirty.
People from disadvantaged castes and states in the northeast of the country often face prejudice due to their eating habits, with complaints about the smell of the ingredients they use.
And it’s not just Indian or South Asian food — communities from Africa, Latin America and other parts of Asia have also reported experiences of embarrassment and shame because of their eating habits.
“Pungent odor”
Prakash and Bhattacheryya claim that it all started in September 2023.
Prakash, a PhD student in the university’s Department of Anthropology, was heating his lunch of palak paneer in the microwave when an employee allegedly commented that the food gave off a “pungent” odor and said that there was a rule that prohibits heating strong-smelling foods in that microwave.
Prakash said the rule was not mentioned anywhere and when he asked which foods were considered “pungent” he was told that sandwiches were not, but that curries were.
Prakash alleged that, after this episode, there was a series of actions by the university that led him and Bhattacheryya — who was also a PhD student at the institution — to lose research fundingteaching roles and even the PhD supervisors with whom they had been working for months.
In May 2025, Prakash and Bhattacheryya filed a lawsuit against the university, alleging discriminatory treatment and “pattern of increasing retaliation” against them.
In September, the university reached a agreement to terminate the action. This type of agreement is usually made to avoid long and costly legal disputes for both parties.
Under the terms of the agreement, the university agreed to award the diplomas to students, but denied any responsibility and banned them from studying or working at the institution in the future.
In a statement sent to the BBC, the university added: “The Department of Anthropology at CU Bolder has been working to rebuild trust among students, staff and faculty. Among the initiatives, department leaders have met with postgraduate students, faculty and staff to listen and discuss changes that better support the department’s efforts to promote a inclusive and welcoming environment for all.”
“Individuals who are found responsible for violating university policies that prevent discrimination and harassment are held accountable,” he added.
“Go back to India”
Prakash says this wasn’t his first experience with food-related discrimination.
According to him, when he grew up in Italy, his teachers often asked him to sit at a separate table during his lunch break because his classmates thought the “unpleasant” food smell.
“Acts like isolating myself from my European colleagues or preventing me from using a shared microwave because of the smell of my food are ways of white people control their Indianness and restrict the spaces in which it can exist”, he says.
He adds that there is a long history of food being used to disparage Indians and other ethnic groups.
“The word ‘curry’ has been associated with the ‘smell’ of marginalized communities who work in kitchens and people’s homes, and has become a pejorative term for ‘Indian’,” he says.
Bhattacheryya says not even someone like former US Vice President Kamala Harris is immune to food-related insults and cites a 2024 social media post by Trump adviser Laura Loomer saying that if Harris became president, the White House “would smell like curry”. Loomer denied being racist.
In the lawsuit, Bhattacheryya also alleged that he faced retaliation after inviting Prakash to give a guest lecture in his anthropology class on cultural relativism.
Cultural relativism is the view that no culture is superior or inferior to another, as the cultural practices of all groups exist within their own cultural contexts.
During the talk, Prakash said he shared several examples of food racism he had experienced, including the palak paneer incident, without naming names.
Bhattacheryya says he also suffered racist abuse when he published a thread on X about “systemic racism” which she and Prakash faced at university in 2024.
Below the post, there were several comments supporting the couple, but also some saying: “Go back to India“, “Decolonization was a mistake” and “It’s not just the food, many of you don’t shower and we know”.
Prakash and Bhattacheryya said that what they wanted from the university was to be heard and understood, and for their pain at being “different” to be acknowledged, and for amends to be made in a meaningful way.
They claim that never received an apology significance of the university. The university did not respond to the BBC’s inquiry about this.
They have since returned to India and say They may never return to the US.
“No matter how good you are at what you do, the system is constantly telling you that because of your skin color or nationality you can be sent back at any time. Precarity is acute, and our experience at university is a good example of this,” says Prakash.
