What 9 Communities Taught Me Over Dinner

By Harshita Rathore

July 26, 2025

What do India’s persecuted communities go through behind closed doors?
What happens when you sit across a dinner table and truly listen?
Over the course of 9 powerful episodes, The Dinner Table, a docu-series by Newsreel Asia, brings together stories from communities who have long been silenced, sidelined, or targeted — simply for their identity, faith, or beliefs.

As the host, I travelled across different states, cooked meals with families from Muslim, Kashmiri Pandit, Dalit, Christian tribal, Sikh, Tibetan, indigenous tribal, Kuki-Zo, and Chin communities — and sat down with them to share a meal. What unfolded was not just food on the plate, but raw, unscripted conversations around violence, displacement, discrimination, and the deep pain their communities carry.

Each episode is a window into their everyday lives — their laughter, pain and resilience. While there are heartwarming, light-hearted moments, the conversations often turn to the harsh realities of what it means to live as a persecuted community in India today.

This video offers a glimpse of all nine episodes from the series.

The Dinner Table was awarded the EPPY Award 2022 (U.S.) for 'Best Community Service Reporting/Project', and was a runner-up in the 'Best Collaborative Investigative/Enterprise Reporting' category.