New Delhi, Aug. 15 -- Indian independence and its aftermath had an unexpected effect on the subcontinent's tea industry. It created three industries: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

When the East India Company set out to create a parallel tea economy in the colonies, today's Bangladesh was very much part of this exercise, being an extension of the eastern parts of India. Tea planting experiments in the 1840s included Chittagong, just south of Tripura. When the country of Bangladesh was created in 1971, and sought its tea origin story, some of the estates assumed significance, like the Malnicherra Tea Estate in Sylhet, planted in the 1850s.

Before that, Partition in 1947 cleaved the tea industry. And the newly created Pakistan now had pr...