Independence Day 2026: The hidden role of food in India's fight against British rule

Long before food became a symbol of India’s rich culture and a major part of its global identity and economy, it played a far more secretive and emotional role in the country’s struggle for freedom.

In an era when colonial surveillance was widespread and openly exchanging information could put lives at risk, revolutionaries had to find ingenious ways to stay connected. Food, something that was part of everyday life, quietly became part of this underground network. A chapati could travel from village to village, a sweet could carry a hidden meaning, and an ordinary food item could become a symbol of defiance.

As India fought its battle for freedom against colonialism, the everyday act of sharing food became an act of courage and resistance.


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The role of chapati

India’s first major freedom struggle against the British began with the Uprising of 1857, when Indian soldiers rose against the East India Company. But even before the rebellion erupted, something ‘mysterious’ was already moving through the country, travelling hundreds of kilometres.

It was not a weapon. It was not a letter. It was a simple chapati, an everyday flatbread eaten in different parts of the Indian subcontinent.

These ordinary chapatis were passed from village to village with no message written on them. No explanation accompanied them. Yet their mysterious journey was spreading rapidly enough to alarm British officials.

In March 1857, Dr Gilbert Hadow, an army surgeon employed by the East India Company, wrote to his sister in Britain about the strange development, according to the Press Information Bureau (PIB). “There is a most mysterious affair going on throughout the whole of India at present. No one seems to know the meaning of it. It is not known where it originated, by whom or for what purpose, whether it is supposed to be connected to any religious ceremony or whether it has to do with some secret society. The Indian papers are full of surmises as to what it means. It is called the Chapati movement.”

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The mysterious circulation of chapatis had first come to British attention in early February 1857. One of the first officials to encounter it was Mark Thornhill, a British civil servant who served as a magistrate in Mathura during the 1857 uprising, near Agra. One morning, Thornhill arrived at his office to find four “dirty little cakes of the coarsest flour, about the size and thickness of a biscuit” lying on his desk, according to his account in The Personal Adventures and Experiences of a Magistrate During the Rise, Progress, and Suppression of the Indian Mutiny.

There was nothing remarkable about the chapatis themselves. What was strange was how they had arrived.

Thornhill was told that an Indian police officer had received them from a village chowkidar, or watchman. The watchman had received them from a man who had emerged from the jungle carrying the chapatis.

The instructions were simple: make four more and take them to the watchman in the next village. That watchman was then expected to repeat the process.

Thornhill examined the chapatis. There was no message written on them. They looked like the ordinary bread prepared in homes across India. But the mystery only deepened. British officials soon discovered that hundreds of chapatis were moving through Mathura and other parts of India. The strange chain stretched from the Narmada River in the south to the border with Nepal in the north, according to Thornhill’s account in The Personal Adventures and Experiences of a Magistrate During the Rise, Progress, and Suppression of the Indian Mutiny.

What alarmed the British most was the speed. For British officials already worried about growing unrest among Indian soldiers, the unexplained movement was deeply unsettling.

The movement of the chapatis happened at a time when food had already become a sensitive issue among Indian soldiers, who were increasingly suspicious of British attempts to interfere with their religious practices. The East India Company's armies were preparing to introduce new ammunition for the Enfield rifle. The cartridges had to be torn open with the teeth before being loaded into the rifle. They were greased with tallow, which in the UK was made from beef and pork fat.

For Hindu and Muslim sepoys, the cartridges raised fears that they were being forced to come into contact with substances that violated their religious beliefs.

The tension eventually contributed to the outbreak of rebellion at Meerut in April 1857. As the revolt spread, the mysterious chapatis took on an even greater significance in the eyes of British officials.

Many came to believe that the circulation of the breads had been a warning of the rebellion to come, perhaps a secret signal sent across India by conspirators preparing for an uprising, according to The Times of India.

While the first major uprising against British rule erupted in 1857, India still had a long and difficult road ahead before gaining Independence. And the use of food as a tool of resistance did not end with the mysterious chapati movement.

Mithai shops, a meeting place

Decades after the mysterious chapati movement, revolutionaries found another way to turn food into a message of resistance. This time, the message was not hidden. It was right there in the colours.

In 1940, Madan Gopal Gupta of Varanasi's sweet shop Ram Bhandar is said to have created the Tiranga Barfi for intelligence meetings of revolutionaries and the exchange of secret information. Gupta was not alone. Several other revolutionaries reportedly helped him prepare the sweet, which was designed to resemble the colours of the Indian tricolour at a time when the British had banned the display of the flag.

The idea was simple but powerful: turn a familiar Indian sweet into a symbol of defiance.

The Tiranga Barfi was also distributed free in an effort to raise awareness and spread the message against British rule, according to the Ministry of Culture.

When British authorities reportedly discovered the sweet and saw it for themselves, what they found was more than an ordinary piece of barfi. The colours of the banned tricolour had been recreated layer by layer in a sweet that could be quietly shared, sold and eaten.

And there was no ready-made food colouring to make it happen.

The saffron hue came from saffron, the green layer from pistachios, while khoya and cashew nuts were combined to create the white portion. Every ingredient had a role, turning a simple Indian sweet into a quiet display of defiance.

What looked like mithai was, in effect, a tricolour that could be carried in plain sight — a symbol of freedom hidden in something as ordinary as a piece of barfi.

Sweets became secret codes

Food anthropologist and chef Sabyasachi Gorai was quoted by The Indian Express as saying that sweets were used much like Morse code, with different varieties and arrangements conveying different messages.

A box of laddoos could signal that bombs were on their way, while Bengal rasgullas could indicate the arrival of a large consignment of explosives. Barfis, meanwhile, were associated with cartridges and ammunition.

Sometimes, the message was hidden not just in the sweet itself, but in the way it looked. Motichoor laddoos, for instance, could have coloured boondi dots arranged in patterns that, when joined together, formed a map.

The rasgulla that triggered a British red alert

The fear of coded messages became so intense that even an innocent reference to sweets could set off alarm bells.

In 1930, a telegram carrying the words “Bengali Sweets Dispatched” reportedly caught the attention of British authorities. Suspecting that the phrase was a code for explosives being sent to revolutionaries, officials reportedly issued a red alert.

But when the shipment finally arrived, the supposed threat turned out to be exactly what the message had said — Bengali sweets.

Inside the boxes were rasgullas from Kolkata, not bombs. The episode showed how food could be used to confuse colonial authorities, who were already on high alert for signs of revolutionary activity, reported TOI.

But sweets were useful to revolutionaries for another reason too. Their shops and food joints provided the perfect cover for secret meetings.

In busy mithai shops, where customers constantly came and went, revolutionaries could meet, exchange information and leave without immediately attracting suspicion. During festivals and religious occasions, the crowds offered even greater cover.

And these shops provided something else that revolutionaries constantly needed — food that could survive long journeys.

High-calorie sweets such as pinnis, made with ingredients including ghee, whole-wheat flour, jaggery, almonds and raisins, could be stored for longer periods while providing much-needed energy to people constantly on the move, as per a report by The Indian Express.

History was not always written in letters or speeches. Sometimes, it travelled quietly from one hand to another—hidden in paper, tucked into flour, or carried beneath layers of milk and nuts.