Welcome to our (Tea) House.

Let us be boring and begin with discussing what chai is. 

That thing which is ritually consumed by the Englishman & Indian alike. 

A hot beverage, with a sweet treat and the occasional spicy take or political tirade, dependent on company.

In China, there is evidence that tea has been consumed for over two millennia and from there, spread through various trade routes to Japan, India, and later to West Asia, Africa and finally to Europe during the 1600’s. However, owing to recent genetic analysis, it is now understood that the tea found in Assam & Fujian are two different varieties of the same species, meaning tea has long been consumed in the sub-continent prior to the Chinese variety arriving, though localized to the Assam region in India. 

The cultivation of tea in both countries too was independent, with each region developing their own processing methods for the consumption of the plant's leaves and sometimes buds – not the bud you’ve been smoking. I could go on in more detail about its mysterious origins and the development of its ritualization which has a deep history in imperial China, Japan & Buddhist Civilizations, with intricate and well-rehearsed ceremonies and mythologies. But for purposes of expediency I’ll end the ancient history lesson here and reorient towards what I really want to discuss, which is the cultural component of this wonderful elixir in recent times.  

In Mughal India, tea was occasionally drunk in its regional forms such as Kashmiri Kahwa, although it was not nearly as popular as coffee and sherbet, both of which would go on to form a core component of courtly commensality. Whilst most places in the subcontinent outside of Assam, Kashmir, and other traditional centres along historic trade-routes did not consume tea en masse, they did have their own localized indigenous herbal remedies like most people around the world, ingeniously concocted using ingredients from their native environments. 

It was surprising to me that tea truly only took centrality in the sub-continent during the colonial period. The Europeans first started receiving tea during the early naval escapades of the Portuguese and Dutch, who began importing from China in the 16th century. The British, soon after developing their love of the drink in the homeland, set about importing the goods themselves but soon realised that their addiction made them overly reliant on the Chinese. So, the political machinations of the empire culminated in their infamous smuggling of seeds from China into India. But what they soon realized is that the environmental conditions were not ripe for the cultivation of the Chinese crop. It was not until they came upon the tea leaves of Assam that they began mass producing tea. The soon-to-be cash crop was grown in huge amounts across India and Sri-Lanka, until eventually India completely eclipsed China as the primary supplier of the crop to the Brits. 

Once the trade imbalance with the Chinese was overturned, Britain discovered a new problem: what was it to do with all this excess crop? Spurred by economic factors and rebellions against exploitation on tea plantations, companies began marketing tea to the general population, with factories giving workers ‘tea-breaks’ and other incentives to increase consumption. It was here that the Indians adopted British habits such as adding milk and sugar, and further developed the product by adding spices into what we now know as masala chai. How economic factors and marketing spurred the cultural production of tea first as a courtly drink associated with the ruling class to later become the driving social lubricant for the masses in the sub-continent is something I think we should all be thinking about. Although we often perceive these cultural practices as essential, static and indigenous, their histories reveal something else. During the 1960’s-70’s oil boom, labourers from the sub-continent who migrated to the gulf brought with them chai, later becoming known as Karak from the Hindi word Kadak, which has since become an embedded part of the culture in these countries. 

There is a lot to unpack, and one could spend hours discussing the place of tea in Buddhist civilization, high-tea in Britain, the Boston Tea Party or Nas’s favorite drink - bubble tea. Instead, I’d like to turn to the current landscape in the UK/US of tea drinking culture, namely, the rise of places such as Chaiwallah, Qahwah house and the like. I have my own theory as to why there has been an explosion of these types of shops but the larger point of this piece is really to question what our assumptions are around identity and culture, how it is produced, reproduced and shaped by forces unbeknownst to many of us. Most importantly, as is the case with gatherings such as these, how can we as Muslims create new spaces and traditions here in the West that adequately reflect our values and strengthen our communities and society at large?

~Saif