About Book
"The Rajah of Darjeeling Organic Tea" is about Makaibari - the first tea garden in the Himalayan Highlands. This book captures the magic of Makaibari and provides a rare glimpse of one of Darjeeling 's greatest characters - the Thunderbolt Rajah. He is a champion of the organic tea movement, a social activist for tea labourers and small organic farmers, an anthropologist who works tirelessly to preserve the cultural heritage of the Himalayan region and an environmentalist who fights to conserve its rich biodiversity.
Rajah Banerjee is a living legend in Darjeeling . As an environmental investigator, he has studied the huge and magnificent model, Makaibari, for years. He is a follower of Rudolf Steiner - the Austrian philosopher who founded the biodynamic agriculture movement, the predecessor to organic farming. Based on Steiner's biodynamic principles, Rajah converted Makaibari to an organic tea estate in 1988, abjuring the accepted practice of maximising yields through artificial fertilisers and pesticides. Rajah moves on foot and horseback, interacting and learning from everyone who crosses his path - the lone traveller, the tea estate residents, social activists, visiting scholars and agronomists, to name a few.
"The Rajah of Darjeeling Organic Tea" chronicles the evolution of Makaibari, a homestead which, by merely addressing and redressing its problems on the ground and from the ground, has become an ideal, a panchavati, where the home and the forest are merged in identity. It is an outstanding archetype of human beings in nature, producing peace, not just tea leaves of extraordinary quality. Makaibari is a vedic village of which ayurvedic tea is a mere by-product, and not its singular identity.
Included with this book is the award-winning hour-long documentary "The Lord of Darjeeling" (both in English and French) made by Xavier de Lauzanne, the renowned documentary filmmaker from France, which captures the true spirit of Makaibari, and is moving audiences at various festivals globally.