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The potato (fancy name: solanum tuberosum) and the tomato (solanum lycopersicum) go back together a long way. In fact, I don't think I will be able to have fries with ketchup again without thinking of old friends, and missing them all terribly. For that is what the two are.
Look at the similarity for classification purposes: the two fall within the same kingdom, division, class, order, family and genus. They must have once had a common ancestor - the legendary and exotic potamato. And being from the same family, they share the same first name too.
Then there's the shared history and culture. Both were originally native to South and Central America, living happy indigeneous lifestyles. Then towards the end of the 15th century, the Spanish arrived. Clearly more impressed with tomatoes and potatoes than with the local population, they were soon exporting the plants back to the motherland as well as to other colonies around the world.
There is a suggestion that their spread in Asia was via the Philippines, a Spanish colony from the late 16th century onwards. Maybe they came to Desh via Spain's European neighbour Portugal. After all, the Portuguese had a permanent settlement in India by early 16th century, and they were also quick to follow the Spanish into South America (in breach of the inter caetera ). Some say it was the British. Maybe there were multiple introductions, by different people at different times and places. We do not know for certain.
The tomato and potato had probably reached Desh by the middle or late 16th century - when Desh was ruled by Akbar the Great. They may have subsequently changed our cuisine and our diet, but noone seems to have noticed their arrival. We have records of Portuguese missionaries, Persian artists and judges, Bilayati traders and merchants, but the humble tomato and potato seems to have entered Desh unrecorded.
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The word tamatar comes from tomato. The Online Etymology Dictionary notes:
TOMATO: 1753, earlier tomate (1604), from Sp. tomate (1554) from Nahuatl tomatl "a tomato," lit. "the swelling fruit," from tomana "to swell." Spelling probably influenced by potato (1565). A member of the nightshade family, which all contain poisonous alkaloids.
Again the parallel history of the two plants is seen, with the idea that our spelling for tomato came from that of the potato. So how did we get to potato?
POTATO: 1565, from Sp. patata, from Carib (Haiti) batata "sweet potato." Sweet potatoes were first to be introduced to Europe; in cultivation in Spain by mid-16c.; in Virginia by 1648. Early 16c. Port. traders carried the crop to all their shipping ports and the sweet potato was quickly adopted from Africa to India and Java. The name later (1597) was extended to the common white potato, from Peru, which was at first (mistakenly) called Virginia potato, or, because at first it was of minor importance compared to the sweet potato, bastard potato.
Poisons and bastard potatos! Suitably impressed, we arrive at the modern words potato and tomato. The question I want to proceed to is the transformation of a potato into an aaloo. Why are the potatoes of Desh called Aaloo? I consulted the wonderful Hobson-Jobson:
ALOO (p. 16) , s. Skt. -- H. ÄlÅ«. This word is now used in Hindustani and other dialects for the 'potato.' The original Skt. is said to mean the esculent root Arum campanulatum.
So aaloo comes from sanskrit then. A quick confirmation at the Monier-Williams Sanskrit dictionary :
Ola to Aaloo? Maybe. But what's Arum Campanulatum anyhow?
An illegitmate name is what, according to the international code of botanical nomenclature. How strange and mysterious. But this is a matter for another day, and I ignore this mystery of illegitimacy and continue ploughing.
A paper on the plant names of Nepal talks about the edible bulb of the Arum lily, or Arum campanulatum. This is apparently eaten as a paste in times of hardship. So we seem to have an edible flower from Desh, which would wrap things up nicely, except isn't a bulb not a root! Sigh.
Hindunet's Saraswati Sindhu Civlization (?!) page has a dictionary which seems to say it is a kind of yam:
2063.Arum campanulatum: ce_n-ai amorphophallus campanulatus (Ta.); ce_na yam, arum campanulatum (Ma.); ke_ne tahiti arrowroot, an itchy root (Ka.); ke_n a kind of yam, arum campanulatum [amorphophallus campanutalus = arum campanulatum](DEDR 2022). Amorphophallus campanulatus: arsaghna (Skt.); jungli suran (M.); ol (B.); zaminkand (H.); karnaikilangu (Ta.); kanda (Te.); chena (Ma.); tuber: stomachic, tonic, restorative, carminative, in piles and dysentery, when fresh acts as an acrid stimulant and expectorant and much used in acute rheumatism (GIMP, p.16).
However, there is not much other information to be found, the reason seeming to be that arum was a 19th century misclassification and whatever it referred to is now going under a different name. So we are trying to work out what aaloo used to be, and all we know is it was arum so we must return to the mystery I was trying to avoid, and find out what arum campanulatum is and what has became of it.
arum campanulatum turns up on a plant database page about a somewhat dirty sounding group of plants - the "amorphophallus". We hit the jackpot right away:
Amorphophallus paeoniifolius (Dennst.) Nicolson var. campanulatus (Decne.) Sivad.
SYNONYM(S) : Amorphophallus campanulatus Blume, Amorphophallus campanulatus Decne., Amorphophallus campanulatus Roxb., Amorphophallus rex Prain, Arum campanulatum Roxb., nom. illeg.
ENGLISH : Elephant-yam, Leopard palm, Stanley's washtub, Telinga-potato, White-spotted giant arum.
NEPALESE : 
Ole (as A. campanulatus).
And here, at last, is the answer we have been looking for all along. The original aaloo of Desh was in fact the elephant yam. Native to the sub-continent, the elephant yam is still known as Ole in Nepal. When the potato first arrived in Desh, its appearance reminded locals of the elephant yam they were familiar with, and they started calling the potato aaloo. Cue to the present, where the potato has become so popular with us that we have long forgotten the original aaloo, its very name and identity lost to the parvenu from the Americas.
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Aaloo: A Hindutva Perspective?
What horror. Foreign vegetables have arrived and taken the names and identitity of our native vegetables! Further, the potatoes are reproducing so heavily that they have taken over as the most populous vegetable, while elephant yams have become a minority in their own country. And did we mention the native vegetables had the name aaloo first! Historical injustices must be corrected, the potato must give up its claim on the name aaloo if it wants to stay in Desh!
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Fortunately, in real life the hindu loony brigade are still unaware of the potato's controversial history. The same seems to be the case for their muslim counterparts:
Ubedullah Khan Azmi, a member of Parliament, and secretary of the Muslim Personal Law Conference, said: "It was the believers in the Qur'an who taught you the graces of life, taught you how to eat and drink. All you had before us were tomatoes and potatoes. What did you have? We brought jasmine, we brought frangipani. We gave the Taj Mahal, we gave the Red Fort. India was made India by us."
Arrival of Islam in subcontinent? Early 8th century. Arrival of tomatoes and potatoes? Late 16th century. Tsk tsk, these sophisticated rhetoricians intoxicated by the exuberance of their own verbosity! He should have instead said "what did they have before us? Zero!" It would have pleased him equally and he would have also been technically correct. And we could then have saluted the Desi ancients who thought up this remarkable metaphysical concept, which also describes so well Mr Azmi's knowledge of history. Zero.
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