Monday, Nov 28, 2005
Indian State Gives Up Quest To Honor Scottish Tea Pioneers
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India's northeastern state of Assam has called off a search for the descendants of two Scottish brothers to commemorate their discovery of wild tea bushes more than 180 years ago.
 Indian women pick leaves from tea bushes in Jorhat
© AFP/File"We tried our best through diplomatic and personal channels to identify family members of the Bruce brothers and invite them to the festival. But we simply could not trace anybody," Assam's tourism commissioner S.C. Panda told AFP on Monday.
Assam, the heart of India's tea industry, was planning to honour family members of Robert Bruce and his brother Charles at a three-day "Tea Tourism Festival" starting December 4.
The Bruce brothers first discovered tea bushes in Assam with the help of some local tribal chieftains in 1823. The discovery helped start India's tea industry and end China's position as the world's supplier of the beverage.
But after three weeks of searching, Assam, which is trying to promote tea estate tourism, has decided to go ahead without any Bruce descendants.
"We still have many interesting and unique events lined up for the festival," said Panda.
The carnival to be held in the tea center of Jorhat, 310 kilometers (194 miles) east of Assam's main city of Guwahati, is geared towards attracting foreign tourists.
Long before the commercial production of tea started in India in the late 1830s, the tea plant was growing wild in the jungles of Assam.
Members of the Singpho tribe ate the leaves as a vegetable with garlic, besides drinking the brew after dipping the leaves in boiled water.
The tea festival will include a demonstration by Singpho tribal elders on brewing tea in their traditional style.
"Tribal chieftains of the Singpho community will light a fire in the festival grounds and brew tea in earthen pots in the same style they did when the Bruce brothers first experienced the event," Panda said.
According to historical records, it was in 1823 that Robert Bruce, a British trader, first discovered the wild tea plants near Jorhat with the help of a local Singpho tribal chieftain.
Robert died soon after and his plan to establish a nursery was followed up his brother Charles who was then an employee of the East India Company.
Assam tea was however not initially officially recognised as a variety of tea.
According to Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, it was not until December 1834 when Charles sent samples to Calcutta (now Kolkata) that the plant was confirmed to be tea.
In the early 1830s, Charles set up the first tea plantation in eastern Assam's Sadiya town and shipped 12 chests of manufactured tea to London in 1838.
Assam accounts for about 55 percent of India's total annual tea production of about 820 million kilograms (1.80 billion pounds). India is the world's largest tea producer.
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