Echoes of empire can be seen everywhere from TV’s Indian Summers to Dishoom, London’s hottest new restaurant chain. But is this rose-tinted take on Britain’s colonial past erasing a bloody history?
On the restaurant wall of Dishoom in King’s Cross, London, is a list of forbidden activities. “No violence. No sticking of bills. No making mischief. No gambling. No combing hair. No dacoity.” What’s that last one again? The 1903 Glossary of Colloquial Anglo Indian Words and Phrases explains dacoity as the anglicisation of a term used in Hindi, Kannada and Urdu that means robbery by armed bandits.
But it’s another prohibition that intrigues me most of all. “No foreign clothes.” What does “foreign” mean in a London restaurant that simulates the food and decor of Bombay cafes in the early years of the 20th century? Are saris unacceptable? Should I have checked my pith helmet? Are dashikis out or in? Alex, the waiter, explains that the prohibition is an allusion to Mahatma Gandhi’s call for a boycott of foreign clothes as a tactic to raise political consciousness to end British rule. “By foreign he meant British – the western clothes that came to India during the Raj,” says Alex.
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