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West Bengal

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Revision as of 14:22, 21 May 2026 by Eloise Zomia (talk | contribs)
West Bengal
পশ্চিমবঙ্গ
⛶
Administration
Type State
Country India
Capital Kolkata
Area 88,752 km²
Documentation
Growing Regions 3
Growing Areas 11
Accessions 0



West Bengal (পশ্চিমবঙ্গ, Pashchimbanga) is a state in eastern India, bordering Bangladesh to the east, Nepal and Bhutan to the north, and the Indian states of Sikkim, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha. The state extends from the Himalayan foothills in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south, encompassing three of the wiki's documented growing regions: the Eastern Himalayas, The Dooars and the North Bengal Plains. It is the most extensively surveyed Indian state on the wiki, with all current Indian accessions originating from the 2025 WEB01 expedition across its northern districts.citation needed

Geography

West Bengal spans roughly 88,752 km² across three principal topographic zones: the Eastern Himalayan ranges of Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts in the far north, the alluvial Terai and Dooars foothills along the Bhutan frontier, and the Gangetic deltaic plain extending south to the Sundarbans. The state's documented cannabis populations are concentrated in the northern districts — Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and Cooch Behar — spanning all three of the state's growing regions.citation needed

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Cannabis in West Bengal

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History

Pre-Colonial Period

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Colonial Period

Under British colonial rule, the Bengal Presidency — which at various points included present-day West Bengal, Bangladesh, Bihar, Odisha and Assam — was the administrative, commercial and scholarly centre of the Indian cannabis economy. Calcutta, the Presidency capital, housed the Excise Department that regulated the trade, the Bengal Secretariat Press that published its foundational documents, the Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Calcutta Botanic Garden where its scientific study was conducted, and the wholesale and financial infrastructure through which the trade passed. The licensed cultivation belt, however, lay entirely north of the Ganges in what is now Bangladesh, and was severed from West Bengal by the Partition of 1947.

The first formal British taxation came in 1790, when duties on alcohol and intoxicants were levied on landlords across the Presidency.[1] Regulation XXXIV of 1793, part of the Cornwallis Code, required a licence from the district collector for the manufacture or sale of bhang, ganja, charas and other intoxicating drugs.[1] Pre-monopoly cultivation was scattered across zamindari estates, with the Jessore tract in the southern Presidency reportedly producing some 2,000–2,400 tons annually before its suppression in 1875 and the consolidation of licensed cultivation northward to the Naogaon area of Rajshahi district.[2]

By the 1850s licensed cultivation had been consolidated into the Ganja Mahal, a small geographical zone astride the Rajshahi, Bogra and Dinajpur districts of the northern Presidency, with its headquarters at Naogaon. The Mahal was worked under a three-circle rotation in which each circle was permitted to grow ganja once every three years, with manufactured product held in licensed warehouses (golas) under Excise Department supervision and duty levied at point of issue.[3] The administrative foundation of the system was Hem Chunder Kerr's Report on the Cultivation of, and Trade in, Ganja in Bengal (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1877), and the cultivators were organised from 1917 as the Naogaon Ganja Cultivators' Cooperative Society Limited.

The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (IHDC) was appointed by Resolution of 3 July 1893 following a question in the House of Commons by William Sproston Caine MP requesting an enquiry into the cultivation and trade of hemp drugs in Bengal specifically.[4] The seven-member Commission first met in Calcutta on 3 August 1893 and conducted much of its work from the Presidency capital; one of its three Indian members was Raja Soshi Sikhareswar Roy of Tahirpur, a major zamindar in the Rajshahi cultivation belt.[5] Volume IV of the seven-volume report is devoted to the evidence of Bengal and Assam witnesses, and constitutes the densest body of named Bengali testimony in any colonial-era source on cannabis. The Commission found that the moderate use of hemp drugs produced no injurious effect on the mind, rejected prohibition, and recommended that the Bengal regulatory model be extended to other provinces.

The Radcliffe Line of 1947 placed the entirety of the cultivation tract, together with the Ganja Society's Naogaon headquarters, in East Pakistan. West Bengal retained the consumption markets, the Calcutta wholesale infrastructure, the urban retail vending network, and the Bengal Cooperative Bank deposits of the Naogaon Society, but lost the licensed cultivation belt entirely.[6]

Post-Independence

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Cultivation

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Preparations and Consumption

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Colonial Bengal recognised three principal cannabis preparations, separated for excise purposes and consistently distinguished across the witness questions of the IHDC:[5]

Ganja (গাঁজা) was the flowering tops of the female plant, manufactured in the Ganja Mahal in three product types. Flat ganja (chyapta, চ্যাপ্টা) was produced by pressing cut tops flat under foot on the manufacturing platform (chatar, চাতার). Round ganja (gol ganja, গোল গাঁজা; long and short-stalked) was rolled between the hands or under the foot into cylindrical or oblong form, with long-stalked round ganja commanding the highest price. Chur ganja (চুর গাঁজা) was the resinous fragments and debris collected from the chatar floor.[7]

Bhang (ভাং) was the leaves and seeds of the plant, ground and consumed as a drink — known in Bengali as siddhi (সিদ্ধি) — or worked into the sweet confection majoon (majun, মজুন). Bhang was sold through licensed government bhang shops, a vending category that has continued in West Bengal into the present day.

Charas (চরস) was collected resin. Its manufacture and sale was prohibited in 1800 "as being of a most noxious quality" but the restriction was rescinded in 1824 on the ground that the drug was "not more prejudicial to health than ganja or other intoxicating drugs."[1] Charas was never produced in Bengal in commercial quantity but was imported from the northwest (principally Yarkand and Punjab) and sold under the same excise framework.


Religious and Cultural Use

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Cannabis use in Bengal is documented across multiple religious traditions in colonial-era sources, with the densest evidence in Volume IV of the IHDC (1894). The Commission's seventy standardised witness questions included extensive enquiry into religious and ritual use, and the Bengal evidence covered Shaiva and Shakta worship in the Shiva–Kali–Durga complex; charanamrita and prasad offerings at temple sites; and use among Vaishnava bairagi and Baul mendicants.[5]


Trade and Commerce

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Calcutta was the financial and wholesale back-end of the colonial Bengal cannabis economy. Wholesale dealers (mahajans) converged on the Ganja Mahal during the January–April marketing season to buy product directly at the gola, taking dispatches under transport permit by river, road and (from the 1870s) by the Eastern Bengal Railway to distribution centres across the Presidency, including Dhaka, Pabna, Khulna, Jessore, Chittagong, Comilla, Mymensingh, Barishal and Sylhet, and overland to the United Provinces, Bihar and the Central Provinces.[2] Smuggling into Lower Burma — where cultivation, sale and possession had been prohibited under the Burma Excise Act of 1873 — was a continuing concern of the colonial excise administration. Smaller export movements to indentured-labour destinations (Trinidad, Guyana, Fiji, Natal) and to British and American pharmaceutical houses for medical Cannabis indica preparations are documented in the India Office Records.[8]

The Naogaon Ganja Society maintained pre-Partition assets in Calcutta, including a deposit at the Bengal Cooperative Bank that has never been recovered.[9]


Scholarship

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Calcutta was the centre of colonial-era scientific and administrative scholarship on Indian cannabis. The Calcutta Botanic Garden under William Roxburgh conducted experimental trials of European fibre hemp on the Bengal plain from the 1790s through the 1810s, documented in Roxburgh's Further Extracts of Correspondence Relating to Indian Hemp; Between W. Roxburgh and R. C. Plowden (Calcutta, 1810). The trials were unsuccessful for fibre purposes but established the Garden's role as a centre for cannabis botany.

The pharmacological introduction of Cannabis indica to Western medicine was conducted in Calcutta by the Irish physician William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, Professor of Chemistry at the Medical College of Bengal, whose 1839 paper "On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah" (Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Bengal, Calcutta) and 1843 monograph established the medical use of cannabis tinctures in British and American pharmacy through the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta published botanical, ethnographic and pharmacological work on cannabis throughout the nineteenth century in its Journal and Proceedings. George Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Products of India (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1885–93, 6 vols), of which the cannabis entry occupies vol. II, pp. 103–149, drew extensively on Asiatic Society material and on Hem Chunder Kerr's 1877 report, and was itself laid before Parliament in 1893 as a foundational document for the IHDC enquiry.

The Bengal Secretariat Press in Calcutta published Kerr's 1877 report, all of the Bengal District Gazetteers (including L.S.S. O'Malley's Rajshahi volume of 1916 with its dedicated chapter on the Ganja Mahal), and successive editions of the Memorandum on Excise Administration in India so far as it is concerned with Hemp Drugs. The IHDC first met in Calcutta on 3 August 1893 and its Secretary, H.J. McIntosh, was Under-Secretary to the Government of Bengal in the Financial and Municipal Departments.[5]


Conservation Status

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Post-Independence

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Modern Cultivation

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Districts

No districts documented yet.

Growing Regions

RegionHas conservation status
Eastern Himalayas
North Bengal Plains
The DooarsVulnerable

Growing Areas

Growing AreaHas growing regionHas conservation status
Chamurchi-Laxmi DuarThe Dooars
ChapramariThe Dooars
ChilapataThe DooarsVulnerable
GorumaraThe Dooars
JaldaparaThe DooarsVulnerable
JalpaiguriNorth Bengal Plains
Khairbari-DeogaonThe DooarsVulnerable
Koch BiharNorth Bengal PlainsMedium
MaynaguriNorth Bengal Plains
MekliganjThe DooarsVulnerable
Upper Jaldhaka ValleyEastern HimalayasUnknown

Accessions

Accession IDNamePriorityCollectedArea
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250012Lataguri General Population 2024High7 December 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250013Lataguri 'Neori Nadi' General Population 2024High7 December 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250014Lataguri 'Kajaldighi' General Population 2024High7 December 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250011Lataguri Feral Selection 2025Medium7 December 2025Gorumara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250015Baulbari General Population 2025High7 December 2025Maynaguri
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250010Siliguri General Population 2024High7 November 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250005Jalpaiguri General Population #8 2024High7 October 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250009Baikar Gourgram General Population 2024High7 October 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250007Panishala 'Mandir' Selection 2024High7 September 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250006Paschim Harmati General Population 2024High7 September 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250008Panishala General Population 2024High7 September 2025
ZOM-IND-UTT-0820250001Siliguri General Population 202422 August 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250004Jalpaiguri 'Pat Kata' Feral Selection 2025Medium7 August 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250002Jalpesh 'Jalpesh Mandir' General Population 2024High7 August 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250003Jalpesh General Population 2024High7 August 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250001Jalpesh 'Madhabdanga' General Population 2024High7 August 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250021Baneswar General Population 2024High31 July 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250023Dinhata General Population 2024High31 July 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250022Baneswar 'Sarkar's' Selection 2024High31 July 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250024Dinhata Feral Selection 2025Medium31 July 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250020Cooch Behar 'Khagrabari' General Population 202526 July 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250019Gopalpur 'Bhutani' General Population 2024High24 July 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250017Gopalpur General Population #2 2024High24 July 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250018Gopalpur General Population #1 2024High24 July 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250048Simlabari General Population #1 2024High22 July 2025Chilapata
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250047Simlabari General Population #2 2024High22 July 2025Chilapata
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250046Simlabari General Population #3 2024High22 July 2025Chilapata
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250049Patlakhawa General Population 2024High22 July 2025Chilapata
ZOM-IND-WEB-0720250016Fulkardabri Sujan's Selection #2 2024High17 July 2025Mekliganj
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250013Haldibari Feral Selection 2025Medium14 July 2025Mekliganj
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250075Suripara Feral Selection 2025Medium28 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250071Jaldapara 'Kauchandpara' General Population #2 2024High28 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250073Salkumar 'Mondalpara' Feral Selection 2025Medium28 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250074Bhandani General Population 2024High28 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250072Jaldapara 'Hollong' General Population 2024High28 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250068Makrapara General Population 2025High27 June 2025Chamurchi-Laxmi Duar
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250064Jaldapara 'Kauchandpara' General Population 2024High26 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250066Deogaon General Population #2 2024High26 June 2025Khairbari-Deogaon
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250060Khairbari 'Umacharanpur' General Population #1 2024High26 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250067Deogaon General Population #3 2024High26 June 2025Khairbari-Deogaon
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250062Jaldapara 'Badaitari' Selection #1 2025High26 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250061Khairbari 'Umacharanpur' General Population #2 2024High26 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250063Jaldapara 'Badaitari' Selection #2 2025High26 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250070Khairbari 'Umacharanpur' General Population #3 2024High26 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250069Jaldapara 'Purba Madarihat' #2 Selection 2025High26 June 2025Jaldapara
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250065Deogaon General Population #1 2024High26 June 2025Khairbari-Deogaon
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250058Hamiltonganj 'Candy Orange' Feral Selection 2025Medium25 June 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250054Hamiltonganj Feral Selection #1 2025Medium25 June 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250055Hamiltonganj Feral Selection #2 2025Medium25 June 2025
ZOM-IND-WEB-0620250056Hamiltonganj Feral Selection #3 2025Medium25 June 2025
... further results

Conservation Status

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Recent News

ArticleDateDistrictCategory
News:2026-01-15/Enforcement/alipurduar-district-police-destroy-illegally-cultivated-cannabis-plants-in-purba-narathali-kumargram15 January 2026AlipurduarEnforcement
News:2025-09-24/Enforcement/cooch-behar-district-police-destroy-marijuana-cultivation-across-multiple-locations-in-coordinated-operation-224 September 2025Cooch BeharEnforcement

See Also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–1894, Simla: Government Central Printing Office, 1894, vol. III, Appendices, Miscellaneous, p. 16.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Rahman, A.M., Nemoto, K., Matsushima, K., Uddin, S.B. & Sarwar, A.K.M.G., "A History of Cannabis (Ganja) as an Economic Crop in Bangladesh from the Late 18th Century to 1989," Tropical Agriculture and Development 66(1), 2022, pp. 21–32.
  3. ↑ Rahman, A.M.D., Matsushima, K., Uddin, S.B., Sarwar, A.K.M.G. & Nemoto, K., "Traditional Cultivation and the Production System of Cannabis by the Ganja Society in Naogaon, Bangladesh," Tropical Agriculture and Development 67(4), 2023, pp. 99–109, DOI 10.11248/jsta.67.99.
  4. ↑ Hansard, House of Commons, 2 March 1893, vol. 9, c. 822.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, Report, 1894, vol. I, ch. I.
  6. ↑ "British-era Naogaon cannabis society still basks in huge wealth," The Business Standard, Dhaka, 2022.
  7. ↑ O'Malley, L.S.S., Bengal District Gazetteers: Rajshahi, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1916, ch. XII, pp. 134–144.
  8. ↑ Mills, James H., Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition 1800–1928, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, ch. 3 and ch. 6.
  9. ↑ "British-era Naogaon cannabis society still basks in huge wealth," The Business Standard, Dhaka, 2022.
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