The irony most people tend to not realise is that were it not for the discovery of the Americas, Indian cuisine would be as bland as British food.
The chilli-peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, all these are New World imports, unknown to India less than 350-odd years ago.
Not really, pepper was being used.
Not quite. Lot of spices are actually native to India.
Upper caste foods were even more bland as they did not eat foods such as garlic and ginger... and quite a bit of spices were considered unclean.