South Indian Filter Coffee, Colonialism and Caste Oppression

Originally Published: 13 July 2021

South Indian filter coffee evokes a strong aroma of remembrance and reflection. On the one hand, the frothy sweet milk emulates cosy memories of a precious morning ritual. Yet, on the other, it blankets the bitter history of caste oppression and the illusionary image of India’s postcolonial reality.

THE LEGEND OF BABA BUDAN

Coffee’s arrival to India is frothed in mystery.

The port of Mocha in Yemen was the sole source of coffee exports and the Yemenis protected their monopoly by refusing to sell live coffee plants and seeds. Legend has it that around 1600, a Sufi monk, Baba Budan, hid seven coffee beans from Yemen in his beard while returning from his Hajj pilgrimage. Budan planted the smuggled beans in Chikmagalur – located in the Indian state of Karnataka - which is now known as “the land of coffee.” Today, coffee still grows on the hills named ‘Baba Budan giri’. However, in his book ‘Black Gold: The Dark History of Coffee’, Antony Wild highlights the absence of “documentary evidence” and mentions that “the earliest reliable report dates the presence of coffee in India to 1695.”

Regardless of the fictitious nature of the Baba Budan story, there is little doubt that British colonialism was responsible for brewing India’s coffee appetite.

COLONIALISM AND COFFEE

While the Dutch began planting some coffee beans in the Malabar region, British colonialism transformed the hills of South India into a coffee growing beanstalk. JH Jolly, a British manager working for Parry & Co, a trading company, envisioned the coffee growing potential of Chandragiri plantations. He sent a petition to the Mysore government in India for permission to grow coffee on forty acres of land. This endeavor was successful and encouraged increased commercial cultivation of coffee. Yet, even by the clock strike of the eighteenth century, most of the coffee produced was take-out for the London market, highlights historian A.R. Venkatachalapathy in his book ‘In Those Days There was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History’. India’s coffee appetite arrived slowly but powerfully weaved itself into South Indian culture, with no intention to leave without leaving a permanent caffeinated stain. As Venkatachalapathy writes, “The incursion of coffee into Tamil society was marked by a cultural anxiety which was matched only by the enthusiasm with which it was consumed.’ The culprit of this cultural anxiety resembles a cappuccino in ethnic attire, encapsulating a history bearing little recognition: South Indian filter coffee.

SOUTH INDIAN FILTER COFFEE

Indian filter coffee is brewed in a dabarah (the cup) and tumblr (the filter), often made of stainless steel, copper or brass. This produces what is referred to as the coffee decoction. Milk is boiled separately on a stove and poured into the coffee decoction, inside the dabarah. Then, in an act that defines the South Indian filter coffee making ritual, coffee is poured back and fourth between two cups. This process is entirely hand-driven, making the far distances the coffee is flung between, appear as a product of great craftsmanship. To the locals, it is a mere habit they can achieve with their eyes closed. For a nation renowned for its karak chai (tea) culture, the laborious process of making South Indian filter coffee demonstrates the indispensable status of coffee to India’s sunrise.

Coffee charmed its way into South Indian culture like the protagonist of a slow-burn romance tale. No more blatantly was this evident than by a dramatic letter someone wrote to Gandhi, as shown in Venkatachalapathy’s book:

“The greatest obstacle in the way of success to our [non-cooperation] movement in Madras are our women. Some of them are very reactionary, and a very large number of the high class Brahman ladies have become addicted to many of the Western vices. They drink coffee not less than three times a day and consider it very fashionable to drink more.”

Gandhi did not respond with a peaceful resistance plan on how to prevent women from drinking coffee as the nation had graver issues at stake. This included, driving out the same colonising powers who placed signs reading “No dogs, no Indians,” outside some establishments in India and banned Indians from entering coffeehouses.

CASTE OPPRESSION

Broken. Dalit literally means broken in Sanskrit. There are several stories about Dalits being killed because their shadow fell upon someone from a higher caste. Dalit women are extremely vulnerable to rape. Not only are they perceived as being from a lower caste, they are also women. While India's caste system was formally outlawed in 1950, even after this, caste discrimination continued and continues to exist. Coffee drinking, although known for its inclusionary nature in bringing together social classes, is also infamous for exclusion. This background provides a useful trajectory since at the same time African Americans were fighting against racial discrimination on an international level, Dalit leaders were advocating for “caste” to be included in either the definition of race discrimination or a separate violation of human rights. The latter’s efforts helped raise international awareness about the plight of Dalits in India, a shocking image for a nation supposedly liberated.

COFFEE AND CASTE

Homi Bhabha, a postcolonial critic, commented in 'Remembering Fanon’, “Remembering is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection. It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present.”

The colonial associations of coffee are treated as relics of a past long buried during independence. Yet, the history of caste oppression and its continued impact is often filtered out, resulting in the “the trauma of the present” being ignored.

Metal tumblers with rims allowed people to drink coffee without having to sip the Tumblr. This was not a mere cultural aesthetic. Venkatachalapathy writes that this Brahmin (the highest caste) invention was purposely designed this way to prevent “ritual pollution” from lower caste members. Since serving filter coffee became an essential element of hospitality, coffee could be served to lower class members at home. Yet, caste exclusion in relation to coffee drinking prevailed in the public sphere. In a seminar, the same author quoted a court case, concerning a Buddhist Dalit, Ramaswamy, who was refused coffee at a restaurant. Ramaswamy and his two friends entered a restaurant on the 13th of July, 1927. The waiter was instructed to deny serving coffee to Ramaswamy because of his caste. Ramaswamy then walked out of the restaurant, while his Brahmin friend rejected his own cup of coffee “as a mark of protest."

Therefore, South Indian filter coffee is more than just foam created by tossing coffee from one steel cup to another. It embodies a history threaded with folk tales, colonialism and the existing stain of caste oppression.