Opium: Popularity and Consequences in Colonial Assam, India (original) (raw)
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ISSUE OF OPIUM IN THE WRITINGS OF NINETEENTH CENTURY ASSAM
JOURNAL OF CRITICAL REVIEWS, 2020
The transitional period of the nineteenth century Assam covers a long period of political disturbances leading to the establishment of the British rule. This resulted in the overall changes in the North Eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. Though there was no major social movement like the other parts of the sub-continent, the contemporary literature reflects the social life of the nineteenth century and identifies the odds and evils prevailing in the Assamese society American Baptist Missionaries, too, focussed on this evil from time to time in their Assamese mouthpiece, Orunodoi (1846-82). Anandaram Dhekiyal Phukan and Maniram Dewan also reported to A. J. Moffat Mills (1853) that the use of opium had converted the Assamese people into effeminate and degraded people.. The satirical writings of Hemchandra Barua (1835-1896) namely, Kaniyar Kirtan (1861) and Bahire Rang Sang Bhitare Kuwabhaturi (1876) show the gradually deteriorating condition of the Assamese society. In the preface, Barua wrote that the play Kaniyar Kirtan was composed to expose the mischievous effect of opium eating among the Assamese. In the Royal Opium Commission (1893) though Hemchandra could not appear in front of the Commission in Calcutta, he managed to send an English translated copy of the play. The Inspector of Schools of Bengal Government has also referred to the Kaniyar Kirtan as a good number of expression and idioms in the play which was peculiar to the people of Assam and Assamese language while arguing to implement the Bengali language in the Assamese courts and elementary schools in 1873. The proposed paper is an attempt to analyse the reformist agenda of the nineteenth century as reflected in Assamese literature in understanding the contemporary social issues specially the issue of opium and the diverged attitude towards it.
The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2024
Opium was one of the highly valued-commodities traded in the northeastern frontier of British India. This article argues that the introduction of opium in the region was in line with the British policy of introducing high-value commodities trade in the colonies. This policy helped extract raw materials and expand exchanges in new territories. Second, this policy of introducing cash crops was subtle. Opium was introduced as a cash crop decades before tea was 'discovered' in the region. The acreage remained low as compared to tea plantations. Opium's value in terms of its revenue-generating capacity was the highest in comparison with tea and salt. Lastly, opium was disposed of through the state-run, monopolistic trade networks. Opium cultivation was discontinued in the British territories in Assam in 1860. All demands for poppy were subsequently met by importing opium from the rest of South Asia. The state-run and state-promoted tea and opium trades sustained the empire's control over resources and lubricated the state machinery. Monopoly over the opium trade was crucial to control labour/resources and finance the Empire. The colonial regime built the 'narco-state' in the northeastern frontier to expand and sustain its trading interests. The exploration of the colonial policies and measures in this regard also interrogates the nature of political economy in the region in the period under study.
2013
The article attempts at an understanding of nineteenth century Assamese reformist discourse as upheld by the Assamese creative literature. Acknowledgement of the evils of opium eating also echoed in several literary outpourings of the nineteenth century, which sought to combine entertainment and reform. Facilitating an understanding of the nineteenth century reformist discourse are two Assamese satirical texts by Hemchandra Barua and Dutiram Hazarika. They enable an evaluation of the perception of the Assamese mind in the nineteenth century towards issues of social reform. Both texts reveal a strong sense of antagonism towards those traditions which nurture the perpetration of social practices as opium consumption which, as it was widely upheld by the Christian missionaries, the medical opinion and the social reformers had resulted in both physical and mental degeneration of the people. The idea that opium addiction was synonymous with backwardness and degeneration made the intellig...
Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 2017
This article analyses the ways that social reformers and colonial officials envisioned and attempted to manage opium dens in colonial South Asia at the end of the nineteenth century. It argues that the opium den in India became a location for moral anxieties about gender, sexuality, consumption and imperial rule, and examining colonial depictions of the den reveals the conflicts, tensions and imperatives that determined colonial opium policy. Moreover, the changes to the colonial regulation of opium dens in particular recommended by the Royal Commission on Opium of 1893 help illuminate the priorities of colonial opium policy, and by extension imperial rule. In 1893 J.J.S. Driberg, the excise commissioner of the province of Assam in British-ruled India, was questioned about the existence of opium dens in his province by the government-appointed Royal Commission on Opium. Driberg denied that any such dens existed, stating: "What I understand by an opium den is a place where all kinds of abominations are allowed, and there are certainly none such in Assam." 1 When it was pointed out to him that in fact shops where opium was consumed on the premises did exist in Assam, Driberg replied, "I do not call them opium dens: I call them places for the smoking of opium." 2 Driberg's response suggests that in late nineteenth century colonial India, an opium den was not simply "a place for the smoking of opium." To colonial officials and aspiring social reformists alike, opium was a fraught commodity. It was a valuable revenue source, yet weighted with controversy. The opium den was the particular focal point of this controversy, commonly depicted as a dangerous space where anxieties about gender, sexuality, empire, race and consumption converged. These anxieties are very evident in late nineteenth-century literary depictions of British opium dens as places of "Oriental" danger embedded in London's East End. 3 British novels such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Mystery of Edwin Drood titillated their readers with descriptions of the opium den as a place of mysterious Eastern vice. 4 But the sinister mystique of the London opium den came in large part from its foreignness. The opium den seemed to contain the threat of the colony infiltrating the imperial capital, and the contagion of the empire staining the mother country. Yet in the excerpt that begins this article the British colonial administrator Driberg was being questioned about an Indian opium den, catering to Indian consumers, and the very existence of a government-controlled opium industry and government-regulated opium sales in India would seem to indicate that to the colonial authorities opium consumption in India was not problematic in the way that consumption in Britain was. Why then did the imaginative construct of the opium den retain its power? Did this construct look different in India than in Britain? And what does Driberg's evasion on the subject of opium dens in Assam tell us about the complexities of British colonial opium policy in India at the end of the nineteenth century? Scholars have analyzed opium dens in late nineteenth-century London for insight into the connection between the regulation of drug consumption, the construction of notions of race, and the management of the boundaries between metropole and colony. But in the substantial scholarly literature that investigates the contribution of the opium industry to the British Empire in Asia, the Indian opium den has not received similar attention. 5 This article contends that examining the ways that social reformers and colonial officials attempted to manage opium dens in British-ruled India illuminates the conflicting
The National medical journal of India, 2012
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, Assam; Correspondence to c/o Hanspal Diesel Injection, Chatribari Road, Guwahati 781001, Assam, India; kawal@iitg.ernet.in, khanspal@gmail.com INTRODUCTION The state-sponsored medical treatment scheme for opium addicts was approved for implementation in Assam by the Congress-led coalition government as part of the Opium Prohibition Campaign in 1939. Launched on 15 April 1939, the Total Prohibition Scheme was confined to the districts of Lakhimpur (south of the Brahmaputra river) and Sibsagar, in the subdivisions of Dibrugarh and Sibsagar (pre-Independence Assam), which were regarded as the areas with the heaviest consumption of opium in Assam. The introduction of the scheme was followed by the cancellation of 10 050 opium passes and the closure of 61 opium shops. Besides, it marked the commencement of a unique experiment in the mass treatment of addicts. The move towards total eradication of opiu...
The Empire of Divine Luxuries: Indian Opium and British Power
This dissertation argues that the British monopoly over opium during the nineteenth century contributed to its rise as an imperial power. The drug was vital to the empire’s ‘triangular trade’ and the fiscal stability of its colonial governments. Additionally, observations of the drug’s consumption habits contributed to a growing sense of European otherness and reinforced the socio-cultural construction of a caste-based, hierarchical empire. Finally, this dissertation argues against revisionist works that have sidelined the economic considerations of opium as a root cause of nineteenth-century Anglo-Chinese conflicts and British imperial policy towards Asia more generally. In this venture, it argues that further research on this topic from a transnational and commodities-focused perspective is warranted.
Medieval History Journal, 2012
Narcotics, 1 in this article, has been used as synonymous with drugs and drug-like products including mild stimulants and intoxicants like opium, tobacco, alcohol and alcoholic preparations. All three commodities, of great commercial significance, were also major items that were chewed and consumed to generate euphoria, stimulation and intoxication. Seen as symbols of power and authority, they were considered to be facilitators of social bonding and social interaction. Consumed by a wide variety of people, it was around narcotics that hierarchies of class and gender were built. Although used as a therapy in some instances, narcotics came to be linked to health hazard, disease and death. With such a diverse trajectory, narcotics become an integral and an interesting medium to discover and study the lives of many in pre-colonial India.
BMC Public Health, 2013
Background: Household survey data of Changlang district, Arunachal Pradesh, were used in the present study to assess the prevalence of opium use among different tribes, and to examine the association between sociodemographic factors and opium use. Methods: A sample of 3421 individuals (1795 men and 1626 women) aged 15 years and older was analyzed using a multivariate logistic regression model to determine factors associated with opium use. Sociodemographic information such as age, education, occupation, religion, ethnicity and marital status were included in the analysis. Results: The prevalence of opium use was significantly higher (10.6%) among men than among women (2.1%). It varied according to age, educational level, occupation, marital status and religion of the respondents. In both sexes, opium use was significantly higher among Singpho and Khamti tribes compared with other tribes. Multivariate logistic regression indicated that opium use was significantly associated with age, occupation, ethnicity, religion and marital status of the respondents of both sexes. Multivariate rate ratios (MRR) for opium use were significantly higher (4-6 times) among older age groups (≥35 years) and male respondents. In males, the MRR was also significantly higher in respondents of Buddhist and Indigenous religion, while in females, the MRR was significantly higher in Buddhists. Most of the female opium users had taken opium for more than 5 years and were introduced to it by their husbands after marriage. Use of other substances among opium users comprised mainly tobacco (76%) and alcohol (44%). Conclusions: The study reveals the sociodemographic factors, such as age, sex, ethnicity, religion and occupation, which are associated with opium use. Such information is useful for institution of intervention measures to reduce opium use.