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Popular around the world, masala chai tea has become a symbol of accessibility and independence to a nation of tea drinkers. Photo credit: Swastik Arora
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A worker stirring the leaves in a withering trough at the Balanoor Tea factory. Photo credit: Balanoor Plantation
Anyone who has ever traveled by train through India, has heard the ‘chaiwala’ (tea hawker) shouting “Chai, lelo, chai! Chai, garam chai” (Have some chai, hot chai). According to Statista, India consumed over 1.1 billion kilograms of tea in 2022. How did a nation with no indigenous tea-drinking culture evolve into the world’s largest tea consumer? The story of how tea became India’s beloved chai is full of spice, intrigue, and ingenuity.
Introducing Tea to the Indian Subcontinent
Camellia sinensis is believed to have originated in a region that stretches from the southern slopes of the Himalayas to the mountains of southern China, northern Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. However, its cultivation and consumption did not develop in the Indian subcontinent until the late colonial period, during which time tea was widely grown and consumed in China.
The British, who acquired the habit of drinking tea from the Dutch, who in turn got it from the Chinese, would buy tea leaves from China and pay back with opium cultivated in India. The gradual decline in the price of tea led to a huge surge in tea imports. The demand for tea was pushed further by the abundant supply of cheap sugar from slave-worked plantations in the Americas, which the British used to sweeten their tea.
Facing a population increasingly addicted to opium and a rapidly decreasing supply of silver, the Chinese authorities seriously objected to the opium-for-tea arrangement. Despite fighting and winning two wars with China to keep the opium and tea flowing, the British realized an alternative source of tea needed to be created.
“Tea plants were spirited from China to break the Chinese monopoly,” explains Dr. Kurush Dalal, culinary anthropologist, historian, archeologist, and director of the School of Archeology at INSTUCEN. “They were sent to Saharanpur via Kolkata in sealed terrariums. However, the first time this was done, the officer in Kolkata opened the seals to water the plants and as a result, the plants all died in transit. On the second attempt, in 1851, the plants were taken to Darjeeling, where they thrived.”
During the next four decades, thousands of acres of subtropical forests were cleared and planted with tea bushes. Indentured labor for the plantations was imported from the eastern Gangetic plain and the tribal lands to the south of it. Over time, tea cultivation spread to different regions of the country, including the southern peninsula.
The tea produced in India during those early times was almost solely intended for export to the West, but as it passed through different middlemen and ports, some of the native population, especially the Anglophile elite, began partaking in its consumption. Fluctuations in London auction prices and the challenges of long-distance transport prompted growers and officials to envisage a potential domestic market for tea. Accordingly in 1901, the Viceroy commissioned an experiment which introduced tea to Indians in select areas. However, the efforts were abandoned in 1904, after only moderate success.
Fast-forward another three decades, and the ripple effects of the Great Depression and growing independence movement decisively changed the picture. Around this time, some British planters began selling their estates in India and returning home.
“Our plantation was incorporated in 1937 with the acquisition of coffee and tea estates from the British planters in the 1930s,” shares Ashok Kuriyan, managing director and producer at Balanoor Plantations and Industries, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. “The British began cultivation here in 1894. They grew tea and set up a factory with all the machinery imported from Britain.” Balanoor estate currently grows tea, coffee, pepper, areca nut, timber, and avocados.
Founded in 1894, the Balanoor Tea Plantation was transferred from British to Indian ownership in 1937. Photo credit: Bhavi Patel
International tea prices dropped sharply in the early 1930s while production rates soared. By 1935, growers had a huge unsold surplus of tea, to the tune of more than 100 million pounds. Nurturing a domestic market with a minimum of 350 million people seemed promising. In 1935, the then Tea Cess Committee was reorganized as the Indian Tea Market Expansion Board (ITMEB) and given a massive budget to begin what was undoubtedly the largest marketing campaign in Indian history.
Hundreds of ‘tea propagandists’ were dispatched, sometimes in motorized ‘tea vans’ that dispensed millions of cups of free tea. ‘Pice packets’ of tea – small paper packets of leaf tea or leaf fragments (‘pice’― the lowest unit of currency in India at the time) were also given out. These pice packets led to the wide-scale pay-per-use packaging of shampoo, detergent, etc. in sachets.
Enamel placards were posted at railway stations and markets detailing the ‘correct’ British process for infusing tea. Demonstration teams were dispatched to festivals and bazaars, with all-female units being sent to conservative, purdah-observing households.
Enamel sign with tea-making instructions in Urdu, 1940 from the Urban History Documentation Archive, Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.
The ITMEB also urged factory owners and office managers to set up free or subsidized canteens on their premises and to give the workers an afternoon ‘tea break.’ Elaborate brochures were shared, highlighting how such ‘lost’ shift time would be cost-effective due to a more productive workforce.
Soviet style poster for ITMEB by Annada Munshi, 1948, from the Urban History Documentation Archive, Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.
World War II slowed the ITMEB’s efforts but the campaign still had a huge impact. Dubbed “The Great Tea Campaign” by renowned author Lizzie Collingham, it created massive public awareness and exposed millions of Indians to their first taste of tea.
“While the Indians disliked the taste of tea in the beginning, the addition of milk and sugar appealed to the Indian palate, acting as an invigorating stimulant, making it very popular,” explains Dr. Dalal. “The spices added to the masala chai are all indigenous, and that trend came on later.”
Despite the IMTEB’s persistent efforts to educate the masses on the ‘correct’ way to make tea, many refused to follow the British method, which used more tea leaves to boost sales. Eventually, people realized that instead of pre-heating a porcelain pot and using separate milk and sugar containers, one could just add all the ingredients into a pan and boil them to get the same rusty red infusion as the elaborate British method.
This technique also enabled people to add far more milk than the British preferred, sometimes more than 50% of the concoction. Later, people began to stir in a range of spices – ginger root, crushed green cardamom, cloves, etc. In an attempt to maximize flavor extraction, tea leaf fragments and dust became the preference, which never used to fetch much at the auctions.
Thus, the immensely popular beverage known as Indian masala chai was born.
Evolution of Chai Post-Independence and the Advent of CTC
“Today, India is predominantly a black tea producer,” explains Ashok. “We started with producing orthodox, but those volumes have been reduced. Now, India mostly produces black tea, CTC, and some green tea from specialty growers. At Balanoor, we used to produce both orthodox and CTC tea, but now we primarily produce only CTC, while orthodox is only on request.”
CTC stands for crush, tear, curl – a black tea processing method that involves running black tea leaves through a series of cylindrical rollers. The rollers have sharp teeth that crush, tear, and curl the leaves. The process was invented in the 1930s by Sir William McKercher in Assam, India. But McKercher’s machines were expensive, cumbersome, and prone to breakdowns.
In the late 1950s, Indian engineers in then Calcutta (now Kolkata) redesigned these machines, creating the “Sliding block CTC machines” that were easier to clean, and their rollers were easier to sharpen. Though patented by the Small Tools Manufacturing Company, the machines were widely pirated from the 1960s to the 80s. This completely transformed the Indian tea industry.
The advent of crush, tear, curl (CTC) machines transformed the Indian tea industry from orthodox black tea makers to predominantly CTC producers. Photo credit: Bhavi Patel
One of the biggest advantages of the CTC process was the dramatic reduction of the per-unit price of chai, which industry professionals call the cuppage. From 250-300, the cuppage went up to 400-600 cups per kilo of dry tea, which drove the massive growth in chai consumption in India.
“Tea is one of the cheapest beverages you can drink in India,” says Ashok. “Sometimes the milk and sugar in the cup of chai would be bigger costs than the tea in it! It is an essential drink for most of the country.”
“In post-independence India, while coffee was and still is regarded as an elite drink, tea is the more accepted and accessible drink for the masses,” adds Dr. Dalal.
Chai Tea Latte and Beyond
In the 1990s, Starbucks created its spin on the traditional Indian masala chai, naming it the chai latte. The massive popularity of the Starbucks chai latte inspired countless other coffee chains worldwide to do the same. In 2023, the chai tea market was valued at $55 billion and is expected to reach $91 billion by 2030 according to Verified Market Reports.
The British introduced tea drinking to the Indians, who fashioned it for their unique palettes and built something flavorful, which was then embraced by the world. Today, the sweet, humble chai has fans everywhere and each delicious cup tells a story that spans continents and generations.
Tea and Chai: Two Sides of the Same Linguistic Coin?
Drinking tea originated in China. However, before the 8th century, there was no dedicated word or character for tea. It was one of the many medicinal herbs and plants, collectively called “tu” 荼 – “bitter plant”.
In the late 8th century, during the reign of the Tang dynasty, Tao Lu Yu wrote one of the finest works on tea called the “Cha Ching” (The Tea Classic). In this, he gave tea its character—茶 which evolved from the earlier one for tu —荼. They are both similar, except that the new character did away with one horizontal stroke.
As tea drinking increased, the character 茶 became commonly used. But while 茶 was written the same way across the country, it was pronounced differently in different dialects. In the Guangdong province, it was pronounced as cha; in Shantou, it was pronounced as te, while in the Fujian province, it was pronounced as ta. In Northern China along the Yangtze River, it was called zhou as well as cha.
“Tea derived its name… based on which route it took out of China,” said Dalal. “For example, in Russia, India, Japan, and Arab countries, tea traveled by land routes, so derivatives of the Mandarin word ch’a were used, like chai in Hindi, cha in Korean, chá in Portuguese, cha in Japanese, etc.”
“Tea was sent to Europe via sea routes, mainly through [Xiamen (Amoy)] port, so derivatives of the word te were used,” he adds. “The Dutch used thee, in English it became tea, in French it is the, in Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian it is te, and so on.”