I love meeting people who are original thinkers—those rare individuals who challenge commonly accepted ideas with refreshing perspectives. During a recent visit to Singapore, I met one such businessman. In the span of a casual conversation, he shook the very foundation of a belief I had long held sacred: that tea—our beloved chai—has been an intrinsic part of Indian civilisation for centuries.
Like many Indians, I took great pride in our country being one of the largest tea exporters in the world. I assumed tea was as ancient to India as yoga or Ayurveda. But this gentleman urged me to dig deeper. So I did a bit of research.
To my surprise, I discovered that even the word cha isn’t Indian—it comes from Chinese. In fact, China has had a deep-rooted tea culture for thousands of years. So how did tea come to India?
Historical records reveal a curious silence. There is very little evidence of tea being widely consumed in India before the British East India Company arrived. The British, as it turns out, were the true tea lovers. But they found it difficult—and expensive—to source tea from China. So they turned to India.
They scouted locations with favourable climates and established hill stations like Ooty, Kodaikanal, Munnar, Assam, and Shimla—many of which were originally home only to indigenous tribal communities. Finding these areas suitable for tea plantations, they began cultivating tea using cheap Indian labour. It was an economic strategy: to ensure their own mornings began with a warm, comforting cup—without depending on the Chinese.
Decades later, not much has changed. Indians continue to toil on those hillsides, often in inhumane conditions, to keep tea flowing to the West. Yes, tea exports bring foreign revenue. But if that money has not improved the lives of our farmers, and if we continue to sell our resources cheaply while slogging for someone else’s comfort—what exactly are we proud of?
We’ve mimicked much of British and American culture—from suits to school systems, from bureaucracies to breakfast cereals. We’ve accepted tea as our national beverage, and soon enough, corn flakes might become our official breakfast too.
So today, let’s also raise a hot cup of chai—not in blind celebration, but in mindful remembrance of what this cup truly represents.