I'm South Asian and our cultures value eating with our hand a great deal. This is for both philosophical and practical reasons. The philosophy of food and dining is that it is an activity which should engage all five senses: food should be brightly coloured to stimulate the eyes, should be aromatic to stimulate the nose, should be well seasoned to stimulate taste, should be consumed in a communal setting with conversation to stimulate the ears and mind, and lastly, should be eaten by hand to stimulate touch.
Now you don't have to buy into that. I don't, I don't really like to have conversations while I eat. But there's another, better reason to eat by hand, and that is that it affords you an unparalleled degree of control over what you eat. Our dishes tend to be complex and have a lot of different elements to them. Eating by hand allows you to precisely calibrate every mouthful so that you get the optimum mix of all the elements and the best possible taste out of your meal.
If your average meal consists of 10 different things served with rice, you just aren't going to enjoy it anywhere near as much if you eat with cutlery, because you won't make the most out of the combinations of the different elements in the meal. It's so much harder to get the right mix using a knife and fork than it is using your hands.
I only eat with cutlery when I eat something from a different cuisine. You can't really eat a steak or pasta with your hands. But for the most part I eat our cuisine and I do so with my hands
