All Things Rice
India gave rice to the world. But because we don’t claim it, everyone ignores our vital contribution to global cuisine and gives the credit to Arabs, the Chinese and others
You will have to forgive the slightly jingoistic tone of this column. The hyper-nationalism is down to the fact I am writing it in Northern Italy where I have been enjoying one of the great local specialties: Risotto Milanese. It is delicious, of course, but while Italians go on (with some justification) about how it is a triumph of their culinary art, even the best risottos remind me of just one thing.
Khichdi.
I know a little bit about risotto so, I am happy to accept that when it comes to ingredients (there is no dal in risotto) and technique (khichdi is not made by slowly ladling stock into the rice), it is an entirely different dish.
Even so, there is no getting around the fact that once Risotto Milanese is served, with its typical yellow (or saffron) colour and its slightly soupy character, all Indians will immediately be reminded of our khichdi.
And while I yield to nobody in my admiration for Italian cooking, let’s face it: if it was not for India, there would be no risotto. In fact, there would be no rice in Europe at all.
When you read about the history of risotto, European books tell you that the Italians were influenced by the Spanish who ruled Milan for centuries and introduced rice to the region. Fair enough. But where did the Spanish get rice from?
The usual answer is ‘from the Moors’. This is a nicely ambiguous response because nobody really knows what the word ‘Moor’ means any longer. In fact, the term has no geographical validity being first used by Europeans to refer to the Berbers, a Muslim community. Later, it was expanded to include Muslim North Africans and, of course, Arabs.
So, when people talk about how “the Moors brought rice to Europe”, what they really mean is that the Spanish got it from the Muslim kings who came from the Middle East and conquered and ruled Spain. (Moor sounds better than ‘Arab’ in European textbooks, I guess).
Okay, so where did the Arabs get their rice from? Any child knows that rice requires huge quantities of water for cultivation and all of the Middle East was not exactly swimming in water (though of course, not all of it was desert either). Rice is certainly not native to that region.
The short answer is the one you and I know intuitively to be the right one: India.
Yes, India gave rice to the world. There is a view that rice was first cultivated in China: archaeologists have found evidence of rice cultivation in China dating back to 6000 BC. On the other hand, archaeologists have also discovered evidence of rice cultivation in the foothills of Himalayas dating to 10,000 BC, which beats anything found in China. And we know now that ancient Aryans (though not necessarily the people in the Indus Valley) were rice-eaters.
So, rice is ours. Perhaps it reached China from India. Or, perhaps (I am prepared to concede) the Chinese cultivated it independently. But nobody else has any claim on rice.
Even the Japanese, who are now big rice eaters, only got rice around 2000 years ago—long after it was being cultivated in China and India.
So, how did all this stuff about the Moorish tradition of rice begin? There are two popular theories. One is that the Arabs discovered rice when they conquered Sindh (around the seventh or eighth century). Another is that Persian traders took it to Iran from India around 500 AD. Whatever the truth, there is no doubt that there is no ancient Arab rice tradition. They got it from India in the medieval period and they took centuries to do anything interesting with it.
All of the evidence is pretty conclusive. For instance, rice reached Egypt in the 7th Century. It is clear where it came from because
KHICHDI MAY BE THE OLDEST RICE DISH IN THE WORLD TO STILL BE EATEN REGULARLY HUNDREDS OF YEARS AFTER IT WAS CREATED. IF IT WAS NOT FOR INDIA, THERE WOULD BE NO RICE IN EUROPE