Representing Tea, Creating Consumers: Tea Advertising in Late Colonial India

Abstract

Selling tea to Indians became one of the most elaborate and widespread colonial marketing campaigns evolved by colonial governmental agencies like the Indian Tea Cess Committee (ITCC) and its, successor, the Indian Tea Market Expansion Board (ITMEB) during the first half of the twentieth century. Among the various marketing strategies launched by the ITCC, and later, by the ITMEB in the late 1930s and 1940s, the print medium became one of the most effective ways to popularise tea among Indian consumers. Tea was visually represented in several ways to appeal to various groups ranging from women, middle-class families and children to peasants, factory workers and soldiers. This chapter looks at how visual representations of tea during the late colonial period were instrumental in disseminating the practice of tea drinking among Indians. Print advertising in both English and vernacular mediums popularised tea as a ‘national’ drink in an attempt to create a tradition and culture of tea drinking in the subcontinent. In particular, visual representations of tea in print advertisements from an English daily like the Times of India in the 1940s are used to demonstrate how topical contexts and exigencies like World War II were exploited to increase consumption and embrace new consumer groups. Print advertisements as visual texts can serve as tools to understand how the domestic consumption of tea expanded in the Indian subcontinent.