Malana
More actions
| Malana | |
|---|---|
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Western Himalayas |
| Growing Area | Malana Valley |
| Geography | |
| Country | India |
| Province/State | Himachal Pradesh |
| District | Kullu District |
| Tehsil | Bhuntar Tehsil |
| Coordinates | 32.0618, 77.2600 |
| Settlement | |
| Type | Village |
| Population | 1,722 (2011) |
| Access | About 3 km on foot from the road; a goods ropeway since 2015 |
| Landscape | |
| Elevation | 2,494–2,651 m |
| Terrain | Shelf on the edge of a gorge above the right bank of the Malana torrent |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | Malana |
| Accessions | 8 |
Malana is a village in the Malana Valley in Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh, India. It lies on the right bank of the Malana torrent, about 15 km from Jari, where the torrent joins the Parbati, at an elevation the 2018 resurvey of the village gives as about 9,000 ft.[1]: §2.1 The 2011 census counted 365 households and 1,722 people.[2] Its people, the Malanis, speak Kanashi, a language no other villagers in Kullu speak or understand.[3]: 38–39 The anthropologist Richard Axelby dates the village's adoption of commercial cannabis growing to the late 1970s, and the charas of the village is known as "Malana Cream".[3]: 54[4] Eight accessions carry Malana as their locality, and the village gives its name to an appellation.
Geography
The resurvey places the village on "a comparatively barren strip of ground on the edge of a narrow gorge", ringed by sheer rock. In its account, Manikaran, Kasol and Rasol lie to the east, Jari to the south, the Chanderkhani Pass and the Naggar valley to the west and the peak of Deo Tibba to the north.[1]: §2.1 The anthropologist Colin Rosser, who worked at Malana in the early 1950s, put it "just under 9000 feet" above sea level, and the collection documentation of the Zomia Collective gives 2,600 m.[3]: 37–38[5] Seed collected in the village fields in 2022 is recorded at 2,494 m.
The village is built in two parts, Dhara Behr above and Sara Behr below, with the Harcha, a sacred place where the elders meet, between them.[1]: §2.1 The resurvey gives the village's land as 437 ha in 1951, before part of it was retained by Punjab when the state was reorganised, 179 ha in 1990–91 and 176.28 ha according to the revenue papers; 2.72 ha went to a private power project of Everest Power and its small dam.[1]: §2.1 It describes "the Malana territory" as six sub-divisions: Malana, Thosko, Nerong, Dhadon, Magic Valley and Bhelag. The first survey of 1990–91 had found five; Magic Valley was added in 2016–17.[1]: §2.1 The collection documentation calls Malana the valley's "main, permanent settlement", with the Tosco and Malndr fields nearby. It names four other main settlements in the valley: Nirang, Wailing, Atolang and Waichin.[5]
Access
Rosser walked to Malana from Jari, a day's journey. When Axelby came in September 2013, a jeep road built for the hydroelectric projects on the Malana River ran to within an easy walk of the village, past a Forest Department checkpoint and a police post.[3]: 53 The resurvey dates the road to 2007. It notes a Himachal Road Transport Corporation bus between Kullu and Malana since 2016, and a ropeway for goods, installed in 2015, between the road and the old village 3 km away. Its other approaches are tracks from Naggar by Rumsu and Chanderkhani (18 km), from Jana by Chanderkhani (17 km) and from Manikaran by Rasol (16 km).[1]: §2.9
Administration
The 2011 census lists Malana (village code 012882) in Kullu sub-district, with an area of 179 ha.[2] The district administration's list of gram panchayats places the Malana panchayat in the Naggar block.[6] Rosser described a village council of three hereditary office-holders and eight elected elders whose decisions were put to an assembly of household heads; Axelby notes that the elected panchayat and its pradhan operate apart from that council.[3]: 43, 54
People
History
Rosser reached Kullu in 1951. That autumn the more conservative faction of the village refused him leave to live there, ending his plan to put up a hut at its edge.[3]: 41, 46 Returning in 2013, Axelby found many of the wooden houses in Rosser's photographs replaced by concrete, slate roofs replaced by tin, a government school and seven guesthouses around the village serving backpackers.[3]: 54 He describes a fire in November 2008 that burnt the Sara Behr half of the village with its central temple; the resurvey dates a fire that gutted much of the village to 2007.[3]: 54[1]: §4.5
Cannabis cultivation
Axelby places the adoption of commercial cannabis growing at Malana "at some point in the late 1970s". Malani accounts, he writes, credit an Italian known as "Glenu" with teaching the village the hand-rubbed technique, in which resin is drawn from the plant "by massaging each flowering leaf between the palm and fingers"; some of the crop is sold to tourists and much goes elsewhere in India and abroad.[3]: 54 The resurvey reports that the whole population spends two to three months a year collecting cannabis, which it treats as a minor forest product.[1]: §2.8 The Associated Press described Malana Cream in 2016 as "a variety of oily hash produced in the village from higher-potency plants with hybrid seeds".[4]
The collection documentation describes the Tosco and Malndr fields near the village as "renowned for their quality". Its lots from Malana are a general population collected by villagers making charas, a selection from in and around the village, selections from the Tosco and Malndr fields and a feral selection.[5] Four of them, dated to the 2022 harvest under the expedition code HIMA01, carry Malana as their locality; the Tosco selection carries Tosco. The other four accessions are seed lines from The Real Seed Company, the Vibes Collective and Coco Genes. The Zomia Collective's index of growing regions tags the Malana "Terraces" fields "Eradications Ongoing", a tag it defines as "Active eradication observed or reported".[7]
Enforcement
Axelby reached Malana in September 2013 the day after a police raid.[3]: 53, 56 He describes police teams arriving each September, before the harvest, to destroy the standing fields. Villagers told him the raids could not destroy the whole harvest, since everybody grew cannabis, and that families whose fields were cut were compensated by the others.[3]: 56 During the resurvey's visit in the second week of October 2017, a maturing crop stood on arable land next to a field the police had destroyed.[1]: §6.34 A Press Trust of India report of 2026 stated that O. P. Sharma, as superintendent of the Narcotics Control Bureau's Chandigarh zonal unit, led "around a dozen combat and destruction operations" in Malana and other places in the district between 2002 and 2006.[8]
Accessions
| Name | ID | Type | Elevation (m) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| COC-IND-HIM-0100000004 | Lama Malana General Population | COC-IND-HIM-0100000004 | General population | |
| COC-IND-HIM-0100000006 | Malana General Population | COC-IND-HIM-0100000006 | General population | |
| RSC-IND-HIM-0120210001 | Malana Cream General Population 2021 | RSC-IND-HIM-0120210001 | General population | |
| VIB-IND-HIM-0100000001 | Malana General Population | VIB-IND-HIM-0100000001 | General population | |
| ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220023 | Malana 'Village' General Population 2022 | ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220023 | General population | 2494 |
| ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220024 | Malana 'Village' Selection 2022 | ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220024 | Selection | 2494 |
| ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220026 | Malana 'Malndr' Selection 2022 | ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220026 | Selection | |
| ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220027 | Malana Feral Selection 2022 | ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220027 | Selection |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Kalia, Arvind; Singh, D. V.; Kumar, Anil; Singh, Sujan (December 2018). Socio-Economic Resurvey of Village Malana in Himachal Pradesh, India (PDF) (Report). AERC Report, Study No. 164. Shimla: Agro-Economic Research Centre, Himachal Pradesh University.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Directorate of Census Operations, Himachal Pradesh (2014). District Census Handbook, Kullu: Village and Town Wise Primary Census Abstract (Report). Census of India 2011, Himachal Pradesh, Series 03, Part XII-B. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India.
- ↑ 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 Axelby, Richard (2015). "Hermit village or Zomian republic? An update on the political socio-economy of a remote Himalayan community" (PDF). European Bulletin of Himalayan Research (46): 35–61 – via Digital Himalaya.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "In remote Indian village, cannabis is its only livelihood". Dawn. Associated Press. 5 December 2016.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Malana". Zomia Collective. Retrieved 27 September 2026.
- ↑ "Gram Panchayats". District Kullu. Government of Himachal Pradesh. Retrieved 27 September 2026.
- ↑ "Growing Regions". Zomia Collective. Retrieved 27 September 2026.
- ↑ "Why is Parvati valley in Kullu considered safe haven for rave parties". The Tribune. PTI. 30 June 2026. Retrieved 27 September 2026.