An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

The British grew tea in India for themselves, not for the locals: the light, fragrant Darjeeling, the robust Assam, the heady Nilgiris tea, all reflected the soil, climate and geography of the respective parts of India for which they were named, but they were grown by Scottish planters (and picked by woefully underpaid Indian labourers) to be shipped to the mother country, where demand was strong. A modest quantity was retained for sale to the British in India; Indians themselves did not drink the tea they produced. It was only during the Great Depression of the 1930s—when demand in Britain dropped and British traders had to unload their stocks—that they thought of selling their produce to the Indians they’d ignored for a century. The Indian masses turned to tea with delight, and the taste for it spread throughout the Depression and the War years. Today, tea can be found in the remotest Indian village, and Indians drink more black tea than the rest of the world combined.