Bengal confines ganja growing to a single supervised tract

From 1854 there was one place in Bengal where cannabis could legally be grown for drugs. Every plant in it was licensed, every harvest weighed, and every ounce taxed before it left. Modern regulated markets have reinvented most of it.

Before

For half a century Bengal had taxed ganja loosely. The right to sell was auctioned to the highest bidder, who bought from growers with little interference. Buyers had their passes endorsed on the way out, and nobody weighed anything.

The tract

Rules issued at the end of 1853 replaced this. Cultivation for drugs was confined to about 6,000 acres near Naogaon, in Rajshahi district, an existing centre of production with the right climate. It became known as the Ganja Mahal, and was put under a special deputy collector, Muthoornath Banerjee.

• A grower applied in writing and needed a licence before planting.
• Officers patrolled for unlicensed plots, and for licensed plots left unplanted.
• Three days’ notice was required before cutting.
• The crop was weighed, registered and stamped, then moved to a government warehouse.
• Duty was paid before a wholesaler could take it, to sell on to licensed retailers.

The law distinguished three products. Bhang, the leaves, was barely restricted. Ganja, the flowers, was taxed by potency, with the stronger “round” kind paying more than “flat”. Charas, the resin, was severely restricted.

The purpose

Officials wanted revenue and less consumption at once, and believed price could deliver both. Duty was raised step by step. By the Excise Department’s own figures consumption of ganja fell by half while the revenue from it doubled.

They watched the limit closely. In 1883 the board of revenue refused a further rise in duty for fear that it would push the trade into smuggling.

Its influence

Bengal remained an exception for decades. The government of India urged other provinces to copy it after 1872, and most declined, pointing out that hemp grew wild. The Central Provinces followed in 1881, Bombay in 1901, and Trinidad borrowed the bonded-warehouse system in 1915.

The index lists the Ganja Mahal for context; it applied to one province of India.^[1]