Colonial Tea

Kamal Baruah

(The writer can be reached at kamalbaruah@yahoo.com)

Europeans sailed along the Atlantic Coast of Africa around the Cape of Good Hope to find routes to the Indian sub-continent. The adventure was inevitable as the land route was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. India was finally discovered when a Portuguese navigator named Vasco da Gama reached the western coast of Calicut in 1498. However the British were the most successful for the sake of trade. What started the pursuit of venturing into the jungles of Assam to discover tea? The story is most fascinating. They set out to explore for quest of profit but also colonized our culture.

The Battle of Plassey,1757 helped the East India Company to seize control of Bengal from the Nawab and his French allies. The British, looking to import tea from China, found it expensive and started exploring. But Assam was lying outside the control of the Mughals and the British. The Ahom dynasty successfully evaded the onslaught of the mighty Mughals for centuries. But the Moamoria Rebellion (1769-1806) followed by the Burmese aggression (1817-1825) fractured the Ahom kingdom, and the British annexed Assam in 1826 with the Treaty of Yandaboo. Robert Bruce, a Scotsman who came to supply arms and troops to the Ahom King Chandrakanta Singha, discovered that Assamese tea is better than Chinese tea.

It is a ubiquitous sight, where large swathes of land are set aside for tea plantations. It's very pleasing to the eyes of travellers over the rolling green shrubs. Although the Chinese have consumed tea for thousands of years, it's a fact that the Singpho tribe of Arunachal used to prepare tea in their native ways. The locals believed that 'the cup that cheers' has memory-boosting powers. A Singpho leader, Beesa Gam with Assamese nobleman Maniram Dewan helped Robert Bruce and his brother Charles in growing tea. When efforts bore fruit from the first saplings, plantation started in Joypur and Dinjoy (Chabua).

The discovery of tea made the first Commissioner of Assam, David Scott, to boost up its business prospects. The British visualized the feasibility for tea plantation as the country was well populated with abundance of grain and availability of labour. The Governor General of India, Lord William Bentinck quickened the process of acquiring and planting seeds & plants from China on a commercial basis. Meanwhile,England received the first tea chests from Assam in 1838 and it was soon acknowledged as superior to the Chinese variety.The Assam Tea Company was formed in 1839 to cultivate tea in Assam.

British colonization brought the waves of migrant tribal people from Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh to work in the sprawling tea gardens. Ironically, tea pluckers were caught in the time warp of misery and deprivation for generations. Little would Robert or Charles have realized in those trying times that their pioneering efforts would eventually take Assamese tea across the oceans.Today, Assam alone produces 17% of the world's tea and 50% of India's total tea, where millions of workers put their toil and grab for a bud and two leaves in picking time.

It sounds very easy to pick fresh tea leaves, but in reality it's tough while harvesting. Plucking tea isn't only related to the quality, output and economic benefits of tea, but also related to the growth and development of tea trees. June is the ideal plucking time for quality tea. Tea Estate Managers supervise and control the overall operations of the tea estate. We were fortunate to host a dinner for our brother-cum-Tea Garden Manager Ratul da recently, whose long experiences have been shared with us.

Garden workers pluck green leaves or a yellow bud from a tea shoot that made the world fascinated for making Black, Green, White, Oolong etc. However, unless you're an avid tea enthusiast, it's unlikely that you'll have heard of Yellow tea too often. This is because it's one of the rarer forms of teas. Nevertheless, this unique tea has quite a lot to offer in terms of taste and health benefits. In similar fashion to the other true teas, the main discrepancy with Yellow tea is that it's processed in a slightly different manner. Yellow Tea is the world's finest premium tea-bag exported wholly to Europe, America and Arab Baskets.

Although we haven't brewed the perfect cup of Yellow Label but we ended up at 'karak-chaii' from crushing, tearing and curling (CTC) tea leaves to enhance the flavours. The habit of drinking tea is quintessentially British. We have been influenced by our colonial past and go green with lemon flavour too. The most widely consumed beverage in the world has historical and cultural link. The talks continued on and on. It was 9:30 in the evening for 'khana-lagai-de' - his line tells a lot and only 'baganias' (tea garden people) can understand. The musings of Jhumur are floated in the wind. The tall Scottish bungalows raise high along the shade trees. Girls are clad in sarees with red borders and they dance to beats of dhol and madal and sing with the flute to depict for the love of pleasure and pain of day-to-day life.