THE INDIAN COFFEE HOUSE : A space historically brewed
~ VARNIKA ( IIIrd Year, Miranda House)
My friend and I are sauntering on an October afternoon in the bustling Mall road of Shimla, searching for a café to re-energize ourselves and upkeep the required excitement quotient of being a tourist. We discovered the iconic eating joint, The Indian Coffee House. Sudden flashback.
It is one of the Sunday mornings. My father and I are sipping filter coffee from a steel tumbler and dabara, listening to Manna Dey-
Coffee houser sei adda-ta aaj aar nei aaj aar nei Kothay hariye gelo sonali bikel gulo sei aaj aar nei (That chat in the coffee house is no more today No more today Where the golden afternoons were lost No more today)
We step into the coffee house to step back a century. As we settle on the leathered sofas (from which one cannot get up without making an unpleasant sound if their skin is in direct contact with the surface), the waiter comes in a white shirt and white trousers wearing a green belt and a turban with a green band. He points at a large board hanging on the opposite wall with a menu written. I am relieved because I don’t have to scan a QR code to get the menu and fidget in the process (I must confess technology is a bit challenging for me). No points for guessing we obviously ordered coffee.
What is iconic about the Indian Coffee House? It is an institution of popular culture with a rich history of active engagement; with the entire spectrum of Indian politics wading through the post-colonial transition and the testing period of emergency serving coffees to social circles (addas) that spontaneously aired ideas, questions, and intimately connected people, art, literature, politics, and culture. And you were wondering a lot can happen over a coffee somewhere else!
In 1936, M.J Simon, secretary of the marketing wing of the Coffee Cess Committee established the British colonial firm, Coffee House in Churchgate, Bombay to increase the demand for coffee. In the next few years, more such coffee houses were inaugurated in different parts of the country. In 1946, three members of the Communist Party of India and workers published a pamphlet in Calicut, “Coffee House Labourers are also Human Beings,” written in Malayalam.
All coffee house workers could read the pamphlet since it staffed the workers from the home state of Kerala and soon the place was renamed as Indian Coffee House. It also came to be occupied by workers one by one. From 1947-57, the Indian Coffee Houses continued to be occupied by the workers who were also in charge of their maintenance. In 1957, the Coffee Board of India (a revamped version of the Coffee Cess Committee) presented a formalized plan to sell the place and shut it down. The obvious consequence of it would have been the loss of livelihood for many workers. Communist leader, A.K Gopalan organized a hunger strike that ultimately lasted 15 days. Then prime minister, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru intervened and a compromise was reached that the Indian Coffee House would be registered under the Indian Cooperatives Societies Act. The first coffee house under this cooperative society was opened in the Theatre Communication Building at Connaught Place, Delhi and now there are approximately 400 coffee houses across the country with 76 outlets in Kerala alone.
The Indian Coffee House at the College Street of Kolkata became a breeding place for poets, artists, literati, politicians, and people from all walks of life. Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Suni Gangopadhyay, and many others engaged in elaborate discussions (adda). Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Ustad Amir Khan, Jyoti Basu, Shombhu Mitra, and Badal Sarkar were not uncommon to see.
Coffee Houses are more than just a business. French historian Michelet in the seventeenth century claimed coffee to be an elixir of mental clarity. Since the age of enlightenment, coffee houses have been social homes for challenging religious practices, governmental bodies, economic trade, and social hierarchies. Coffee house culture breeds a free, inclusive, and open space, often inadvertently threatening the power mongers of the society. In 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency when Allahabad High Court found her guilty of corrupt election practices and barred her from holding office for the next six years which she didn’t concede.
Overnight, India was under dictatorship as opposed to the freedom it was promised at midnight. During this time , the Indian Coffee House at Connaught place, Delhi became a key site of resistance to the Emergency. SFI, JNU, and Delhi University Socialists and right-wing groups like members of ABVP, RSS met together to put on a coordinated, organized students’ movement against the emergency. The right-wing members here learned from the communists how to develop and coordinate a wide grass-roots network, use satyagraha as a mass movement tactic and effectively disseminate and circulate statements, pamphlets, politically poems; though socialists often complained them to be poor learners and passive in debates.
On May 15th, 1976, on the orders of Sanjay Gandhi, the Indian Coffee House was demolished by the New Delhi Municipal Corporation. The demolition of the place also severed the relations between the left and right student groups with the right distancing itself from a politics too confrontational. Soon, a new coffee house was erected on the terrace of Mohan Singh Place. Ram Shastri, an activist and journalist while speaking to photojournalist Stuart Freedman for his book, The Palaces of Memory: Tales from the Indian Coffee House, says, ‘All revolutions start in coffee houses you know.’
In the mid-nineties, the Indian Coffee House at Mohan Singh Place nurtured the LGBTQ movement. American scholar, Paola Bacchetta, in her paper, Rescaling Transnational Queerdom, wrote that people met here to discuss “pressure to heterosexually marry; familial and societal lesbophobia; economic independence; countering antilesbian media; relations to the IWM; and heterosexist law.” There were groups such as Red Rose Rendezvous (identified by a red rose at the center of the table) and CALERI (Campaign for Lesbian Rights) that met here regularly in the 1980s-1990s.
In Allahabad’s Coffee House, located in Civil Lines, the Urdu poet Firaq Gorakhpuri held his courts for hours on all kinds of issues. His 1936 article written in defense of homosexual love and its depiction in ghazal is revolutionary. He describes the depiction of homosexuality in poetry across space and time in the works of Sappho, Socrates, Saadi, Hafiz, Shakespeare, and Whitman.
He writes- “zarā visāl ke ba.ad aaina to dekh ai dost tire jamāl kī doshīzgī nikhar aa.ī” (Look in the mirror after our union, friend How your beauty has acquired a virgin innocence)
Indian Coffee Houses have a long tradition of dissent and assertion of identities with lived experiences of democracy at work. The chain of restaurants brews a cosmopolitan culture. However, it is difficult to sustain living spaces of history in an age of hyper-capitalism. The pandemic gave a further setback to the workers and managers who run the eatery on a cooperative basis. Nostalgia is a powerful sentiment but not enough for sustaining these historically living coffee houses.
(Manna Dey’s voice echoing in the background continues Coffee houser sei adda-ta aaj aar nei aaj aar nei Kothay hariye gelo sonali bikel gulo sei aaj aar nei…)
REFERENCES AND CITATIONS
Wikimedia Foundation. (2021, October 24). Indian Coffee House. Wikipedia.
Venkatesh, K. (2021, January 13). A short history of the India coffee house: Conversation, revolutionary politics and a different way to do business-art-and-culture news , Firstpost. Firstpost. Plys, K. (2021, March 1). Spaces of resistance: From Indian Coffee House to Tihar Jail. Jamhoor.
Dissent, debate, and Coffeehouse Culture. The Edict. (2021, August 17). India; Coffee; Asia-Pacific; ICA. (n.d.). https://www.ica.coop/en/media/news/indian-coffee- \house-walk-down-memory-lane.
Roy, V. (2018, February 3). Indian Coffee House: Heady Brew in chipped China. The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/society/indian-coffee-house-heady-brew-in-chipped- china/article22644068.ece.
Zachariah, P. (2015, May 30). Indian Coffee House: The ambience is free. mint. https://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/fGuferX5qDy3uuktAl25EI/Indian-Coffee-House-The-ambience-is-free.html.
Nair, M. (2017, July 16). A farewell to Delhi’s Regal Cinema, the birthplace of the city’s LGBTQmovement.Scroll.in.https://scroll.in/magazine/832816/a-farewell-to-delhis-regal-cinema-the-birthplace-of-the-citys-lgbtq-movement.
The palaces of memory. Stuart Freedman.(n.d.).https://www.stuartfreedman.com/the-palaces-of-memory.
Verma, R. (2021, June 26). Satyajit was here: Kolkata’s College Street Coffee House. The Hindu.https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/satyajit-was-here-kolkatas college-street-coffee-house/article34945690.ece.
Firaq Gorakhpuri, the epicure of beauty. The Wire.(n.d.).https://thewire.in/books/firaq-gorakhpuri-the-epicure-of-beauty. Staff, B. (2021, June 3). ‘haven’t paid workers for 10 months’: Shimla’s iconic Indian Coffee House feels pandemic heat. News18.https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/shimlas-iconic-indian-coffee-house-feels-pandemic-heat-3804590.html.
Plys, K. (2017). Political deliberation and Democratic reversal in India: Indian Coffee Houseduring the emergency (1975–77) and the third world “totalitarian moment.” Theory and Society,46(2), 117–142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-017-9287-1
McComb, Sofie. (2015). Fostering Enlightenment Coffeehouse Culture in the Present. https://cns.utexas.edu/images/CNS/Sofie_McCombEnlightenment_Coffeehouse_Culture.pdf
Bhattacharya, B. (2017). Much ado over coffee: Indian Coffee House then and now.
Singh, S. (2013). A people stronger: The collectivization of Msm and Tg Groups in India. Sage.
Mir, R., & Gulazāra. (2014). The taste of words: An introduction to urdu poetry. Penguin Books.
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