From the Editor: Why I lose a little bit of myself every time I have ‘chai tea’
Chai's colonial rebranding is why we need to talk about cultural appropriation in food. (Andy Li/Wikimedia Commons)
This is a love letter to chai.
A tea beverage common in South Asia, chai originated in my homeland of India over 5,000 years ago. And as long as my memory has cooperated with me, I can remember my mom and dad fixing up a cup of chai for themselves at least three times a day for the last 22 years.
It’s not simply a beverage — it is an act of service, it’s an excuse to gossip, to rest, to break. No matter the weather, a hot cup of chai is something any South Asian person is far too familiar with.
But when coffee houses — cough, cough, Starbucks — decided to commercialize the unapologetically Desi beverage and aggressively rebrand it as “chai tea,” they lost not only a logical bet in naming the absolute far too horrendous to be anywhere near the actual chai drink but also failed to effectively capitalize it to the culture they stole it from.
No wonder South Asians despise “chai tea.” But the reason for this hate goes much beyond the taste. You see, it’s not simply about chai anymore — it’s about the racial disconnect that comes with it.
When we commercialize chai, which emerged and has been seen as a symbol of colonial resistance to the British for centuries, and rebrand it as a 2015 VSCO girl aesthetic with caramel drizzle and light ice, it loses not only its charm but another battle with colonialism. See the irony, don’t you?
And no, this isn’t cultural appreciation because they don’t make it the way it’s supposed to be made.
We have read of appropriation in fashion, media, and text far too much to not pay attention to food.
For many immigrants and South Asian people, food serves as a connection to their home countries and cultures. It is a part of their identity, and seeing disrespectful misrepresentations of cultural tokens that have been passed down and refined through generations is not only inauthentic and disingenuous but also contributes to further oppression of minority cultures.
Colonialism had introduced India to tea, which was produced in plantations during the British Raj. While the East India Company had tried to monopolize tea. And while the Raj had started an aggressive marketing campaign to thrust tea on Indians, my fellow countrymen had fashioned a less boring version — better than your chai lattes — to add flavour to the bland concocted mess that the British had come up with.
It is also important that when I talk about chai, I am speaking not just of the motherland, but the amalgamation of cultures that make up South Asia. Tea transcended borders, and chai was our personal touch and how we tailored it to suit our tastes.
While whitewashing samosas, garlic naans, and, just for the sake of it, Scandinavian scarves, might be acceptable to some extent because they are commercialized in their original forms, rebranding chai into something it isn’t is not.
You cannot speak of cultural appreciation, sharing, and exchange if stealing without acknowledgment is the only way out almost always.
