{"AuthorName":"Philip Lutgendorf","Description":"

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 01: An Indian woman sips tea. Sample from a catalogue of calendar images, circa 1950s-60s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 01<\/a><\/span>"Chai, garm chai<\/em>!" On my first visit to India in 1971, I regularly succumbed to the railway hawkers' cries ("Tea, hot tea!")1<\/sup> and acquired an enduring habit—for, like millions of other people, I begin the day with a dose of sweet, strong, and milky tea, infused with the robust "CTC" leaves that (even in Iowa) I obtain from a local Indo-American grocery.  But whereas I initially supposed tea-drinking to be as Indian, and perhaps as old, as the Vedas, I have come to know that it is, in the longue durée<\/em> of Indian history, a very recent development; one that (in many parts of the country) did not much precede my first visit, or that even followed it.
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\r\nThe process by which tea came to be cultivated on the subcontinent and consumed by upper-class Indians as a social beverage has been fairly well documented — e.g., in historian Gautam Bhadra's pioneering catalogue essay for an exhibition of tea advertising held in Calcutta in 2005, and in Arup Kumar Dutta's celebratory 1992 volume, underwritten by the Assam Tea Corporation, Ltd. A brief but suggestive chapter in Elizabeth Collingham’s fascinating 2006 study of the evolution of modern Indian cuisine, Curry<\/em>, has further outlined, mainly from English-language sources of the pre-Independence period, the aggressive marketing campaign that helped transmit the tea habit to the masses. My own ongoing research seeks to expand this account by utilizing a range of materials from Hindi and other Indian languages, such as advertisements and articles in newspapers and magazines, literary citations, and oral history and lore, as well as the "visual texts" of popular illustration and signage (Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 01: An Indian woman sips tea. Sample from a catalogue of calendar images, circa 1950s-60s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 01<\/a>). I eventually hope to offer a book-length narrative of the mass dissemination of chai, focusing on changes in manufacturing, advertising, marketing, and consumption, and in eating habits, urban space, and social networks. In this short essay, I will summarize the available research on the promotion and spread of tea-drinking in India, making special reference to the charming images preserved in the Priya Paul Collection<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

An Imperial Thirst<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Although the tea plant (Camellia sinensis<\/em>) is thought by some to have originated on the southern slope of the Himalayas, its cultivation and wide consumption—already prevalent in ancient China—did not develop on the Indian subcontinent until the late colonial period. Even then, it occurred only because the British, who had acquired the tea habit from the Dutch and ultimately from the Chinese, sought an alternative to the monopoly on the supply of leaves held by the latter, and began experimenting, starting in the 1830s, with tea cultivation in the hills of Bengal and Assam. Finding that the plant indeed flourished there, they began exporting tea leaves to Britain, and this expanded supply of inexpensive tea, coupled with the ready availability of cheap sugar from plantations in the Americas, helped to dramatically transform the diet of the British working class during the Industrial Revolution, who increasingly relied on sweetened tea with milk as an easily-prepared source of energy-boosting caffeine, calories, and carbohydrates (see Sidney Mintz's superb study of the history of sugar, Sweetness and Power<\/em>, 1985, especially pp. 108-150).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 02: An advertisement for Liptons tea, published in the Express Coronation Durbar Souvenir edition, 1911. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 02<\/a><\/span>An advertisement for the Thomas Lipton Company, published in the "Coronation Durbar Souvenir" edition of the Express<\/em> in 1911 (Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 02: An advertisement for Liptons tea, published in the Express Coronation Durbar Souvenir edition, 1911. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 02<\/a>), conjures a vision of tea as a gift from brown-skinned colonial subjects, being offered to smartly dressed English ladies and a monocled gentleman, against a backdrop of an orderly "garden" plantation, with its bungalow-style factory building. Yet this imperial infusion, steeped in porcelain "china" pots, accompanied by pitchers of warm milk and spoonfuls of sugar, had already begun to be savored by the bhadralok<\/em> ("well bred") residents of Calcutta. This taste begins to be attested to in Bangla literature and advertising after ca. 1880, but it was initially restricted to a comparatively small Anglophile elite. Indeed, much pre-Independence tea advertising (including the majority of the relevant images in the Paul Collection) suggests such a target audience, emphasizing comfortable bourgeois domesticity, modernity in costume and furnishings (e.g., the sari-clad tennis player of Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 03: A woman tennis player having a tea break. Sample from a catalogue of calendar images, circa 1940s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 03<\/a>, with her Westernized blouse and smart white sneakers), and the elaborate and expensive (by Indian standards) equipment required to brew a "proper" cup of tea (as in the gleaming bone china "tea service" of Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 04: An advertisement for Lipton's Tea, circa 1930-1940. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 04<\/a>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 03: A woman tennis player having a tea break. Sample from a catalogue of calendar images, circa 1940s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 03<\/a><\/span>          Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 04: An advertisement for Lipton's Tea, circa 1930-1940. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 04<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 05: Special Tea<\/em>. Advertisement, circa 1930-1940. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 05<\/a><\/span>My own interest is especially in the subsequent spread of tea consumption, mainly in the twentieth century and (in many parts of India) only during its second half, and in its diffusion both geographically and socio-economically—via the indigenized boiled and "ready-mixed" concoction usually known as c\u0101y<\/em>, c\u0101<\/em>, or cah\u0101<\/em>, which was often made spe\u015bal<\/em> ("special") by the addition of extra cream, sugar, and savory spices—to become the proletarian beverage par excellence: the diurnal and all-day "fuel" of the "casual economy" of rickshaw drivers, artisans, and day laborers, no less than of the "formal" one of office "babus" (clerks) and shopkeepers (the white-collar worker of Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 05: Special Tea<\/em>. Advertisement, circa 1930-1940. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 05<\/a> is enjoying "special" tea, which is further characterized as lajjatd\u0101r<\/em> or "delightful"), and the quintessential "Indian drink" carried to the West by generations of backpacker-tourists.
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\r\nYet the triumph of tea on the subcontinent (which continues, in the early twenty-first century, in some parts of South India that once exclusively favored coffee) was a slow and sometimes contested process, intertwined with and dependent on such phenomena as urbanization, improved rail and road transport and increased human mobility, the breakdown of caste and caste-related dining practices, and the rise of advertising and aggressive marketing. British interest in creating an indigenous consumer base for their export crop, reflected in the Indian Tea Cess Bill of 1903, did not immediately spark a great demand for tea, and was countered by the arguments of Mohandas Gandhi and other nationalists that the consumption of this "imperialist" and capitalist beverage (which required centralized large-scale cultivation and processing) was both physically and politically enervating for Indians (on the condition of tea estate workers, see, e.g., Piya Chatterjee's 2001 study, A Time for Tea<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 06: Rural folk sing and dance in an advertisement for Brooke Bond Kora Dust, circa 1920s-1930s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 06<\/a><\/span>Although full-leaf Darjeeling and Assam tea remained a comparatively expensive commodity, and most pre-Independence advertising was aimed at a middle class audience, cheaper grades of "dust" and "fannings" (fragments of leaves that were a by-product of tea processing) also began to be marketed. An example is Brooke Bond's "Kora Dust," placed in Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 06: Rural folk sing and dance in an advertisement for Brooke Bond Kora Dust, circa 1920s-1930s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 06<\/a> in the context of a rural "folk" festival featuring musicians, dancers, and (improbably) the company's prominently displayed packaging, with a logo featuring the Madonna and Child. Such "crude" blends were often issued in small packets, displayed in perforated chains (m\u0101l\u0101<\/em>s or "garlands") and sold for "one \u0101n\u0101<\/em>" (one-sixteenth of a rupee) in small dry-goods shops. These packets were also sometimes distributed as free samples by bicycle-riding promoters employed by tea blending companies, who visited small towns and villages.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 07: An advertisement for Liptons Tea, published in the Times of Ceylon Christmas Number, 1935. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 07<\/a><\/span>          <\/span>Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 08: Tea Garden, No. 386<\/em> in a sample calendar from Empire Calendar Manufacturing Company, Calcutta; ca. 1940s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 08<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

A National Habit<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n

The most dramatic expansion of tea consumption—and the development of relatively standardized chai (produced by boiling tea leaves in a mixture of milk, water, and sugar, with optional spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, clove, ginger, or black pepper)—only occurred after 1947 and the ensuing transfer of majority ownership in tea estates (which, significantly, were exempted from the sweeping land-reform legislation of the Nehru-Congress era) and in tea wholesaling companies from British to Indian hands. This shift is exemplified in Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 07: An advertisement for Liptons Tea, published in the Times of Ceylon Christmas Number, 1935. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 07<\/a> and Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 08: Tea Garden, No. 386<\/em> in a sample calendar from Empire Calendar Manufacturing Company, Calcutta; ca. 1940s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 08<\/a> above, which both recapitulate the popular visual trope of "the journey of tea" from tea-garden to consumer, but with a difference: the happy recipient of the subaltern (female) tea-picker’s labor (the complex intermediary process of tea processing, packaging, and shipping is elided) shifts from an elegantly-dressed English woman in the older image to a richly ornamented but (deliberately) ethnically vague Indian matron in the later one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 09: Tea is 100% Swadeshi<\/em>. Poster made for the Indian Tea Market Expansion Board, 1947. Reproduced from Gautam Bhadra, From an Imperial Product to a National Drink (Calcutta: CSSSC, 2005), p. 19, fig.24.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 09<\/a><\/span>Indeed, the Tea Board of India (reorganized in 1953, to replace the aptly-named "Indian Tea Market Expansion Board" of the colonial era), declared the "imperial brew" to be emphatically "swadeshi<\/em>" ("of the country"). An extraordinary poster, contained in the 2005 Kolkata exhibition and Bhadra’s accompanying catalogue essay (and reproduced as Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 09: Tea is 100% Swadeshi<\/em>. Poster made for the Indian Tea Market Expansion Board, 1947. Reproduced from Gautam Bhadra, From an Imperial Product to a National Drink (Calcutta: CSSSC, 2005), p. 19, fig.24.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 09<\/a>), visually cements this ideological assertion, with its patterned juxtaposition of Gandhian and Congress Party spinning-wheel symbols (carkh\u0101<\/em>) with tea cups, and its central image of a modest, sari-clad spinner enjoying a refreshing break. Major companies now began aggressively marketing tea as an energy-enhancing drink conducive to both individual and national health and civility.
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\r\nAdvertisements Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 10: A tea advertisement in the Hindustan Times<\/em>, ca. 1940s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 10<\/a><\/span>also emphasized tea's ability to deliver alert, energized citizens, free of the "lassitude" that the British commonly attributed to their native subjects, and ready to build the New India—such as the middle-class parents and dutifully studious son depicted in the newspaper advertisement shown in Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 10: A tea advertisement in the Hindustan Times<\/em>, ca. 1940s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 10<\/a>.
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\r\nYet the mass marketing and consumption of affordable tea also depended on changes in the technology of tea processing: the gradual replacement of full-leaf black teas produced by the "orthodox method" (in which intact leaves are bruised, then briefly fermented and air-dried) with "CTC leaf" ("crushed, torn, and curled"), that permitted tea producers to double their output and consumers to brew stronger infusions from smaller quantities of the resultant potent and tightly-rolled leaf granules. Although machines to produce CTC leaves were first developed in the 1930s, the technology remained too cumbersome and expensive for most growers to adopt until the patenting (and subsequent wide-scale plagiarism) of a simpler "sliding-block" CTC machine by Anglo-Indian T. C. Martin of Calcutta in the early 1960s.2<\/sup><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 11: An advertisement on a tin sign for Brooke Bond Red Label Tea, ca. 1960s-1970s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 11<\/a><\/span>         Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 12: An advertisement for Brooke Bond A-1 Dust Tea; circa 1960s-1970s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 12<\/a><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Soon, CTC-leaf tea (a.k.a. "mamri" tea), mainly produced in Assam, became abundantly available in bulk in retail shops that proliferated in urban areas (see Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 14: A wall-painted advertisement for Bharat Chai, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, 2004. Photo by Philip Lutgendorf.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 14<\/a>, bottom of page), and was also packaged as such widely-recognized "All-India" brands as Lipton "Yellow Label" or Brooke Bond "Red Label" (the Hindi slogan in Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 11: An advertisement on a tin sign for Brooke Bond Red Label Tea, ca. 1960s-1970s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 11<\/a> and Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 12: An advertisement for Brooke Bond A-1 Dust Tea; circa 1960s-1970s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 12<\/a> emphasizes economy, boasting that "Each packet contains more leaves to produce superior chai!"). It also helped spark the expansion of chai stalls and shops—new spaces for (especially) male camaraderie and the exchange of news, gossip, and opinions—as well as the growing adoption of ka\u1e5bak<\/em> ("strong, flavorful") chai as a domestically-produced beverage, suitable for consumption at all hours of the day, and the de rigeur<\/em> hospitality offering to visitors, especially in mid-to-late afternoon— usually accompanied by biscuits and savories (c\u0101y-v\u0101y<\/em>, "tea and so forth") (See Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 13: Friends, No. 411<\/em> in a sample calendar from Empire Calendar Manufacturing Company, Calcutta; ca. 1940s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 13<\/a>, and Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 15: A child asks for a cup of tea; sample from a catalogue of calendar images, ca. 1930-1940. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 15<\/a>, bottom of page).<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 13: Friends, No. 411<\/em> in a sample calendar from Empire Calendar Manufacturing Company, Calcutta; ca. 1940s. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 13<\/a><\/span>Such social spaces and practices, that now appear to be as quintessentially Indian as rice and dal, in fact spread through much of north and central India only during the last four decades of the twentieth century—thus, no retail bulk-tea supplier in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, predates the late 1960s, because, as one shopkeeper there told me, "People didn't drink much tea here before that."
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\r\nAs the first mass marketed food product in South Asia, tea and its indigenized avatar chai is thus not merely an energizing and comforting drink: it is a potent (ka\u1e5bak!<\/em>) signifier of many of the historical and social transformations of the past century: the spread of urbanization, mass transportation, capitalism, nationalism, and of changing lifestyles, caste practices, and gender roles. Visual texts, such as the images in the Priya Paul collection, are an important source for documenting the impact of these changes on everyday life, and I hope to use many more in my continuing research on the social and cultural history of chai.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 14: A wall-painted advertisement for Bharat Chai, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, 2004. Photo by Philip Lutgendorf.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 14<\/a><\/span>          Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Fig. 15: A child asks for a cup of tea; sample from a catalogue of calendar images, ca. 1930-1940. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Fig. 15<\/a><\/span><\/p>","pageBackColor":"#ffcc99","topLineTextColor":"#cc6600","title":"

Chai Why?<\/p>","subTitle":"

The Triumph of Tea in India as Documented in the Priya Paul Collection<\/p>","footNotes":"

1 I use the spelling that, thanks to Starbucks and others, has now been internationally adopted to render the Hindi word that scholars would generally transliterate "c?y<\/em>." On its etymology and history, see Mair and Hoh 2009..<\/p>\r\n\r\n

2 I am indebted for this information to Shri Anik Palchoudhuri, current Vice Chairman & Director of Mohurgong & Gulma Tea Estates. He was a friend of Martin’s and manufactured the latter’s machine for more than a decade through his own tool-and-die company.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

References:<\/strong>
\r\nBhadra, Gautam. 2005. From an Imperial Product to a National Drink<\/em>. Kolkata: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC).
\r\nChatterjee, Piya. 2001.  A Time for Tea<\/em>. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
\r\nCollingham, Elizabeth M. 2006.  Curry, a tale of cooks and conquerors<\/em>. New York: Oxford University Press.
\r\nDutta, Arup Kumar.  1992.  Cha Garam, the tea story<\/em>.  Assam: Paloma Publications.
\r\nMair, Victor, and Erling Hoh. 2009. The True History of Tea<\/em>.  London: Thames & Hudson.
\r\nMintz, Sidney. 1985. Sweetness and Power, the place of sugar in modern history<\/em>. New York: Viking.<\/p>","authorUrl":"philip-lutgendorf","visitgallery":"Chai Why?<\/h4>Philip Lutgendorf<\/span>

Visit the Gallery: A child asks for a cup of tea; sample from a catalogue of calendar images, ca. 1930-1940. From the Priya Paul Collection, New Delhi.<\/p><\/h2>\">Visit the Gallery<\/a>","unsubscriber":1}