Do you like tea?
Do you know the difference between Indian tea and our own?
When it comes to India's national drink, it has to be tea. For many Indians, a day should start with a cup of Indian chai (masala chai), and this is not the end; they may buy several more cups from small shops and tea stalls throughout the day.
Indian chai is typically made by combining tea leaves, milk, sugar, ginger root, cardamom, and cloves among other spices.
However, tea is not native to India, tracing its roots back to Chinese Tea. The history of Indian tea is quite short.
In fact, just sixty or seventy years ago in India, most people had never tasted tea, let alone chai.
Let's delve into the specific history of Indian tea.
It is claimed that as far back as ancient India, tea trees grew wild in the northeastern state of Assam.
During the 12th century, the Jingpo tribe (a cross-border ethnic group mainly distributed in Yunnan Province in China, and also in India and Myanmar) and several other indigenous groups frequently drank wild tea. They would pack roasted dried tea leaves into bamboo tubes and then smoke them. To this day, the Jingpo people still consume tea this way.
However, this is not the origin of current Tea drinking in India.
According to reports, in Indian cities near trade routes established between China and Europe and the Middle East, people began to drink tea. For example, at the end of the 17th century, residents of Surat City in Gujarat used tea imported from China to treat stomachaches and headaches.
The English traveler John Overtoun recorded in his book “A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689” that Indian merchants drinking tea would “add some spicy spices and lump sugar, and even some lemon.”
The true beginning of Indian tea history is tied to the relationship between China and Britain. In the late Qing Dynasty, tea was one of the main export products of the Qing government and an important tool for maintaining a trade surplus.
British merchants saw business opportunities and imported tea from the Qing Dynasty, reselling it to other countries – true middlemen profiting from the price difference.
The British also became accustomed to drinking tea and could no longer return to a life without it. By the 1830s, the annual consumption of tea in Britain reached 40 million pounds.
As Sino-British tensions escalated, especially with the outbreak of the Opium War, the British urgently needed to find new tea bases. They turned to their colony, India, particularly the region of Assam.
The development of the Indian tea industry was swift but not without challenges. Starting from the 1830s, Europeans, Indian merchants, and Assamese people all began establishing tea gardens. With the increase in demand for tea exports, a craze for growing tea emerged.
However, the situation with plantation workers was another matter. Many Assamese people did not trust the tea industry and refused to plant tea in the jungle or work in tea gardens. To assert their sovereignty, the Assamese people rebelled against plantation owners, launching attacks on them and their families.
Therefore, plantation owners had to hire workers from other parts of India who became indentured laborers. These tea workers were far from home and trapped on the plantations due to illness, malnutrition, and debt issues.
Despite the surge in Indian tea production by the end of the 19th century, very few people actually drank tea. In fact, most Indian tea was exported abroad.
The small amount of tea remaining in the Indian market was sold to Europeans and upper-class Indians who embraced British culture.
These individuals brewed tea in the British style using specialized teaware and elaborate methods, adding milk and sugar.
One can say that the root cause of the problem at the time – having much tea but few local consumers – was that India was a British colony.
In the 1880s, there were many voices in India opposing tea drinking. As more and more cases of abuse towards Indian tea plantation workers came to light, and as Indians gradually recognized the plight of these workers, many Indian nationalists and upper-class individuals completely abandoned the habit of drinking tea.
However, things began to change in the early 20th century. At that time, economic recessions occurred in many regions globally, which led to difficulties exporting Indian tea. Tea merchants shifted their focus to the domestic market. They initiated marketing campaigns targeting primarily the Indian middle and upper classes.
The initial advertisements were similar to those aimed at Europeans and Americans, focusing on the craftsmanship of tea, Health benefits, and the British method of brewing tea.
Early tea packaging featured idyllic scenes of tea gardens, attempting to dispel negative perceptions of tea plantations.
But Indians have always been unconventional. Regardless of how advertisements promoted the British method of brewing tea, they developed their own brewing techniques.
Instead of Steeping tea leaves in boiling water, Indians boiled the leaves directly in water or milk. They often used broken tea leaves or ground tea, which saved on tea leaves while producing stronger, more caffeinated tea.
Additionally, Indians added more milk and sugar to counteract the strength of the tea made from broken leaves.
To make tea more “Indian,” tea vendors added fresh ginger, green cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and bay leaves when brewing the tea.
Modern Indian chai likely evolved from these early tea drinks.
In the 1920s and 30s, tea houses began appearing in major urban centers in India. In the eastern city of Kolkata, tea houses sprang up in neighborhoods near universities, offering cheap tea and snacks.
These tea houses soon became centers for news, political gossip, and discussions on cultural issues, and in subsequent decades, they became important gathering places for intellectuals and independence activists.
In Mumbai and Delhi, Persians (followers of Zoroastrianism from Iran) established cafes serving their own tea and Persian-flavored foods.
Persian cafes served a particularly thick and long-steeped tea known as “Iranian tea.”
In the 1930s, during the global economic depression, Indian tea plantations set production records, but tea prices fell. Therefore, the Indian Tea Board launched an aggressive marketing campaign to increase tea consumption across India.
This campaign targeted all consumers in the country, regardless of class, race, gender, or origin.
Tea roving demonstrators promoted tea at train stations, factories, and villages. They openly demonstrated how to brew tea, encouraged free tastings, and offered single-serving packages to take home.
To boost productivity, demonstrators lobbied factory and office managers to provide tea breaks for employees.
They promoted tea as a healthy, invigorating, and sensible alternative to alcohol.
Although these efforts only slightly increased tea consumption, they successfully introduced tea to many people who quickly developed a liking for it.
Later events placed tea in an awkward position. During the 1930s and 40s, Indians became increasingly intolerant of British colonial rule.
As part of the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi called on Indians to reject British imperial goods (including tea) and publicly criticized the low wages and exploitation of indentured laborers on tea plantations. This led to many tea workers striking or leaving the plantations altogether.
Simultaneously, Gandhi opposed advertisers' promotion of excessive tea drinking, stating: strong tea is poison, and utmost caution must be exercised when creating advertisements.
Advertisers did not give up, instead using the Indian independence movement to promote tea. They portrayed tea as a national drink closely linked to national identity and commissioned Indian artists to create images of tea drinkers dressed in local attire accompanied by text in regional languages.
While these ads emphasized regional differences, they also emphasized national unity, undoubtedly resonating with the populace aspiring for independence.
By 1947, when India declared independence, tea merchants issued statements claiming tea to be the binding force for the Indian people and a future cultural and economic ambassador to the world.
After independence, tea gardens previously owned by foreigners were gradually sold to Indian natives. Although India continued to export tea, over time, more and more tea remained in the local market.