Jorhat, April 21: A day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was urged by the Assam government to declare tea as a national drink, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said here that he would strongly take up the plea for giving national drink status for tea with the Centre.
Addressing the Assam Tea Planters’ Association (ATPA) platinum jubilee celebrations-cum-75th annual general meeting here this afternoon, Ahluwalia gave an assurance on the matter and also advised Dispur to build a strong case based on the history of tea. He referred to the first Indian tea planter-turned-martyr Maniram Dewan, who was hanged by the British in Jorhat on charges plotting against the colonial rule, during the famous 1857 uprising.
“The Assam tea industry has indeed a glorious past and beginning with a native person (Maniram), who from the royal post of dewan (minister) of Ahom monarchy, had set up a plantation and became not only the first non-British planter but also gave stiff competition to British planters,” Ahluwalia said.
Dewan, born near Jorhat on April 17, 1806, was in his teens when one day in Calcutta, he heard a group of British merchants discuss the profitability of the tea business in China. He told them the same bushes were grown by the Singpho tribe in a region that now falls on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border. One of his listeners was Scotsman Robert Bruce, who went on to be known as the man who discovered tea in Assam in 1823.
It was a momentous event in the economy of the state, which to large parts of the outside world is almost synonymous with tea. Dewan set up Cinnamara tea estate here in 1845 after resigning from his post of dewan with the British-instituted Assam Tea Company, the first tea firm in the state. Dewan had played a leading role in Assam politics during the early British rule, initially helping the British rulers establish peace with various tribes and chieftains, after two Burmese invasions.
Ahluwalia said the fact that a person who did well as a tea planter during its infancy and had to give his life during the first war of Independence was a very strong point that tea is far ahead of its rival drinks to get national status. The Planning Commission deputy chairman said the beverage, which has a nationalist and patriot as one of the pioneers in the evolution of the industry, makes it a fitting case.
“I shall go back (to Delhi) and personally take up the case with the ministry or department responsible for granting the coveted tag,” Ahluwalia said at the packed auditorium of Tocklai Experimental Station, the oldest and largest tea research centre near the historic Cinnamara tea garden set up by Dewan.
“I like drinking black tea and started the habit during my student days in Oxford,” Ahluwalia said. He also advised Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi, who was present on the occasion, to place the demand with the Centre by citing Dewan’s historic connection. Yesterday, Dispur had submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister in Guwahati, in which the national drink tag for tea demand figured.
Assam has a long tradition of tea culture and is the largest tea growing state. Though tea faces stiff competition from coffee, the tea industry has been claiming that a recent countrywide survey had shown that 83 per cent households drink tea.
