Asklemmy

I think the point is they are very different cuisines, not interchangeable. They both just happen to be spicier than the American palate is used to.

I don't choose food based on country of origin but what I fancy to eat. Sometimes that's Indian foods sometimes thai, sometimes vietnamese etc.

I live in Australia where there is not a great selection of Indian food (despite a relatively high Indian population) compared to the UK where I also lived. Even so, there are different styles of Indian food with different dishes available just in my suburb. It's nothing like Thai food, which also has a large variety. Both Indian and Thai restaurants have a few dishes that are 'classic' and available at most mainstream restaurants. Like, it would be odd to not have Pad Thai available, or in an Indian, butter chicken.

Sometimes I'll want a pad Thai. Sometimes a butter chicken. The pad Thai is not better than the butter chicken. A green curry is not better than a jalfrezi. They are different flavour profiles.

I would say there is more crossover between dishes from Vietnam, Thailand malaysia and China, with varying levels of spice and flavour but very similar dishes available and common.

Again, you might prefer a Vietnamese sweet and sour chicken, but that doesn't mean Cantonese or Hong Kong style is better or worse.

Gee, how far back does it have to go to be authentic? Tomatoes weren't in Italy until after Columbus brought them (of course after 1300), and didn't catch on until well after the later date mentioned of 1700, so there goes all of Italy's most famous dishes.

Hamburgers are American food. Not Native American food, but American. Next you're going to tell me baguettes are Middle Eastern food because grain was domesticated there, or that camel meat is Native American food because they evolved in America before crossing the land bridge in pre-human times.

According to your source

Naan as known today originates from Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt.

The word Naan originates from Iran.

Anyway you might as well try to make the case that any Indian dish that contains tomatoes, potatoes, chillies, squash, and much else isn't really Indian because they didn't exist there until a few hundred years ago.

I think after a cuisine or manner of cooking has been used in a region for almost a thousand years we are free to say it is authentic to that region, even though it was introduced. That you would deny Indians that, while accepting that Thai cuisine only started using chilli peppers in the last 300 years, opens a broader discussion about your personal understanding of culture and ethnicity.

Further, a Big Mac is a product made by a single corporation, lmao. I’m not going to justify that with further argument. But to use your Naitive American angle; a big part of NA cuisine is a bread called ‘bannock’. It can be savoury or sweet, and every tribe cooks it a little different from every other tribe. It is an important part of Indegenous cooking… and it’s an introduced food. The word bannock isn’t even from any native word. It came about from Scottish settlers/workers surviving on meagre company rations of flour and oil in isolated regions where they had no idea how to get food from the land. First Nations were introduced to it then found themselves in a similar situation as they were pushed off their land and given flour rations by the government so they wouldn’t all die. This all happened so recently my grandparents knew people affected by this.

It’s integral to their culture, even, and anyone who would deny bannock isn’t naitive would rightly be called an idiot by any indigenous person I know. Even though it’s an introduced food. That’s how culture, and food, work.

invented by people from Pakistan who were just living in India

Pakistan was part of India until 1947. These guys ended up on the Pakistan side of the partition, and then returned to India as refugees.

I'm not sure that it's fair to say that they weren't Indian.