Yes, you can make Indian food without chillies. My mum never put chillies in most of her things. She was known for not even keeping chillies in her India spice box!

I've had mild eczema since I was born, and can't see how chilli could induce eczema, which, as far as I can gather, is a contact condition: for me at least, it's induced by sweat or house-dust mite, and not by anything I eat.

I prefer chilli in my Indian and Chinese food, but if you leave it out, you still have all those other lovely spices to enjoy.

I often wonder if the so-called health benefits of chilli peppers is somewhat overrated. Eating something on a regular basis purely because it burns and creates an endorphin rush in my opinion isn't normal. Many plants have a means of protecting themselves from pests and predators in nature, such as the stinging nettle with it's sting - to mention but a few. There is a plant in the Australian jungle that packs a sting which can last up to six months, some deterrent eh? I imagine that chilli peppers are hot to prevent animals from eating them. When you consider that the pods (which contain the seeds) are the hot part of the plant and the means in which the plant reproduces, doesn't it make you consider that the reason why chilli peppers are hot in the first place is for a protective reason? When birds eat chilli peppers and chilli seeds they feel no burn at all, and once the seeds pass through a birds stomach and the bird deposits them somewhere the seeds germinate faster, apparently. I think this is meant to be one of the ways saltpetre helps speed up the germination process of seeds, but I'm not too sure on that. I know that chilli peppers are a member of the nightshade family and that the nightshade family of plants (tomatoes, tomatillos, chillies, peppers, eggplant - to my knowledge) can cause problems for some people. Have you ever considered that tomatoes could be causing you an issue? A lot of Indian dishes do call for tomatoes after all.

Unless you take an allergy/intolerance test then I guess the only way you could try and find out what is causing your problem would be to eliminate one ingredient at a time for about two weeks, and then eat a lot of that ingredient at the end of the two weeks and see if you notice any difference. You say that you have dermatitis on your fingers, so unless your hands are coming into direct contact with spices (assuming that the dermatitis is caused by coming into contact with a certain ingredient) then I would highly doubt that you have an intolerance to any of the spices. If you are using tinned tomatoes in place of fresh then again I would doubt that it was caused by tomatoes. They always say that you should wear gloves when preparing chillies as they can be an irritant, so maybe try eliminating chillies from your diet for a couple of weeks and see what happens. I know that garlic intolerance can cause skin problems for some, and I have read that garlic can cause contact dermatitis. Personally I would try with the chillies first and see how you get on. If it turns out to be a problem with chillies then you could either decide to eliminate them from your diet altogether, or you could eat them once a week. I always remove the seeds from chillies as I believe them to be an irritant to the stomach - when you consider that the seeds are supposed to be the hottest part of the plant and our bodies can't digest whole seeds. I like Indian food but I only tend to eat it about once a week sometimes less.

Surely chillis are native to South America, perhaps a historian gave advise us when they were actually even introduced to India! All of Indian's many regional recipes must have developed over hundreds of years without chillis.

If you like that extra kick, add them. If not leave them out!

I am a fan of hot chilli peppers and I grow my own every year (naga, jolokia, fatalli, habanero, scotch bonnet, Trinidad 7pot and scorpion etc.) I stopped eating garlic some time ago (in any form, no ketchup or anything that contains garlic) and what I noticed was that I no longer had the desire to make things exceptionally hot by adding chillies to everything. I still use the super hot peppers but mostly for their flavour more than anything else. I think in moderation chillies are fine, but like most things, you can over do it to the point where it becomes stupid.