Tag Archives: India

Curry Goes to War: Indian Army Field Rations in World War Two

By Pradeep Barua

The Indian Army participated in both  world wars in the twentieth century. During the First World War (1914-1918,) 1.3 million Indian soldiers fought for the British Empire. Another two million men joined the Indian Army and fought for the allies in World War Two (1939-1945).[i] In the latter case, feeding this massive army in various theatres of war, ranging from the jungles of Burma (Myanmar) to the deserts of North Africa to the frozen Apennines of Italy, proved to be a major challenge for the Army.

Alongside the challenges of the battlefield and terrain, the Indian Army was also a multi-faith army comprised of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. In addition to religious differences, Hindu and Sikh soldiers were subject to caste considerations. Food and rations had to be prepared along strict guidelines to adhere to caste and religious sensitivities. Two cooks or Langris were assigned to a company of soldiers (about 100 men). Depending on the company’s composition, the cooks would be Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, and of a particular caste as needed. The presence of the Langris ensured that food for the different religions and castes was provided for in the right way. The Indian Army also supplied stackable cooking pots, so soldiers could prepare their own meals in the field. This was especially important to high caste Brahmin Hindu soldiers who had to prepare and eat their own food in order to preserve their caste status.[ii]

Frontline British soldiers had access to 24-hour ration packs that included tinned bully beef, spam, steak, kidney pudding and sausages. These were not acceptable to Indian soldiers, and it was subsequently a challenge to keep them fed on the frontlines. To aid in this, dehydrated lentils, fish, vegetables, and fruit were provided to Indian soldiers engaged in combat.[iii] Indian soldiers, like their British counterparts, also foraged for fresh eggs, fish, and poultry as the situation allowed.

Whether it was lentils, fish, or meat, the favorite form of preparation was a curry. It was slow cooked in a pot and served on an enameled metal plate roughly 12 inches across.[iv] The slow cooking tenderized hard dehydrated lentils, dry fish, and even tough cuts of meat. Crucial to the curry was the addition of a blend of powdered spices that each Indian soldier carefully hoarded and carried into the frontlines. A base curry spice blend included turmeric, cumin, and coriander. To this, people added other spices such as chili, black pepper, cinnamon, or nutmeg depending on regional preferences. The curry was usually eaten with a flat wheat bread called the chapatti, which was made every day by the Langris. The curry and the chapattis became synonymous with Indian troops in various theatres of conflict. Many civilians in the combat zones, who were assisted by Indian troops, fondly recall the food that the Indian soldiers shared with them. In Italy, for example, villagers today remember with gratitude the curries and chapattis that Indian soldiers distributed among them to relieve starvation during the Italian campaign in World War Two.[v]

Food traditions of the Indian Army developed at the regimental level. The regimental messes evolved and enshrined curry recipes over periods of up to a century.[vi] This knowledge was passed on to the regiment’s battalion cooks. On festive occasions these dishes were cooked in the rear areas and transported to soldiers in forward positions.

What follows is a small representation of curry recipes unique to Indian Army Regiments:

Assam Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment fought mainly in Assam and Burma during the Second World War. An iconic dish is Machoor Tenga Jhool or Fish Sour Curry.

A bowl of red curry with seafood.
Fig. 1. Machoor Tenga Jhool or Fish Sour Curry. Image courtesy of author.

Jammu & Kashmir Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment also fought in Burma during the Second World War. Its iconic dish is Rogan Josh or Mutton Curry.

A bowl of brown curry with mutton.
Fig. 2. Rogan Josh or Mutton Curry. Image courtesy of the author.

Sikh Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment fought in all the major theatres of war that the Indian Army participated in during the Second World War. Its iconic dish is Sarson ki Saag aur Makki ka Roti or Mustard Greens Curry and corn flat bread.

A plate of green curry with a flatbread.
Fig. 3. Sarson ki Saag aur Makki ka Roti or mustard greens curry and corn flat bread. Image courtesy of the author.

Ultimately, the Indian Army regiments enshrined regional customs and traditions. Food served an essential purpose in maintaining these regional identities. The Indian soldiers’ curry rations played a vital role in ensuring that the Indian Army’s morale and well-being was in the best condition during the Second World War.

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[i] See Pradeep Barua, The Late Colonial Indian Army: From the Afghan Wars to the Second World War (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021).

[ii] “An Army Marches on its Stomach,” National Army Museum, UK, https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/army-marches-its-stomach

[iii] Kristen Ann Ehrenberger, “Dehydrated Rations for Indian Soldiers in the Second World War,” H-Nutrition, 22 June 2017, https://networks.h-net.org/node/134048/discussions/182894/dehydrated-rations-indian-soldiers-second-world-war

[iv] “Tales From the Supply Depot: Indian Army Enameled Plate,” 18 May 2015, https://hatchfive.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/indian-army-enamelled-plate/

[v] War and Chapati: The Role of Indian Soldiers in Italy during WWII, documentary produced by Assocoiazione Universarte and directed by Harvinder Singh, https://globalhistorydialogues.org/projects/war-and-chapati/

[vi] Regimental Zaikas: Indian Army Regimental Dishes (Bangalore: ASC Centre and College, 2019).


Pradeep Barua is Professor of History at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He is the author of several books on South Asia and military history including Gentlemen of the Raj, The State at War in South Asia, The Military Effectiveness of Post-Colonial States, and The Late Colonial Indian Army.

A Recipe for Brown Stew

By Geeta Budhraja

This is the apéritif to what I hope can translate into a larger comprehensive project on the delights of Anglo-Indian cuisine. Born into a family where conversations celebrated food – what to eat, why, the origin of the dish or ingredients, etc. – and a healthy inclination towards fusion, it’s not surprising that Anglo Indian cuisine is by far my all-time favourite.

An illustrated bowl of steaming stew sits on top of a cookbook
Image courtesy of Ms. Priyanka Sarkar.

 

My paternal grandfather was Chief Engineer with the Indian Railways from the early part of the twentieth century when it was still under British governance. He maintained links to this colonial past until well after Indian Independence, which showed up in the cuisine served at railway parties and were a part of celebratory dinners at home. The khansama, or family cook, who was typically local and Indian, was trained in whipping up all the basic Anglo-Indian dishes, as he’d previously been in the employment of the “gora sahib” (white British men).

My father was with Dunlop India Limited, which had its headquarters in the Anglo-Indian Mecca- Free School Street in Calcutta (now Kolkata). So, meals at our home were a celebration of all things Anglo-Indian.

In this post I am going to look at a quintessentially Anglo-Indian dish that is a fusion of a very typical British base to which Indian spices or an Indian touch has been added to rather glorious, if I may say, results.

The khansama had been used to serving British bachelors who came without their wives as the first wave of officers, unsure of living conditions in India. They introduced the gora sahib to Indian spices like turmeric, mustard seeds, cumin, cloves, cardamom, and asafoetida to rather promising responses. When the memsahibs (their wives) arrived, they wanted to reclaim their husbands’ palate, and therein lies the origin of the battle of spices between the khansamas and the memsahibs. Anglo-Indian recipes are the battleground of this war that was never quite won by either but settled into a grudging truce where either one would concede defeat depending on the response of the bada sahib (husband).

A key dish is a brown stew (distinct from the Caribbean one that gets its name from the addition of brown sugar). A British stew is a dish wherein meat and vegetables are simmered to create a very light and flavourful soup-like consistency, while stew in India is trotters simmered in a gravy with onions, garlic, ginger, and yogurt along with spices like cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, and mace. The end result is a rather rich gravy-like dish. The brown stew referred to here is a fusion of these two, and its origin probably lies in one of the kitchens where the British memsahibs would have asked for stew, and the only stew that the khansama knew of was paya (trotters) curry.  So, for his ‘stew,’ he probably substituted the trotters with the meat of choice and added ‘English vegetables’ like carrots, celery, and potatoes. He also retained spices like black cardamom, cloves, cinnamon sticks, whole peppercorns, and bay leaves, thinking that the memsahib and the bada sahib would not appreciate a bland bowl of soup particularly in the winters when this would be a typical dinner repast. The understanding was that there should be a little bit of warmth to blunt the edge of the season, which of course the spices such as cinnamon and cloves would deliver. Sometimes ‘Indian’ or local vegetables like round gourd and cauliflower would also be added if they were handy.

Additionally, this stew is thickened with whole wheat flour – what in India we call atta, which is the entire kernel of wheat that has been ground – rather than refined flour. To go back to the origin of its use, the khansama in the railway houses, when told to dish out a stew (I believe in my house at least this is what happened), ran out of refined flour and innovated by adding what was available, which was wheat flour. Atta is a little coarser than the refined flour and makes for a richer, earthier gravy with a nutty flavour. A roux calls for light sauteing with clear instructions to not allow browning, while atta requires a rich brown hue to remove the raw taste and enhance the nutty flavour lending a rich brown colour to the stew. Any good khansama wouldn’t consider his “Angrezi” (English) khana (food) complete without a liberal dash of Worcestershire sauce as the crowning glory. The end product would be dished out in elegant white porcelain bowls, usually sprinkled with a little bit of garam masala garnished with a combination of coriander and parsley.

Brown stew, as I know it, is a steaming hot, rich, and flavourful repast. It is redolent with a heady mix of spices, spiked with tangy Worcestershire sauce and generous portions of chicken, mutton, or pork. This dish is an ode to a successful marriage of culinary cultures.

 


Dr. Geeta Budhraja is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Aryabhatta College, Delhi University. With over 30 years of teaching experience, she has been actively involved with students and college life in the classroom and areas of art and culture, theatre, and other administrative responsibilities. She works actively in theatre production, culinary culture, and gender studies, and has contributed articles on Feminist Theory, Performance Theory, and book reviews in national and international journals. She has also been an invited speaker on Cultural Studies in international and national forums. She writes poetry and non-fiction.

She may be contacted at drgeetabudhiraja@gmail.com.

Garcinia Longings

By Rini Barman

My digestive tract goes for a toss once seasons are about to change in Assam. I am speaking of that eerie intermediary period when the winds, too, aren’t very sure which direction to follow. With rising temperatures and global warming each year, weaker tummies only go from bad to worse. One cannot predict when the ghastly phenomena of multiple burps or dumps might occur. I have tried everything—eating bland, working out, sleeping early, chucking out midnight Netflix, and even taking mild antacids. 

Mother used to say I have a cursed tummy when none of her ‘gut’ suggestions worked. And a sour stomach is a lot to deal with. Imagine the dreariness amidst the super fast-paced nature of life—the speeding cars under the terrace, the local shopkeeper screaming to set up his tiny outlet of edible greens, the small children taking their dolls to the street for they now have no place to play. No time to slow down a bit and look back at the concrete urban disasters one has cooked for oneself.

When I asked their parents about their nonchalance, they told me the grapes are all sour. I had invited them to my terrace—I thought, well let’s have some thekera (garcinia peduncalata). Most of them had homes outside Assam. They’d not really tasted it and thought it was some black-coloured leaf.

Dried garcinia pieces. Credit: author.

 

My weekends are now often occupied in drying fresh thekera and storing it in small containers. I befriended a local fruit-seller; he too knows that an ill person has a dozen medical bills and he’d rather not fleece them. His name is Hemendra Deka, Hemen for short. His wife left behind twin daughters whom he has to feed by selling fruits and veggies by evening and milk by day.

Tangy Liaisons

Local proverbs tell us one shouldn’t eat anything sour alone: ‘sakala tengati okole nakhaba’. Doing so irritates the tummy more. The idea here is that sourness stimulates enzymes and makes one crave it more—greed, after all, is a vice. Thus, sharing sour fruits and vegetables is a sign of caring for each other—a kind of intimacy even. Elderly women also believe harsh tanginess can be injurious to health, and must be balanced out with sweeter stuff (like sugar syrup and jaggery) at weddings and social events. But to totally cut it out is to miss out on the spice of tanginess altogether. The term ‘tenga hoi gol’ implies it has gone all to waste—this is used liberally from rotten food to relationships. There’s also ‘tenga lagise’ as a synonym for tiredness to mean ‘I am now bored and sick of it.’ The reference to unpleasant tastes and rotten food as having gone ‘sour’ is quite interesting. 

Tanginess Spectrum

Basking in the winter sun isn’t a distant memory to me. I still find excuses to do it while peeling lemons, oranges, tamarinds, and other stuff like mixing chillies and salt with robab tenga, our very own pomelo (Citrus Maxima). The locals also consume the tender leaves of the edible garcinia and add them into their curries. A slight addition also adds a distinct flavour. The Northeastern region of India is home to a lot of piquant species—there’s a tanginess spectrum and a rich, rich palette. One cannot pin it down to an either/or.   

Sun dried garcinia pieces turn blackish. Credit: author.

 

To me, the sourness of thekera isn’t like lemon or the abundantly available elephant apple, ou-tenga—both of which are mostly consumed raw. But thekera is usually sun-dried and for usage later on. Amongst the diverse sour plants and fruits, thekera has a kind of moderate tanginess—the reason why it balances the stomach. Available and consumed across Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries, it works wonders with reflux ailments. Powdered thekera is a medicinal potion to ease digestive problems like dysentery; it also helps menstrual aches heal. 

No Quick Fixes

During that time of the month, I crave some tangy eating, unlike my cousin sisters who don’t have lemons or anything sour to prevent too much bleeding. What I do is dip one or two slices of thekera into boiled lentils or my fish curry. For those who enjoy more tanginess, you can soak thekera overnight in water and use it as a souring agent in your dishes the next day. My mother used to add thekera in case other kinds of vegetables like tomatoes were not as sour as she expected them to be. It worked as a quick fix back when I was a child. 

But life now is very far from such quick fixes. Hemen told me new fruits in the market are mostly chemically-ripened and that there is cutthroat competition. Local sellers are desperately juggling to make ends meet. “Raising daughters is no mean feat—you too must be careful, don’t eat tangy stuff all the time, tummies can be delicate at this age”, he advises me with his ‘fatherly’ basics, as he puts some thekera into my bag. 

I think of him dearly very often, wondering what his daughters might look like and how difficult it is to make do without a parent. My summer evenings are no longer filled with rum and whiskey but with thekera-flavoured water. Perhaps life too is going to be more of the same—a choice between dried tanginess and raw acidic toxins. I guess one has to keep swimming! 

Thekara cocktails on the terrace. Credit: author.

The Thekera Cocktail

Ingredients

  • 3 slices of dried thekera (soaked overnight in water)
  • Ice cubes
  • Rock salt
  • Sugar or honey
  • 1 medium glass of chilled water

The next day, strain the water  into a separate glass. Mix 4-5 tbsp of that into a glass of water. Add honey/ sugar and salt to taste. Add the ice cubes. Your humble cocktail is ready.

Thekara cocktails on the terrace. Credit: author.

 


About

Rini Barman is an independent writer and researcher based in Assam. Her interests include art and culture, ethnicity, folklore among others. Her essays have appeared in esteemed national dailies and magazines. She tweets @barman_rini.  

The Kitchen, Courtyard, and Bazaar: Meditations of “Natural” Health and Beauty

By Mobeen Hussain

Early twentieth-century vernacular literature aimed at elite and middle-class Indian women was full of contradictions in authors’ attempts to mediate conflicting colonial modernities in the pursuit of personal care, beauty, and health. During the interwar period, middle-class consumers could choose from a barrage of foreign and local products, albeit on tight budgets and alongside concerns of domestic economy (as espoused by social reformers). In domestic literature as well as advertising, the use of bazaar-bought branded products and homemade chemical concoctions were proffered as desirable resources and products, but also revealed the potential for dangerous artifice and excess. In these same domestic manuals and women’s periodicals, a plethora of methods were identified for natural beatification and aesthetic health including exercise, diet, and domestic remedies which were perceived as “natural” by virtue of being homemade. However, these concoctions, from cold and toning creams to soap, involved purchasing chemicals and ingredients not usually found in the Indian kitchen.

Vernacular texts simultaneously elaborated on the superiority of indigenous systems and practices, including Ayurvedic (Vedic-based medical system) and Unani Tibb (of Greco-Arabic origins) recipes and prescriptions (or nukshas), reviving and adapting these older practices by including select chemicals and Western concoctions. In Hifz-i-Sihhat (Preservation of Health), an Urdu-language manual written by the Begam of Bhopal Sultan Jahan and published in 1916, the chosen format for nukshas was to print English chemical names in brackets and offer an Urdu transliteration.[i] In other manuals, too, English functioned as a corroboration for the superior nature of chemicals, construing them as scientific. In a 1944 Bengali-language Narir Rupa-Sadhana o Vyayama (The Pursuit of Beauty and Physical Exercise for Women), for instance, author Latika Basu shared technical recipes containing numerous chemicals such as hydragyri cholor corrosive, ammoni chloridi purificati, and mist arneygdalae amar.  Basu embraced the bazaar alongside chemicals purchased from dispensaries and cooked up in the kitchen and courtyard of the Indian home as connected epistemological spaces in which to attain ideal beauty and health.[ii]

Cover of Ismat magazine (New Delhi), reproduced with the permission of the Endangered Archive Programme, EAP566/1/2/6, British Library.

Ready-made and branded products also came with their own contentions. Susie Sorabji, writing for the Madras-based The Indian Ladies Magazine (1901-1938), criticised the use of “paint and powder,” by arguing that English products were incompatible with the Indian locale and environment, reminiscent of nineteenth-century evaluations of western medicine in India.[iii] Instead, she advised that women should “keep the hair, that glory of a woman, intact, and dress as simply as possible.”[iv] This advice departed from that of the Urdu-language Ismat magazine (1908-1993), in which a housekeeping/house management column called Khaanadari, comprising nukshas, domestic notes, and sections on health and comportment, first appeared in 1932. The author, Mohammad Zafar, offered advice for bodily beauty including exercise, nutritional advice, seasonal adornment, tips for soap and cosmetic use, and step-by-step guides for maintaining “rang aur roop” [colour and glow].[v] Zafar’s approach, in contrast to Sorabji’s, focused on the careful selection and use of products— adornment was a delicate thing [singaari ek nazuk cheez hai] and “cosmetic goods needed to be selected with caution.”[vi] The Khaanadari column also routinely offered advice on altering skin colour, coded as making skin colour [rang] beautiful [khoobsurat], correcting the colour that was pale [zard]— read unhealthy and sickly—or purchasing prepared “rang cream” from shops.[vii]

A decade later, by the late 1940s, Zafar’s position moved closer to Sorabji’s. In a 1948 column (now published from Karachi in the newly-formed Pakistan), he delineated a difference between khoobsurati and husn (both broadly mean beautiful). He prioritised the cultivation of khoobsurati, as general beauty that encompassed inner beauty (“one always has it”) and health, over the pursuit of husn, a beauty that garnered praise, attraction, and “affects another person”.[viii] He also claimed that adornment had become a sort of purdah (female segregation) or niqab (a garment that covered the body and face), warning that bad cosmetics could ruin your face.[ix] The purdah analogy revealed Zafar’s anxiety that cosmetics were being used as superficial masks rather than as resources in the cultivation of natural beauty: a template for ideal modern middle-class womanhood. Yet, despite this late rejection of cosmetics and overt beautification, most popular literature of the late colonial period drew on and adapted intergenerational oral cultures and substances, naturalised chemicals through “cooking” them at home, and borrowed from multiple repositories of transnationally-circulated printed methodologies to transform homemade chemical concoctions into natural, authentic, trustworthy products.

 

 

[i] Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal, Hifz-i-Sihhat (Bhopal: Sultania Press, 1916).

[ii] Latika Basu, Narir Rupa-Sadhana o Vyayama, (Calcutta: Kailaschandra Acharya, 1944)/

[iii] See Seema Alavi, Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim Medical Tradition, 1600-1900(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p.237.

[iv] Sister Susie, “Our Fashion Suggestions,” The Indian Ladies Magazine (Madras), Vol.2 No.8 March 1929, p.436.

[v] Mohammad Zafar, “Khanadaari”, Ismat (New Delhi), Vol.54 No.4 Apr 1935, pp.313-14.

[vi] Ibid., Vol. 59 No. 2, July 1937, 185-187, p.187.

[vii] Ibid., Vol. 81 No.5 Nov 1948, p.249; Ibid., Vol. 61 No.2 Aug 1938, p.181.

[viii] Ibid., Vol. 81 No.2 Aug 1948 p.105.

[ix] Ibid.