The East India Company is back

[Saifullah Sani]

Fifty-year-old businessman Sanjiv Mehta bought the defunct company’s registration in 2005. News of the EIC’s revival made international headlines five years later when he opened its London store, incidentally on the same day the company was shelved 135 years earlier. He told the Financial Times then that, “People are rejoicing because an Indian has bought the EIC — it is a symbol of redemption.”

The EIC emporium is located on Conduit Street, close to the famous toy store Hamleys and a short walk from Oxford Circus. You enter its luxurious crimson and shale interior to encounter wooden caskets and chests spilling over with gourmet delights — the EIC has about 350 luxury food products. Their Poppy cordial, in particular, stands out as a reminder of the vast opium trade that the EIC engaged in to pay for Chinese tea.

Postcolonial payback: The East India Company is back – The Express Tribune