Garhjat
More actions
| Garhjat | |
|---|---|
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 21.40, 85.11 |
| Gene Pool | South Asian Gene Pool |
| Country | India |
| Provinces/States | Odisha |
| Area | 58,200 km² |
| Growing history | |
| Earlier names | Garhjat; Gurjat Mahals; Tributary Mahals of Orissa |
| Dated news reports | 2020–2026 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Garhjat is a landrace cannabis growing region in the hill districts of northern and western Odisha, India. It takes its name from the Garhjat, or Tributary States, of Orissa. The ganja grown there was called Garhjat ganja in the 1890s.[1]: 5 The region is drawn on ten districts: Angul, Dhenkanal, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Sundargarh, Deogarh, Sambalpur, Subarnapur, Nayagarh and Boudh. It stops at Kandhamal District, which belongs to the Eastern Ghats growing region. In 1894 the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission found no regular field cultivation in the Garhjat, but called the growing of the plant in homesteads and gardens there "quite uncontrolled and extremely common".[2] An audit of Odisha's excise administration found cannabis cultivation continuing from 2014–15 to 2016–17 in eight districts of the state, among them Angul, Boudh, Deogarh and Sambalpur.[3] Police destroyed cannabis fields in Sundargarh in 2025 and in Keonjhar and Boudh in 2026.[4][5][6]
Geography
In the 1890s the Garhjat, which officials also called the Gurjat Mahals or the Tributary Mahals, was a group of chiefs' States on the frontier of the three British districts of the Orissa Division.[1]: 5[7] H. G. Cooke, Commissioner of the division and Superintendent of the Tributary Mahals from November 1892, told the Commission that the States' relations with the Government were set out in treaties but were "somewhat undefined".[8]: 20 H. P. Wylly, the Government Agent at Keonjhar, had spent about eleven years administering States there. He counted seventeen of them, lying between 200 and 1,500 feet (60–460 m) above sea level and under the same climate as the Orissa delta.[9] Abhilas Chandra Mukerjee, an inspector of excise for Bengal, wrote of nineteen.[7]
The region also takes in country that lay outside the Orissa States in the 1890s. Sambalpur was then a district of the Central Provinces; Sonpur, Bamra and Rairakhol were among that province's feudatory States.[10]: 73–74 Gangpur and Bonai were counted among the political States of Chota Nagpur.[2]
Cultivation history
The Tributary States in the 1890s
Wylly wrote that the plant was grown in all the Orissa States. Its extent could only be found by careful local enquiry, but its cultivation there was "fairly extensive". No State restricted its cultivation or the sale of ganja. He had known both Hindus and Muslims to grow it for their own use and for sale.[9] Mukerjee wrote that ganja was "regularly cultivated in all the Gurjat States", that almost everyone there grew it for their own use and that every grower was also a seller.[7] Kanti Bhushan Sen, the Special Excise Deputy Collector of Cuttack, made his enquiries within about three miles of the frontier. He saw the plants in Keonjhar, Dhenkanal, Athgarh, Tigiria, Baramba and Khandpara. Almost all the consumers in the States, whatever their caste, grew their own plants.[11]
After touring the States, Cooke concluded that the plant grew only inside house enclosures and "certainly is not cultivated in fields". He saw ganja for sale once, in Dhenkanal; the people who grew it mostly used their own crop, leaving a surplus that was available for smuggling.[8]: 20 The Commission weighed this evidence with the accounts from Angul and concluded that "there is no regular field cultivation in the Garhjat, and that the homestead or garden cultivation is quite uncontrolled and extremely common".[2]
Restrictions, 1878–1892
On 19 October 1878 the Government of Bengal prohibited the cultivation of ganja in the Tributary States within three miles of the frontier of the British districts.[7][11] The Bengal excise memorandum for the Commission states that consumption of the taxed Rajshahi ganja rose in all three Orissa districts after the order and fell considerably in Cuttack after its withdrawal in 1889. A notification of 21 June 1882 forbade the import of Garhjat ganja into British territory; one of 23 March 1892 allowed it again under separate rules.[1]: 10–11 Mukerjee dated the withdrawal of the three-mile order to 6 September 1889 and wanted it restored, but thought a general prohibition "out of the question in a tract where the plant is indigenous".[7]
Cooke said that Mayurbhanj had carried out a prohibition and that its people used excise ganja.[8]: 21 In Angul the plants disappeared under a prohibition and came back after its repeal, three or four years before the Commission's inquiry.[12] Cooke saw no efficient way of stopping the smuggling across so long a border, short of enlisting the chiefs themselves in the British excise system.[8]: 21
Sambalpur, Sonpur and Boad
The Central Provinces excise memorandum of 1893 states that the lack of any restriction in the neighbouring Tributary States had for many years cut into the sales of taxed ganja in Sambalpur. Most of the trouble, it says, came from smuggling out of Gangpur and Boad. When the Bengal Government argued that Garhjat ganja was much less harmful than the ganja of the Central Provinces, a local enquiry concluded that the drug smuggled into Sambalpur from Boad and Gangpur "was ganja proper; differed little from that grown in Nimar; was, like it, smoked, and so far from being less harmful, actually produced more lasting intoxication".[10]: 73–74
From 1880 the feudatory chiefs of the Central Provinces were to prohibit cultivation and draw their ganja from the wholesale vendor of a British district. An enquiry in 1887 found that all of them had done so except the chiefs of Sonpur, Rairakhol and Chhuikhadan.[10]: 74 Trimbak Rao Sathe, the Diwan of Sonepur, told the Commission that cultivation there had stopped in 1889. Since then the villages of Boad along the Sonepur border had grown more, partly because Sonepur's smokers preferred Boad ganja, which resembled their own, to the flat ganja the Government supplied.[13]: 21 The Commission thought the prohibition in the Central Provinces States might have given cultivation in the Garhjat an impulse, but found no decisive evidence of any important extension.[2]
Since 2000
An audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India found cannabis cultivation continuing from 2014–15 to 2016–17 in eight districts of Odisha: Angul, Boudh, Deogarh, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Malkangiri, Rayagada and Sambalpur.[3] In January 2018 the Director General of Police, R. P. Sharma, said that in the 2017–18 crop year the police had destroyed cannabis on 851 acres in Angul (against a target of 200) and on 789.1 acres in Boudh. He also reported "a sharp decline" in cultivation in Sambalpur, Deogarh, Angul and Nayagarh, which he credited to constant destruction and awareness drives.[14]
In November 2025 a joint team of excise, forest and police officials destroyed over an acre of cannabis in villages of Bhalupani panchayat, under Tikayatpali police station in Sundargarh District. According to official sources, the crop was grown for networks from outside the state, with local tribal residents allegedly employed to tend it.[4] In January 2026 police destroyed more than two acres grown on forest land near the Suna River, in Joda block of Keonjhar District.[5] In October 2026 Manamunda police destroyed around 52,000 plants in a forest near Bagidia village in Boudh District, at the start of the district police's "Zero Cannabis Cultivation in Boudh" mission.[6] The month before, the state's Special Task Force had named Boudh among six hotspot districts in its strategy against cannabis cultivation.[15]
Garhjat ganja
Garhjat ganja was used only in the three districts of the Orissa Division. Small quantities were imported into Puri under the excise rules, but more was smuggled into all three districts across a long frontier of jungle country where detection was very difficult.[1]: 5 The Bengal memorandum adds that the drug was in great demand with the priests of the shrine of Jagannath at Puri and with the attendants of other Orissa temples. Pilgrims and mendicants brought it in small quantities as offerings.[1]: 10–11
In his 1893 report on ganja, David Prain wrote that the best of India's "inferior, but still genuine" ganjas were perhaps those of the Malabar coast and of the Orissa Tributary Mahals, whose ganja the Excise Manual called "Gurjat" ganja. He wrote that the male plants appeared to be removed there, though "not so early or so completely" as in northern Bengal. In his view careless drying and a fermentation gave such ganjas "a heavy, rancid, disagreeable odour".[16]: 10
Wylly described seed sown in beds in April and May and planted out in June or July; the plants flowered in October and November and were reaped in December. Growers kept seed from the previous year's garden and used the seed of wild plants only if their own failed. He wrote that the male plant was "emasculated by having its stem punctured or cut and pieces of broken tile inserted in these cuts". People named their plants, he said, by the size of what he called the leaf buds: Bhaluki for big buds and Cheli-neuda for small.[9] Sen, on the other hand, reported that the male plants were not removed in the States; the leaves of both sexes were kept as patti.[11] Rai Nandakisore Das, the District Officer of Angul, wrote that in the Tributary Mahals the plants were not trodden under foot, as in the manufacture of Rajshahi ganja; instead young plants and their branches were twisted every two or three days until they stood four or five feet high.[17] The ganja of the Orissa States was flat ganja;[9][17] in Sonepur, before 1889, it had been round ganja, tied up in leaves.[13]: 21
Growing Areas
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Memorandum on hemp drugs in Bengal, by Mr. K. G. Gupta, Commissioner of Excise, Bengal". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. III: Appendices, Miscellaneous. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. paras. 8–19 and 44, pp. 4–6 and 10–11 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IV, "Extent of cultivation, and its tendency to increase or decrease", paras. 96–100, pp. 37–39 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Comptroller and Auditor General of India (2018). "Chapter III: State Excise". Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Revenue Sector for the year ended March 2017, Government of Odisha (Report). Comptroller and Auditor General of India. para. 3.4.9, p. 33. Report No. 4 of 2017.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Mishra, Suranjan (11 November 2025). "Over Rs 10 Lakh worth of Ganja plantation destroyed in Odisha's Sundargarh". OdishaTV. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Mishra, Suranjan (29 January 2026). "Odisha Police destroy over 2 acres of illegal Ganja cultivation". OdishaTV. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Post News Network (16 October 2026). "52,000 cannabis plants destroyed in Boudh". OrissaPOST. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 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. pp. 172–173 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. H. G. Cooke, Officiating Commissioner, Orissa Division". 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. Bengal witness no. 8, pp. 18–22 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. H. P. Wylly, Government Agent at Keonjhar, Orissa". 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. Bengal witness no. 91, pp. 247–249 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Memorandum on hemp drugs in the Central Provinces, by Mr. H. V. Drake-Brockman, Officiating Commissioner of Excise". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. III: Appendices, Miscellaneous. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. paras. 3–66, pp. 57–74 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Kanti Bhushan Sen, Baidya, Special Excise Deputy Collector of Cuttack". 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. Bengal witness no. 62, pp. 150–156 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Narayan Chandra Naik, Khas Tahsildar and Deputy Collector, Angul". 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. Bengal witness no. 73, pp. 209–210 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Trimbak Rao Sathe, Extra Assistant Commissioner, and Diwan of the Sonepur State". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. VI: Evidence of Witnesses from Central Provinces and Madras. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. Central Provinces witness no. 13, pp. 20–24 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Post News Network (21 January 2018). "Record cannabis crops destroyed". OrissaPOST. Retrieved 20 October 2026.
- ↑ Sethy, Itishree (9 September 2026). "Nasha Mukt Odisha: STF Launches Four-Pronged Strategy to Eradicate Cannabis Cultivation". Pragativadi. Retrieved 19 October 2026.
- ↑ Prain, D. (1893). Report on the Cultivation and Use of Gánjá. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press – via National Library of Scotland.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Rai Nandakisore Das, Bahadur, District Officer of Angul, Cuttack". 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. Bengal witness no. 34, pp. 82–84 – via Internet Archive.