Attack on Mumbai Restaurant Is Attack on Freedom of Speech & Expression: Reminds Emergency Days

Coffee is a stimulant. In India, Coffee House and Tea Shop have been centres of intellectual activism for decades. But establishment of the day never likes the thinking class to think and stimulate discourse or debate the ills of the government and raise voice of dissent.

In Mumbai, it is not a coffee house but a restaurant that attracted the ire of the Congress Party not because the eating joint was an ‘adda’ (hub) of thinkers and intellectuals who discussed and debated the current political situation in the country. It is like any other restaurant where people go for eating vegetarian meals and snacks.

The crime of the owner of the restaurant was that he started thinking and reacting to the performance of the UPA Government at the Centre intelligently. The bill of Aditi Restaurant in Mumbai carried a line as a pun on the UPA- “AS PER UPA GOVT. EATING MONEY (2G, COAL, CWG SCAM) IS A NECESSITY & EATING FOOD IN AC RESTAURANT IS A LUXURY”

The restaurant owner was peeved to find that those who eat in an air conditioned restaurant pay more by way of taxes. Aditi or for that matter majority of restaurants in Mumbai are air conditioned because of humid weather condition.

The printed bill was enough provocation for the Youth Congress activists who attacked the eating joint on Tuesday, July 23, 2013. The Maharashtra Government instead of booking the Youth Congress activists for vandalism registered a case of defamation against the restaurant owner. Defaming whom, the UPA Government. Does the government of the day have any fame to lose?

The intolerance of the Congress reminds me of the Emergency days. There used to be a Coffee House in Connaught Place of Delhi, quite famous and popular. For, it was the host of Delhi’s thinking class, writers, poets, journalists, jurists and political activists. The Congress then took the view that the Delhi Coffee House had become a centre of discourse of a class of people who were spreading dissent and encouraging rebellion against the government and against Indira Gandhi in particular who was Prime Minister. At the behest of Sanjay Gandhi, the Coffee House was closed and during the Emergency in 1975 the structure was demolished. Delhi lost its landmark and thinking class its hub.

Many years later the Coffee Board of India opened its outlet on Baba Kharag Singh Marg on the lane that houses State Emporiums. But it never replaced the old Coffee House that carried a distinct aura and ambiance besides its special clientele.

I remember another Coffee House in Patna on New Dak Bungalow Road. In early 1970s the Coffee Board of India opened a new air conditioned Coffee House, with state of the art interiors and furniture. It served delicious Dosa, Vada, Idly, Uthapams etc at reasonable rates. Its coffee had aroma and taste that has not been lost on me and many others who were regular visitor to this joint even after decades of its closure.

In those years there were very few air conditioned restaurant in Patna and there was no tea or coffee shop there that was air conditioned. So, the Coffee House attracted the intelligentsia- writers, poets, journalists, lawyers and politicians. I too was a regular visitor to the Patna Coffee House.

I used to find some big names entering the Coffee House. Jaya Prakash Narain was one of them. JP would spend few hours there chatting and discussing the situation in the country. Poet, Phaniswar Nath Renu and poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar were also regulars to the Coffee House. So were leaders like Mahamaya Prasad Sinha, Dr Purnendu Narain Sinha, Abdul Ghafoor etc.

The Coffee House closed because the government did not want it to run. The Coffee Board of India stopped taking interest in running the joint. Its furniture was getting worn out but was not replaced, its air conditioning plant stopped working and its food lost delicacy. The aroma of ‘coffee’ was gone. And with that the Patna Coffee House was shut down for ever.

~R. K. Sinha