Caste in a Cup of Coffee☕
Colonialism, TamBrahms, and ‘Filter Kaapi’
Coffee began its career in India as a European beverage. Although coffee entered Indian soil in the seventeenth century, the whopping popularity it enjoys today is quite recent.
However, beneath the voguish features of coffee, there’s a hidden dark side to it that most of us aren’t aware of — Caste: a stubborn stain in Indian fabric refusing to fade away.
But can something seemingly innocent as coffee be a site of caste history?
When we distance ourselves from the familiar routines of our lives, we get to look at them anew. Even an uninteresting piece of habit such as drinking a cup of coffee seems to have an enormous amount to say.
To begin with, as per an Indian Coffee Board Publication, South (of) India accounts for 78% of Indian coffee drinkers, among which Tamil Nadu boasts the highest coffee consumption rate at 36%. The most popular coffee consumed here is a unique variety called filter coffee. Filter Kaapi, actually.
Here, coffee isn’t merely a brew; it’s an art form. But don’t let familiarity cloud your perception; this isn’t the timid, watered-down rendition that Western palates are accustomed to. In Tamil Nadu, Filter Kaapi is an affair of the heart. It’s the essence of convivial conversations shared over stainless steel tumblers, infused with the warmth of camaraderie. It’s the first sip that awakens your senses and the last drop that leaves you yearning for more.
Coffee is a drink, no doubt. But Kaapi? It’s a strong emotion, dear reader. More than that, Filter Kaapi tells the tale of a grim past.
Colonialism and the Usher of Coffee Era
In those days we didn’t drink coffee. Drinking hot beverages in the morning is a product of colonialism in India. Until the popularity of coffee and the ‘other’ tea in the twentieth century, Tamilians drank neeragaram (fermenting water drained after cooking rice, and adding water and salt to taste). Apart from being cheap and nutritious, neeragaram was wholesome, good for health, and nourished the body exhausted from hard labour. It could be the healthiest drink you could ever have.
However, coffee began to slowly replace neeragaram. Its promise of instant energy and glamorous appeal as the English drink found its way to every household. From men to kids, they were dumbstruck by the heavenly bliss obtained from a cup of coffee. For them, coffee was a wonder; a magic.
‘Coffee is the elixir that drives away weariness. Coffee gives vigour and energy,’ claimed an advertisement for those times.
Many intellectuals lamented this cultural shift to modernity. The incursion of coffee into Tamil society was marked by cultural anxiety, especially the pristine, unblemished, and untainted countryside was now at risk of Western exposure. Women, the bearers of posterity, culture, and tradition, were getting addicted to coffee. Even old women, the repositories of old-world wisdom, were losing touch with their roots.
Emergence of Tamil Middle Class and Coffee Culture
Despite these perceived dangers, coffee was here to stay. The emerging middle class, who prided themselves on their education and wealth, now considered drinking hot beverages all day (the more, the better) as essential, prestigious, and fashionable.
It would have been preposterous to even think that they would dismiss an artefact with such wide cultural import. English education and a career created by colonialism had caused them to consensually negotiate their culture with the British modernity that was in vogue.
Gradually, coffee came to be the ‘touchstone’ of hospitality in Brahmin middle-class households. Offering a cup of coffee to a guest was seen as the right thing to do. RK Narayan, the famous first-generation English novelist, goes on to say in My Dateless Diary that a middle-class south Indian “cannot feel that he has acquitted himself in his worldly existence properly unless he is able to … ask any visitor who may drop in ‘Will you have coffee?’”
Any coffee wouldn’t do either. It has to be ‘good’ coffee prepared with precision at every stage, beginning with selecting the right seeds, roasting and grinding them. RK Narayan lavishes upon the process in his book like this:
“…decoction drawn at the right density, on the addition of fresh warm milk turned from black to sepia, from which ultimately emerged a brown akin to the foaming edge of a river in flood, how the whole thing depended upon one’s feeling for quality and eye for colour; and then the adding of sugar, just enough to mitigate the bitterness but without producing sweetness. Coffee making is a task of precision at every stage.”
The resultant coffee catering to the local taste preferences is called Filter Kaapi, only a distant cousin remotely related to its namesake in the West. The local coffee preferred a style of coffee that was less concentrated and had a milder, less bitter flavour, quite contrary to the likes of its Western counterpart. It was achieved using a perforated metal or cloth filter, allowing the coffee to drip through slowly. And its credit unreservedly goes to TamBrahms (Tamil Brahmins) who played a key role in promoting coffee culture in the south (of) India.
Filter Kaapi, Davara Tumbler, and Pollution
Filter coffee is typically drunk from a cup-saucer combination called the davara tumbler (above). The widespread use of these metal tumblers (brass or steel) with rims, unlike the North Indian rimless ones, is Tamil Brahmin’s invention.
This period was a cusp between tradition and modernity. One had to stay rooted while navigating new roads. Untouchability (or pollution) was still practised in Brahmin households. As a higher caste in the varna system, Brahmins refrained from getting into contact physically or materially with a lower caste member, as it led to contamination or pollution of the ‘higher’ caste.
With the adoption of coffee culture from the British, it became especially harder in urban settings. When Brahmins had guests over, one wouldn’t immediately know the caste of the guest. And they couldn’t be impolite not to serve them coffee in a cup different from what was used by the household.
New problems demanded new solutions. And as it turned out, the unique design of davara tumbler enabled drinking coffee without sipping. You could pour the coffee down your throat through the defined rim without your lip touching the cup.
Two birds in one stone. You can save middle-class hospitality and not risk caste pollution. Quite crafty, isn’t it? Over time, despite discrimination based on caste and religion being abolished, this unique structure remained as a vestige of the caste system.
Institutionalisation of Coffee and the ‘other’ tea.
A coffee hotel or coffee club served coffee (not tea) along with tiffin in the cities of Tamil Nadu from the 1920s until the 1950s. The coffee hotels were run by Brahmins and were in popular minds associated with Brahmins.
To an extent, coffee hotels played a major part in levelling the caste hierarchy that no legislation could have achieved on such short notice. Or so it might seem. It paved the way for the institutionalisation of coffee in Tamil society. A.K. Chettiar observes:
“The coffee hotel is not just an eating joint. In villages, it is a place of congregation. In towns, it is the place where traders clinch deals. Wage-earners, school-going students and sub-editors, who down ‘half a cup’ by the hour-all depend on the coffee hotel.”
Imagine a public place where people of all castes under the roof of a Brahmin before independence. It looks good until you swallow the pride and see the distinctions within it. There, too, hang boards “Brahmins”, “Shudras”, and “Panchamas, lepers, and dogs do not enter”.
But, coffee was expensive, and India was rooted deep in the caste system that allowed it to become a drink only of the elite Brahmin Class.
After such discrimination was legally abolished by the constitution, Periyar launched a campaign to remove the adjective ’brahmin’ from the names of hotel establishments. He asked: “Caste oppression in its experiential form is largely determined through food. Therefore, why should the government permit the use of caste in the names of hotels?”
Closing Thoughts
Gradually, the Brahmin hegemony fell, and coffee was democratised. Presently, roughly a century since coffee became a staple in our households, its sombre past is no longer our concern. As the robust coffee flavour caresses our taste buds, all else fades away.
You saw how a cup of coffee helped to blur the lines of caste discrimination. Perhaps it has the magical ability to mend things. And so, the history might fade, but the enduring embrace of coffee’s essence remains, reminding us that even amid life’s challenges, a simple cup can bring soothing reassurance.
Let me bid adieu with these beautiful lines from T.S.Eliot:
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
Thanks for reading.
Do you know any other daily mundane object that hides a grim history of caste? Let me know in the comments.
With love,
Sneha
