Drinka Cuppa
The Teas
Perhaps the greatest Indian manoeuvre against China is the cha manoeuvre. Tea, after all, is a Chinese herb and tea drinking was a Chinese practice. Englishman Samuel Pepys writes in his famous diary in 1661, “I sent for a cup of tea (a Chinese drink), of which I had never drank before.” The Indian offering came much later. In
The Indian Tea Gazette of 1881, one Samuel Baildon writes how in 1839 samples of the first tea manufactured in Assam were sent to the East India Company in London, which in turn forwarded a portion to the Society of Arts. The society submitted a report that read thus: “Indian tea possessed all the richness, strength and flavour of the very finest kind imported from China.” The British did their bit to popularise and anglicise Indian tea and not for charity but the