4th century BC brinjal recipe from Ettuthogai, an ancient Tamil text: Smear green brinjal with gingelly oil. Roast it on charcoal and then peel it. Mash it when cold. Heat some more gingelly oil. Add mustard seeds, curry leaves, crushed pepper corns, ginger powder and chopped fresh ginger. Finally, add the mashed brinjal and cook briefly till well-blended. (Courtesy: Jacob Aruni)
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There is an enchanting Tamil folk tale about brinjal. One day a king, delighted with his brinjal fry, praised it lavishly. “It is the king of all vegetables,” his minister agreed loyally. “That is why god has given it a crown on top of its head.” The king then had it cooked every day for each meal, till he grew sick of it. “I can’t eat it any more,” he thundered. The minister didn’t miss a step. “Yes sir, it is the worst vegetable! That is why god has driven a nail into its head,” he put in promptly.
It is not just folk tales that document our love for brinjal. Across the country, brinjal is an intrinsic part of our traditions. For instance, the history of the popular Sode Matha temple, in Karnataka’s Udupi district, is inseparable from the vegetable. Poisoned, Lord Hayavadana asked for a naivedyam prepared from a special type of brinjal called gulla. That variety is now widely known as ‘mattu gulla’, the former being the name of the village where it was first cultivated. For Bengalis who relish their begun bhaja, brinjal is also a must for gota sheddho (a boiled dish of vegetables) that’s eaten a day after Saraswati Puja. And Ayurveda recommends it for its anti-rheumatic and anti-tussive properties. Brinjal is even older than Sanskrit, which had to borrow the word ‘vartaka’ and ‘vrntaka’ from the Munda language.
And now this vegetable, with its illustrious history, faces a period of upheaval as the government prepares to release a genetically modified (GM) variety into the market. And in the tussle between pro-GM and anti-GM lobbies, new details about brinjal are coming to light through an ongoing series of “brinjal festivals” in different cities, and new research on its origins and properties.
Urban consumers, their acquaintance with this vegetable largely restricted to the high-yielding purple varieties, are discovering for the first time the immense range of brinjals available in India—over 2,000 varieties, from the large yellow ‘kotti tale badane’ (literally, cat’s head brinjal) from Karnataka with a texture “soft as butter” to the finger-thin ‘salte begun’ from Bengal, and a host of others—striped and prickly, minute and bulbous. Some varieties are uniquely suited for local dishes, like ‘lamudhadha badane’ used for vangi bhath in the south. Then there is the whitish egg-shaped variety that explains the name (eggplant) Americans gave it when they first cultivated it in the 17th century.
India was familiar with the brinjal for very many centuries before that. The brinjal finds mention in many ancient Indian texts, like Ettuthogai in Tamil, that chronicles the lifestyle of people living two millenia back. Jacob Aruni, a Chennai-based chef, says, “In the text, brinjal comes across as a vegetable for the mediocre, not fit enough for kings who liked to feast on yam, drumstick and banana flowers. Nonetheless, there are detailed accounts of the vegetable being cooked with dal and also fish.”
By raising awareness about the vegetable’s diversity, proponents of sustainable agriculture hope to increase pressure on the government to stop it from releasing genetically modified brinjal—commonly referred to as Bt brinjal—for public consumption. They emphasise the fact that brinjal originated in India. Some countries that have been identified as centres of origin for certain species have moratoriums on genetic modification of those crops. For example, Peru, where potato originated, and Mexico, original home of corn, have a ban on genetic testing of these two. This comes from the fear that the alien gene, mostly sourced from other species, could escape (in some instances it indeed has) from the modified varieties, and contaminate the crop’s entire natural genetic diversity.
“If that happens here with brinjal, all our conservation work would be laid waste,” says Krishna Prasad of the Bangalore-based Sahaja Samrudha, a grouping of organic farmers from Karnataka. The organisation has a seed bank of 52 species found in Karnataka. “Brinjal cross-pollinates openly. There is every chance that all its natural varieties could be polluted.”
With efforts to protect it and celebrate its many varieties, the humble brinjal has become a hot potato for many. To the outrage of brinjal enthusiasts, a government expert committee on GM recently refuted brinjal’s indigenous status, and said it originated in Africa. “Certainly, that is a way of bypassing provisions of the Cartagena Protocol, which demands an extra-cautious approach for testing GM varieties in regions where the crop originated,” says Kavitha Kuruganthi of the Coalition for a GM-Free India.
I.S. Bisht, a principal scientist at the Delhi-based National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, asserts that Solanum melongena L (the botanical name for brinjal) originated in the wild in India and adjoining areas—a view seconded by noted food historian K.T. Achaya, who also states that brinjal is an indigenous vegetable that originated from a wild ancestor. The bureau has acquired and conserved as many as 2,500 varieties of brinjal, 95 per cent of them from India.
So why aren’t more brinjal varieties cultivated widely? Anshuman Das, secretary of Development Research Communication & Services Centre in Calcutta, blames low awareness among urban consumers of the many varieties, which results in poor demand for all except the common ones. “We have to break that cycle to revive these varieties,” he adds. Hopefully, with this newfound attention, a time will soon come when urban consumers will be knowledgeable enough to ask for brinjals by their name. Much like the way we do with mangoes now.
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