Can we see through the sales pitch?

Colonialism leaves behind many scars, but not all are obvious. Some sit in stone, statues, railways, courtrooms. Others seep quietly into daily life, becoming habits so deep that we forget they were ever alien. In India, two such inheritances from the British, language and food, have travelled remarkably different roads. One became a permanent marker of class; the other so thoroughly naturalized that its foreignness was forgotten. And today, in an ironic twist, the latter is being resold to us as a new symbol of status. The common thread binding these journeys is not culture, not policy, but something more fluid: marketing.

The Allure of English

When the British arrived, they knew that conquest of territory was only half the battle; the real prize was conquest of the mind. English was their sharpest tool. Thomas Macaulay’s infamous Minute on Indian Education (1835) made the blueprint clear: create a class of Indians who were “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”

The plan worked. For an ambitious Indian, mastering English was not merely about literacy, it was a passport to opportunity. It opened doors to government jobs, legal professions, commerce, and higher education. Speaking English became shorthand for modernity, sophistication, and success.

This legacy survived 1947. Even today, English proficiency carries with it the aura of privilege. A young graduate may hail from a rural background, but if she speaks English fluently, she is instantly elevated in the social imagination. The language has been marketed so effectively, first by the British, later by India’s own institutions and corporate sectors, that it remains aspirational, a class divider as much as a connector.

English is not just a tool; it is a brand. And like all good brands, it has weathered political storms and nationalist pushbacks to stay aspirational.

The Wheat Revolution

Food, on the other hand, tells a subtler story. Unlike English, bread or wheat was never explicitly sold to Indians as colonial symbols of modernity. Yes, the well-to-do imitated the British table, serving bread at breakfast or tea with jam. But mass India still ate what it always had: rice in the east and south, millets and pulses in the central and western belts, barley and bajra in the north.

Then came the Green Revolution of the 1960s. Facing crippling food shortages and famine fears, India turned to new agricultural policies and high-yield crop varieties. Wheat and rice became the poster children of this national effort. They were supported by irrigation subsidies, fertilizer inputs, and, crucially, the Public Distribution System (PDS).

The marketing was brilliant: wheat was never pitched as a colonial grain but as a patriotic one, the fuel of India’s self-sufficiency. It was branded as modern, scientific, productive, and reliable. Slowly, traditional millets faded from fields and plates. By the 1970s, what had once been nearly 40% of cultivated grain was reduced to a marginal crop. In cities, entire generations grew up believing that wheat chapatis were the default “Indian” staple, forgetting that bajra rotis or ragi mudde had been their grandparents’ daily bread.

Here lies marketing’s most powerful feat: it not only sold wheat, it rewrote memory. What was once imported and new became naturalized as tradition. So much so that today, when people are told that millets are India’s “heritage grains,” they react with surprise.

The Millet Revival

Now comes the ironic twist. In the last decade, millets have staged a comeback, not from grassroots nostalgia but from glossy campaigns. Branded as “nutri-cereals,” they are celebrated for being gluten-free, high in fiber, rich in micronutrients, and climate-smart crops that require little water. The United Nations declared 2023 the International Year of Millets. At India’s G20 summit dinners, millet-based delicacies were served with pride. Urban supermarkets display them in sleek packaging, priced high, promoted as gourmet or superfoods.

But here’s the catch: millets are not being sold to us as our everyday inheritance; they are being resold as elite commodities. The grain that once fed the poor farmer is now available in luxury health cafes and fitness blogs. To eat millet porridge today is to appear trendy, mindful, globally aware, almost the opposite of its old identity as “coarse grain.”

Marketing has thus pulled off another sleight of hand. Where it once persuaded us to abandon millets for wheat, it now persuades us to abandon wheat for millets, but only after transforming them into status symbols. The same cultural memory that erased millets is now being rewritten to celebrate them, not for their roots, but for their coolness.

The Double Irony

If English and wheat illustrate anything, it is that markets are not bound by history, morality, or identity. They are bound only by their ability to persuade.

Language: The British sold English as modern and aspirational, and India kept the brand alive. The market continues to associate it with class mobility.

Food: The Green Revolution sold wheat as patriotic, burying the memory of millets. Today, the health industry sells millets back to us as cosmopolitan superfoods.

Both stories reveal the same truth: what we remember as heritage and what we forget as habit often depends less on culture and more on marketing.

Relevance

This is not just about nostalgia for lost grains. It is about how power operates through consumption. When a society forgets its own food history, it also forgets the ecological wisdom embedded in it. Millets are drought-resistant, nutrient-rich, and suited to Indian soils. Their marginalization came not from inefficiency, but from the narrative that wheat was superior. That narrative was sold, not proven.

Similarly, English may be a practical asset in a globalized world. But when it becomes a gatekeeping tool of class, it reflects not just utility but branding , the successful association of a language with prestige.

In both cases, marketing turned choices into hierarchies. It made us believe that speaking English was better than speaking Kannada, that eating wheat was better than eating ragi, that returning to millets today is somehow exotic rather than everyday.

The British may have left, but the marketplace continues their work in subtler ways. It tells us what is modern, what is elite, what is desirable, and sometimes even what is “traditional.” We think we are exercising choice; more often, we are consuming a narrative.

The paradox of India’s colonial inheritances, English as a badge of class, wheat as a naturalized staple, and millets as rebranded luxuries, shows that marketing does more than sell. It rewrites memory, reshapes identity, and redraws the boundaries of status.

The question is not whether we will keep buying. The question is: can we see through the sales pitch?