How tea habit developed in India

From The Triumph of Tea in India as Documented in the Priya Paul Collection
via Chapaty Mystery :
"But whereas I initially supposed tea-drinking to be as Indian, and perhaps as old, as the Vedas, I have come to know that it is, in the longue durée of Indian history, a very recent development;....
British interest in creating an indigenous consumer base for their export crop, reflected in the Indian Tea Cess Bill of 1903, did not immediately spark a great demand for tea, and was countered by the arguments of Mohandas Gandhi and other nationalists that the consumption of this "imperialist" and capitalist beverage (which required centralized large-scale cultivation and processing) was both physically and politically enervating for Indians (on the condition of tea estate workers, see, e.g., Piya Chatterjee's 2001 study, A Time for Tea).
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The most dramatic expansion of tea consumption—and the development of relatively standardized chai (produced by boiling tea leaves in a mixture of milk, water, and sugar, with optional spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, clove, ginger, or black pepper)—only occurred after 1947 and the ensuing transfer of majority ownership in tea estates (which, significantly, were exempted from the sweeping land-reform legislation of the Nehru-Congress era) and in tea wholesaling companies from British to Indian hands.
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Indeed, the Tea Board of India (reorganized in 1953, to replace the aptly-named "Indian Tea Market Expansion Board" of the colonial era), declared the "imperial brew" to be emphatically "swadeshi" ("of the country"). An extraordinary poster, contained in the 2005 Kolkata exhibition and Bhadra’s accompanying catalogue essay (and reproduced as Figure 9), visually cements this ideological assertion, with its patterned juxtaposition of Gandhian and Congress Party spinning-wheel symbols (carkhā) with tea cups, and its central image of a modest, sari-clad spinner enjoying a refreshing break. Major companies now began aggressively marketing tea as an energy-enhancing drink conducive to both individual and national health and civility."