Cannabis in Bengali culture
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Cannabis in Bengali culture covers the social and secular life of the hemp plant among Bengali speakers in present-day West Bengal and Bangladesh: the names and sayings attached to it, the company in which it was smoked and drunk, its place in festival hospitality, the licensed shops that sold it, the songs and customs of the cultivators of the Ganja Mahal, and its treatment in print and politics. Worship is treated in Cannabis in Bengali Religion and food in Cannabis in Bengali Cuisine.
Bengalis knew two drugs from the plant. Bhang, the leaf, was pounded into a drink called siddhi and handed round on festival days; ganja, the flowering top, was smoked in the clay pipe called the chillum. When the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission took evidence in Bengal in 1893, its witnesses drew a social line between them. Drinking siddhi at Bijoya, the last day of the autumn festival of the goddess Durga, carried no stigma, while ganjakhor, ganja smoker, was an insult among the educated.[1][2]: 166 Ganja was the smoke of labourers, boatmen, palanquin bearers and ascetics, and of a minority of richer men who took it in private. The historian Utathya Chattopadhyaya calls the world of names, proverbs and company that grew up around it "the ganjakhor's ecumene".[3]: 45, 55
Names
Bengali had many names for the plant and its drugs. When Hem Chunder Kerr collected them for the government of Bengal in 1877, he recorded vijaya, "the all-conquering", ananda, joy, chapala, "the causer of unsteadiness", and madini, "she who intoxicates"; the commonest colloquial name in his Bengali list was harshini, "she who delights". Siddhi, which Kerr rendered "the success-giver", named both the plant and the drink.[3]: 44 In southern Bengal ganja was turitananda, the thing that quickly delights, a word that could be personified as a teacher, "sri turitanondo", or joined to the speaker's own mind. Chattopadhyaya argues that names of this kind fell out of use after the 1890s, once the official triad of ganja, bhang and charas took hold in dealings between the state and its subjects.[3]: 56–57
Some names described a habit. Around Mymensingh, ganja smoked after drink was chabuk, "the whip". Pran Kumar Das, a deputy magistrate who had worked in the Bengal excise department since 1878, learned the word from a friend who closed his evenings, after spirits and madak, an opium preparation, "with a pull at ganja, which he said was the whip". The Calcutta medical teacher Devendranath Roy wrote that well-to-do men in Mymensingh smoked ganja to deepen the effect of drink and called it chabuk, and that palanquin bearers used it the same way after a day's carrying.[3]: 45
The cultivators of Naogaon kept their own vocabulary. The growing plant was ganjar gach, never ganja, which named the product; bhang gach was the weedy plant; the female and male plants were madi and morda. Rahman and his colleagues, who interviewed former cultivators between 2017 and 2020, regard the plant name and the pair madi and morda as peculiar to Naogaon.[4]: 2–3, 6
The ganjakhor
Ganjakhor means one who consumes ganja; Bengali uses one verb for eating, drinking and smoking.[3]: 26 K. G. Gupta, the Commissioner of Excise in Bengal, told the Commission that the educated classes regarded ganja smoking "with aversion and the word 'ganjakhor' is an epithet of scorn and disgust, but perhaps less so than 'matal' or drunkard". The smoker, he wrote, was believed to be "light-headed, untruthful, and irritable".[5]: 46
Other Bengal witnesses reported the same word from their own districts. In Bogra, the police superintendent W. C. Fasson wrote, "That man is a ganjakhor" was a saying "marking him as possessed of all sorts of waywardness and peevishness".[6] At Diamond Harbour, the pleader Rakhal Chunder Tewary found that the word had "come to mean, inconsiderate and rough", and that ganja was "no longer a fashionable intoxicant".[7] Aghore Nath Banerji, vice-chairman of the Serampore municipality, wrote that many people avoided the drug for fear of being called ganja-khor or charas-khor, and that those who used it did so "very privately".[8] In Bogra the physician Pyari Sankar Dass Gupta called the ganja-khor a bad son, a cruel husband and a troublesome neighbour.[9]
Not every witness shared the view. J. C. Price, the collector of Rajshahi, the district that grew the province's ganja, wrote that he had never had a man pointed out to him with "Look, there is a ganja-khor. See what the drug has done for him", although he had seen the effects of alcohol.[10] Among the poor the scale could run the other way. A Murshidabad landholder, Hari Krishna Mazumdar, reported that a man who could smoke ganja in excess earned the title bhangi, and boasted when others addressed him by it.[11]: 387
The smoker's habit of exaggeration passed into speech. Speech that was "varnished", Dass Gupta wrote, was called a ganja-khori galpa, a ganja smoker's tale.[9] Mukerjee wrote the phrase ganja khuri katha, a tall story.[2]: 166 Modern dictionaries keep the sense. The Samsad Bengali-English dictionary glosses gãjakhuri as "absurd, incredible, cock-and-bull", gives "a cock-and-bull story" among the colloquial senses of ganja itself, and defines gẽjel as a ganja smoker or, figuratively, one "given to telling lies or cock-and-bull stories".[12]
The figure could also serve as an image of fellowship. In a conversation of 25 October 1885 recorded by Mahendranath Gupta, the Calcutta saint Ramakrishna told a doctor that a man who loves God seeks the company of holy men as one hemp smoker seeks another: the smoker hides from those who do not smoke, but rejoices on meeting a fellow smoker.[13]
Sayings and stories
Witnesses offered the Commission proverbs, couplets and songs as evidence of how Bengalis understood the drug. Chattopadhyaya reads them as a body of knowledge in which the effect of ganja depended on the smoker's intention and circumstances, set against the colonial doctors' search for a fixed cause of addiction.[3]: 46–50 Several sayings set bhang against ganja. G. Price, the civil surgeon of Burdwan, gave "Siddhi khaley budhi barey, ganja khaley lukhi charey", which he translated as "The man who drinks bhang thrives, he who takes ganja goes to the bad", deserted by the goddess of fortune, and "Ganja kheley baaper naam bhuley jaaye", one who smokes ganja forgets his father's name.[3]: 52 A Calcutta landholder, Prosad Dass Dutt, gave the second half of the first in the form "Ganja khele Lakhi chare", "goddess of wealth quits him who smokes ganja".[14]
Other sayings sorted smokers by purpose. Nobo Gopal Bose Rai Chowdhoory, a Burdwan pleader who had served as a munsiff at Natore, gave the rhyme "The rogi, jogi, bhogi, and dagi use ganja": the sick man to be rid of disease, the ascetic for devotion, the glutton to digest and the convicted man for courage in desperate acts. He also gave an English rendering of a ganja smokers' song: "Ganja is the king of all intoxicating drugs ... It removes all sorrows and pains of deaths of relatives, makes an old man young, and weakens the pain of whipping."[15][3]: 49–50 A saying of the poor that he reported held that ganja made one man talkative as a parrot, another solemn as an owl and a third sleepy as Kumbhakarna, the giant of the Ramayana. A "metrical proverb" from Rajshahi, cited by the Calcutta surgeon A. Crombie, ran: "The ganja smoker cherishes his wife, the opium smoker's wife is a widow, and the drunkard is a Brahmini bull".[3]: 50–51 Mukerjee appended to his own evidence seven songs of the ganja smokers, which call on Shiva, Kali and Trinath alongside a Muslim saint.[2]: 174–175
Folk tales made the same point at length. In a legend from Dinajpur, published in 1873 by the civil servant G. H. Damant as "The two Ganja-eaters", a man fishing by a river says that his name is "eater of six maunds of ganja" and sets off to fight a sugarcane cutter said to take nine maunds without feeling it. On the way he eats all his ganja and drinks a pond dry. The two men end up fighting on a fishwife's arm, are carried off by a kite, and fall before a raja's daughter, who takes them for bits of straw and has them swept away.[16][3]: 25–26 Chattopadhyaya reads the tale both as a parable of the futility of quarrels among the intoxicated and as a warning that ganja was the preference of men who spoke in superlatives.[3]: 26
Smoking in company
Ganja was smoked in company. The Commission found that hemp drug shops in British India were "rarely used as smoking resorts", being small or shared with other trades, and that "ganja smokers who smoke in company generally congregate in places of public resort or in their own houses".[17] Its Bengal witnesses described these gatherings. In Rampur Boalia the medical missionary D. Morison found smoking done "always in company, unless the man has means. It is too expensive to smoke alone", since a pipe held more than one man could take; he was surprised to find boys of 10 to 15 clubbing together to buy ganja.[18]
The meeting place had a name. Mazumdar wrote that men assembled "for the purpose of smoking ganja" in a place "called 'ganjar adda'. Here they talk on various subjects", and, in his view, laid plans for mischief. Twenty or twenty-five years earlier, he added, there had been regular addas for ganja smoking in the country towns and large villages, but they were no longer seen, many smokers having turned to opium or liquor.[11]: 386–387 Girindra Mohan Chuckerbutty, a munsiff at Comilla, thought a moderate habit easy to break, unlike that of men "who resort regularly to the ganja dens or addas".[19]
Class decided where a man smoked. Dutt wrote that the respectable kept ganja away from their families, though young men of that class who disliked wine had once smoked it "secretly amongst their party"; by 1893 such smoking was "considered as degradation, and wine has taken its place".[14] The same witness defended the drug for those who carried a palki at night, navigated dangerous waters or worked a field in knee-deep water in the rain, men he had seen resume work "invigorated" after a chillum or two.[14] Fasson made the same case for fishermen and boatmen exposed to the weather.[6]
In 1876 the Calcutta satirist Kalidas Mukhopadhyay put a ganjakhor into Kolir Nobo Rong, a polemic on the moral decline of the age of Kali. His smoker sits on a raised platform in a Calcutta street calling passers-by to share his pipe, "Here, prepare it, pour it, have it, and sing", and tells a friend from his village that one chillum of ganja is his umbrella and his mosquito net. When the narrator mocks him, the smoker turns on him in anger. Mukhopadhyay closed with the stock charges: ganja drove away the goddess of wealth and made a man mount a donkey thinking it a horse. Chattopadhyaya contrasts the satirist's moralising with the smoker's invitation to share, which he reads as an offer of community to a newcomer in the city.[3]: 55–57
Festival hospitality
The custom that the Government of India named in its instructions to the Commission was a Bengali one: an infusion of bhang offered "to every guest and member of the family on the last day of the Durga Puja".[20]: 159 On Bijoya, after the image of the goddess had gone to the river, households exchanged visits and embraces and passed round the cup with sweets. The Commission found its witnesses "almost equally divided" on whether this was a social courtesy or a religious rite.[21] Mazumdar called it a social custom, "not regarded as essential", that a day or two a year could not harm.[11]: 387 Dutt wrote that "the better class of people, as a general rule with a higher education, sip it only; but the Anglicized natives do not conform to this rule".[14] Bose Rai Chowdhoory pointed out that it was taken "only for one day in a year".[15]
Holi, which Bengal keeps as Dol Jatra at the full moon of Phalgun, was in the 1890s "observed more generally in Behar than in other parts of the Lower Provinces".[20]: 160 A Press Trust of India report of 2022 described people in West Bengal drinking bhang on Dol Jatra.[22]
Shops and politics
Under British rule ganja, bhang and charas reached Bengali buyers through licensed shops. In the 1890s the Collector fixed the number of shops in each district, the right to sell was auctioned for a year, and the number of ganja shops in Bengal had been cut over 20 years from 4,398 to 2,672. Customers might consume the drugs on the premises, and sale was not restricted to any class of buyer.[23]
The shops became targets of nationalist politics. In the Non-Co-operation movement from 1920, Congress workers picketed and looted excise shops selling liquor and ganja; Chattopadhyaya writes that these campaigns "cast intoxicants as villains" alongside foreign cloth, and that the movement reached Naogaon in August 1920. Before Gandhi's campaigns, he argues, militant Hindu self-assertion among young Swadeshi men had already tied ganja to Brahmanical ideas of untouchability, purity and pollution.[3]: 206–207 Picketing of excise shops in Bengal and Bihar continued into the civil disobedience campaigns; in May 1930 Congress activists in Mymensingh town took ganja from an employee of the retailer Nikunja Behari Lahiri.[3]: 218 In the Bengal Legislative Council, members attacked the trade from the other side: one accused the government of letting a single Calcutta family hold licences for eleven excise shops in the mill districts of Barrackpore, and in 1931 a Calcutta member, Haridhan Dutt, moved to prohibit charas, of which Calcutta's smokers had bought 52 maunds that year. The government raised the minimum age for buying charas from 16 to 20 and limited possession to one tola.[3]: 217–218
After Partition the case against ganja was put most fully by a Bengali, Harendra Coomar Mookerjee, vice-president of the Constituent Assembly. In six articles of 1948–49 in the Calcutta Review, the Modern Review and the New Review, drawn from his tract Why Prohibition? for Congress workers in Calcutta, he argued for prohibiting ganja, bhang and charas alike, estimated that one per cent of the population was addicted, and claimed that moderate ganja smoking had "practically disappeared among the well-to-do since the days of the Non-Co-operation Movement". He conceded that bhang was needed for "the Durga Puja of Bengal" and proposed that the state supply it before religious festivals at cost. Mookerjee later served as governor of West Bengal.[3]: 222–225
In West Bengal the state's retail licences for ganja, opium and bhang lapsed after the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 came into force; the Calcutta High Court recorded that their holders had traded until 11 December 1989.[24] The Act's definition of ganja excludes leaves not accompanied by the flowering tops, which leaves bhang to state excise law,[25] and West Bengal's excise rules of 2003 provide a separate retail licence for it.[26]
Naogaon
The only tract in the Bengal Presidency where ganja could lawfully be grown lay around Naogaon, now in Bangladesh,[4]: 1 and the crop shaped the life of its villages. Kalimohan Chakrabarti, a clerk from Nadia who settled in Naogaon in the 1870s, wrote a serial account of its life and customs from 1910, published as a book, Ganjar Golpo (The Tale of Ganja), by the Kazi Press of Naogaon in 1913–14.[3]: 60 He closed its first chapter with the burning of old stock that officials judged spent after three years, which he presented as a sacrifice to the fire by the emperor.[3]: 1
The interviews of Rahman and his colleagues with former cultivators recorded the customs of the tract before cultivation ended in 1987.[4]: 1–2 Men sang as they trod the cut plants on the threshing yard, the chatar, a leader first and his companions after him. In one song the singer lays out what the season's ganja will buy: a marriage with gold for the bride, a pair of oxen from the market, a sari for his wife, a shirt for himself, a new umbrella and shoes, and feasting in every house. Another, mostly in Hindustani words, praises the ganja of "Bangladesh": after one pipe so-so, after two jolly, after three a minister, after four a king.[4]: 4–5 Mohammad Afzal printed that song in his 1970 history of the Naogaon subdivision and remembered men singing it in rhythm, holding one another as they pressed the ganja underfoot.[3]: 214–215
Three proverbs survived among the cultivators. "Gajar nauka pahar dinggai", the ganja boat crosses a mountain, meant that money from the crop made the impossible possible. "Gaja holo rajar nesha, garib khele moron dasa" held ganja to be the king's intoxicant and deadly to the poor. A third invited a child's father-in-law to come out visiting in Phalgun, the month when growers were paid.[4]: 4 Payment in Phalgun was celebrated with a local sweet, roser misti, bought on the way home. Growers of the tract thought themselves richer than their neighbours and married mostly among themselves. Stories told of a grower of Dhopaipur village whose coins had to be carried home by bullock cart, and of a monk at a place called sannyas tala who stopped travellers at night to ask for a light for his pipe. In the Bolihari union a fair called "Hindu Bhanga" was held for two or three weeks in the cold month of Poush, where people sat round a bonfire taking ganja and stallholders came to trade; and on one day after the harvest the surplus ganja dust was burned in a furnace while people from nearby villages gathered round.[4]: 5–6
The cultivators' cooperative put its earnings into the town. Mahfuzur Rahman, an economist who grew up there in the 1930s, wrote that anyone who mentioned Naogaon to a Bengali would call up ganja, and that the school, the houses, the mosque, the park and the pond all belonged to the Society; his father, the imam, faced the contempt of in-laws for leading prayers in a mosque "built with ganja money". Its leaders patronised both Hindu and Muslim festivals.[3]: 215–216
Since 1947
The Radcliffe Line of 1947 put Naogaon in East Pakistan and most of its buyers in India. Afzal wrote that more than three-quarters of the licensed stock was burned or lost in cancelled sales between 1947 and 1950. East Pakistan allowed cultivation to continue on about 100 bighas until 1970, and the Society lived on rents from its shopfronts, its staff quarters known as the Ganja Barracks, a cold store and the Mukti Theater; skilled field workers began leaving for Nepal in the 1970s.[3]: 228 The specialist growers called ganja doctors also helped to develop ganja production around Kathmandu and Butwal.[4]: 4
Bangladesh banned cultivation in 1987.[4]: 1 The Business Standard reported in 2021 that the ban had left about 50,000 people of 7,000 families without work, and that the Society still held 28 buildings, a cold store, warehouses, 11 high schools, three mosques and a temple, having helped to build mosques, temples, bridges and hospitals in the town.[27] The cold store had been built in 1975 for the cannabis crop and was leased out after the ban.[28] In 2022 a former grower told the paper that in his day ganja "would be consumed by the saints, monks, and shrine singers", and its reporter found that the crop "still dominates the tea stalls" of Naogaon's villages.[29]
See also
References
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Abhilas Chandra Mukerjee, Brahmin, Deputy Magistrate and Deputy Collector, on deputation as 2nd Inspector of Excise, Bengal". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 63, pp. 157–175 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 3.20 Chattopadhyaya, Utathya (June 2026). Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India. Oakland: University of California Press. doi:10.1525/luminos.276. ISBN 9780520425699.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Rahman, A.M.D.; Matsushima, K.; Uddin, S.B.; Sarwar, A.K.M.G.; Nemoto, K. (2025). "Studies on ethnobotany of folk customs for cannabis in Naogaon, Bangladesh". Tropical Agriculture and Development. 69 (1): 1–8. doi:10.11248/jsta.69.1.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. K. G. Gupta, Commissioner of Excise, Bengal". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 17, pp. 44–48 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. W. C. Fasson, District Superintendent of Police, Bogra". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 87, p. 240 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Pundit Rakhal Chunder Tewary, Brahmin, Pleader and Honorary Magistrate, Diamond Harbour, 24-Parganas". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 214, p. 458 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Aghore Nath Banerji, Vice-Chairman, Serampore Municipality, District Hughli". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 200, p. 431 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Pyari Sankar Dass Gupta, Baidya, Medical Practitioner, Secretary, Bogra Medical Society, Bogra". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 134, p. 339 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. J. C. Price, Magistrate and Collector, Rajshahi". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 9, pp. 26–27 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Hari Krishna Mazumdar, Baidya, Zamindar, Islampur, District Murshidabad". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 169, pp. 386–387 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Biswas, Sailendra (2000). Samsad Bengali-English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad. pp. 305, 318 – via Digital Dictionaries of South Asia.
- ↑ Gupta, Mahendranath (1921) [1902]. Śrī Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa Kathāmṛta (in Bengali). Vol. 1 (9th ed.). Calcutta: Pravas Chandra Gupta. khaṇḍa 16, paricched 4 (25 October 1885), p. 272.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Prosad Dass Dutt, Zamindar, Calcutta". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 245, p. 517 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Nobo Gopal Bose Rai Chowdhoory, Kayasth, Talukdar and Judge's Court Pleader (late Munsiff of Nator), Memari, Burdwan District". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 218, p. 468 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Damant, G. H. (September 1873). "Bengali folklore: legends from Dinajpur". The Indian Antiquary. 2: 271 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. XVI, "Provincial systems examined", para. 684, p. 333 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Rev. D. Morison, M.B., C.M., M.D., Medical Missionary, Rampur Boalia". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 133, p. 335 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Girindra Mohan Chuckerbutty, Brahmin, Munsiff, Comilla (Tippera)". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 95, p. 255 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IX, "Social and religious customs", paras. 431–450, pp. 159–166 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IX, "Social and religious customs", para. 433, pp. 159–160 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ "Bengal celebrates colourful Dol Jatra with pomp and gaiety". EastMojo. Press Trust of India. 18 March 2022. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. XV, "Existing systems described", paras. 592–601, pp. 291–296 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ West Bengal Foreign Liquor Off On Shop Owners Association and Others v. The State of West Bengal and Others. Calcutta High Court (21 January 2008). F.M.A. No. 1733 of 2003.
- ↑ The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985(Act No. 61 of 1985), 1985, section 2(iii).India.
- ↑ West Bengal Excise (Selection of New Sites and Grant of Licence for Retail Sale of Liquor and Certain Other Intoxicants) Rules, 2003, Rule 4(c).West Bengal.
- ↑ "British-era Naogaon cannabis society still basks in huge wealth". The Business Standard. Dhaka. 24 December 2021.
- ↑ Ali, Abbas (6 October 2022). "Historic Naogaon cold storage on the verge of shutting down". The Business Standard. Dhaka.
- ↑ Billah, Masum (28 August 2022). "Stealing from thyself: Ganja farmers reminisce of the old days". The Business Standard. Dhaka.