This beloved century-old drink cools people. It’s also suffused with South Asian history

NEW DELHI - Eid-al-Fitr was just two days away. The narrow lanes in Batla House, a Muslim-dominated neighbourhood in Delhi, were chock-a-block with people jostling as they bargained for deals on the evening of March 19.

Hawkers lined the lanes with their carts, stacked with clothes, jewellery, household goods and toys. Some also offered a delectable range of food and beverages.

Among them was Mr Mohammad Shadab, on whose cart gleamed a timeless ruby-red summer cooler and classic Ramadan favourite – RoohAfza.

This rose-flavoured drink concentrate was created in 1907 by Mr Hakim Hafiz Abdul Majeed, a Delhi-based practitioner of Unani medicine, as a way to beat the heat and dehydration during North India’s cruel summers.

Made from a recipe that has changed little in nearly 120 years, this sugary pick-me-up, whose name in Urdu means something that uplifts one’s soul, still commands the love of millions of Indians.

While its colour bears some resemblance to the popular bandung drink in South-east Asia, RoohAfza’s herb-infused and rose flavour gives it a distinctive taste.

It is enjoyed in myriad ways, including as a frugal chilled drink served with a dash of lemon, or as a key ingredient in the opulent “Mohabbat ka Sharbat” (Sherbet of Love), a popular summer drink in north India made with milk, RoohAfza and watermelon chunks.

“Summers, it is RoohAfza, and winters, it is chicken soup,” said Mr Shadab about his stall’s two key mainstays, barely audible above the din of two-wheelers honking their way through the thronging crowd.

Generations of Indians have grown up with the taste and memory of this drink produced by Hamdard Foods India.

Ms Salma Husain first encountered the drink in Delhi in the 1960s. She had just relocated from Mumbai to the Indian capital and was suffering repeated nosebleeds, which she attributed to the city’s high temperatures.

A family friend introduced her to Mr Hakeem Abdul Hameed, the son of Hamdard’s founder, who sent her two bottles of RoohAfza and suggested that she mix it with water and drink a glass every morning.

While she didn’t initially like its syrupy sweetness, the 85-year-old Gurugram-based food historian now swears by it, and continues to drink a glass every day in the summer. She has never had a nosebleed since, she said. “You will always find a bottle of RoohAfza in my house,” Ms Husain told me. “Just half a glass of RoohAfza and all your tiredness is gone and you are fresh like a flower.”

Love for the drink has been passed down for generations to 28-year-old Alishah Ali, a cultural heritage specialist based in Delhi. She associates it with her grandmother’s house, where it would be lavished on shaved ice lollies with lemon juice, or consumed diluted, with pomelo pulp. “It has always been omnipresent in our kitchens, especially in summers,” she said.

The drink continues to be part of her life today, especially during Ramadan when it is mixed with milk and basil seeds as a refresher during iftar meals.

This beloved summer thirst quencher also mirrors the tumultuous story of South Asia and its people. Like British India, which eventually ended up as three independent nation states – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – the parent firm behind the drink, Hamdard, was also split into three entities, with one in each of those countries.

Following the Partition of India in 1947, Mr Hakeem Abdul Hameed chose to remain in India while his younger brother, Mr Hakim Mohammed Said, moved to Pakistan, where he later set up a separate Hamdard entity that also produced and retailed RoohAfza.

More than two decades later, when East Pakistan became the independent country of Bangladesh in 1971, Hamdard Pakistan found itself split into two, and the firm ended up with a third entity – Hamdard Bangladesh.

To this day, each of these companies continues to produce Roohafza, along with a range of medicines and other edible products. The drink remains equally popular in both countries – in Bangladesh, it is part of the wedding trousseau, and in Pakistan, it is considered by many as its de facto “national drink”.

But while the political divisions created three variations of RoohAfza, the essential ruby-red, rose-flavoured characteristics of the drink remain immutable, not unlike South Asians, who remain intertwined with stubborn commonalities, including language, food and family ties, which politics have not managed to efface.

Even the drink’s name evokes a gentler and more syncretic world. The name RoohAfza was borrowed from a character in the Urdu poem Masnavi Gulzar-e-Naseem, written by a Hindu – Kashmiri Pandit poet Daya Shankar Naseem – and not a Muslim.

Unfortunately, today there is a vociferous section of Hindus who castigate Urdu as a “Muslim” language, even though history and lived reality – as in the case of RoohAfza or popular Urdu Bollywood songs – show the opposite.

More than a drink, this cultural icon, like Indian Muslims, has also found itself caught in the crosshairs of right-wing Hindus.

In 2025, controversial Hindu yoga guru and businessman Baba Ramdev said revenues earned from RoohAfza were being used to fund madrasahs and mosques. He urged customers instead to buy his firm’s rival similar rose-flavoured drink, and said it would serve Hindu charitable causes.

It was an attempt to incite an economic boycott against a Muslim-owned brand and the High Court of Delhi, following a lawsuit by Hamdard, described his remarks as “shocking to the conscience”. Better sense prevailed and Mr Ramdev, through his counsel, pledged that he would not repeat such remarks.

Other false claims have aimed to tarnish the brand, including one that claimed Hamdard does not employ non-Muslims. Despite these attacks, RoohAfza remains popular.

Soon after the Ramdev controversy, Hamdard put out newspaper ads in India saying it had been “overwhelmed” by support from Indians. The drink, the ads said, “not only touches the taste buds, but also the soul”. And that is what makes it the “Drink of India”, it added.

This Ramadan, it also launched an ad campaign that builds further on its syncretic appeal as a drink that has been consumed since 1907 not only by Muslims, but also Hindus and others.

Like any other similar drink concentrate, RoohAfza may have its flaws – not least its unforgivably high sugar content (nearly 88 per cent of it is just sugar syrup) and artificial additives. But despite these shortcomings, it remains a drink that represents an idea of India worth cherishing.

On that note, there is perhaps nothing better than a glass of RoohAfza, the way it’s enjoyed best – with ice-cold water and a generous dose of lime – sipped languorously with a prayer for a harmonious India.