Himalayan pink salt was never a source of Pakistani pride. Then it became ‘made in India’
- Pink salt has become a matter of sovereignty in Pakistan, after the public discovered that India had been re-exporting it. Pakistan must come up with a new strategy for processing, marketing and reclaiming the salt
Himalayan pink salt has caught the imagination of health nuts the world over, but where it comes from has now become a political issue. The salt is estimated to have formed hundreds of millions of years ago, when ancient bodies of water evaporated; it is mostly mined from the Khewra Salt Mine in the foothills of the Salt Range in Jhelum, in the Pakistani province of Punjab.
Pakistan never considered pink salt a prized product, much less a matter of national prestige and sovereignty, until this year – after a story on social media that India has been re-exporting the salt worldwide and labelling it “made in India”. Pakistani Twitter was furious: the salt cannot have been “made” in India when it was bought from Pakistan.
Pakistani politicians took notice. Senator Nauman Wazir Khattak suggested filing a patent on pink salt to make sure it is sold with Pakistan’s name, not India’s, on it. Shibli Faraz, leader of the Senate and a member of the Standing Committee on Commerce and Textile, called pink salt a “unique product”; he repeatedly raised the issue in parliament and pressed for legislation for Pakistan to trademark pink salt.
In the first place, exports to India account for hardly 2 per cent of Pakistan’s total exports. This may be an ideal opportunity to come up with a new export strategy: sell pink salt not in raw form but as a finished product, and find new buyers directly.
Even though the Khewra Salt Mine is the world’s second-largest, Pakistan is not among the world’s top 10 salt exporters; instead, neighbouring India and China are seventh and ninth, respectively.
