Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In 1900, tea was almost unknown to the average Indian. Today, India is the world’s largest producer AND consumer of tea. If you go to India today (though of course, India varies a lot by region – chai is most popular in the north, but it competes more with coffee in the south) (Collingham, 2006), chai drinking seems so natural that it is as if the tradition has been around for centuries. However, like many aspects of modern-day India, this tea tradition was greatly influenced by British colonization. The British first developed a taste for tea when they imported it from China, and then they began to cultivate it in their own colony, for maximum economic gain. Like good capitalists, they realized they could increase their market to the very people they had colonized and forced to grow their tea: Indians.

As you have seen in this exhibit, the British mounted an extensive advertising campaign, running ads in English and Indian languages in newspapers throughout India. Moreover, they set up tea stalls, put tea in grocery stores, and actually went out into people’s homes and taught them how to brew tea (Lutgendorf 2012, 2015; Collingham, 2006). The fact that tea was a ‘foreign’ foodstuff was not entirely negative, however; traditional Indian culture has many rules around food preparation, with separations between Muslims and Hindus, as well as Hindus of different castes. But, tea worked to transcend these boundaries, and because it was so new, it had more of an egalitarian impact on the diverse Indian culture (Collingham, 2006, 201). Remarkably, tea began, in its own small way, to break down caste barriers, as it was a neutral product outside of traditional Ayurvedic classifications (201). Especially in cities, it was harder to tell who belonged to which caste, and Muslims and Hindus did not always feel as beholden to strict dietary rules. A cup of chai was something you could sit and share with any type of person, regardless of religion or class.

One can see this universality surrounding chai still today in India. Though there are continually class conflicts and religious strife, something as simple as a cup of tea can be a step towards mending these centuries- (or millennia) long issues. Certainly, British colonialism and the subsequent partition of the Indian sub-continent is a dark stain on India’s history. Nothing can ever erase that, but chai might make it taste a little better. Today, chai helps the lowest classes of people make a little money, and it is one of India’s biggest agricultural products. Tea truly became a uniting force during the times of independence and afterward. With a country so diverse, with people of different ethnic groups, speaking different languages, and practicing different religions – tea is something that India as a country can unite around and feel proud of. And Indian chai, with all of its milk, sugar, and indigenous spices like cardamom and ginger, is definitely not British tea – Indians put their classic spin on it and made it their own.