Talk:Cannabis in Rajbanshi culture

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Page scope

The page covers the hemp plant among the Rajbanshi of the north Bengal plains: the wild growth of the plant, ganja smoking, bhang and the festivals, and folk medicine, in the former Cooch Behar State and the neighbouring districts. The licensed trade and excise of Cooch Behar State are covered on Cannabis in Cooch Behar State; the cultivation belt and its modern enforcement on Cannabis in West Bengal; Bengali Hindu worship, including the Bijaya drink, on Cannabis in Bengali Religion.

Data verification

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Discussion

Sources

Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894 and 1895). Most of the page rests on four officials' answers. Volume IV (Bengal and Assam): witness no. 94, Jadub Chandra Chuckerbutty, Civil and Sessions Judge of Kuch Behar (pp. 253–254); no. 64, Gobind Chandra Das, Deputy Collector of Malda (pp. 175–188; the Rajbanshi passages are on pp. 179 and 181); no. 22, R. T. Greer, Deputy Commissioner of Darjeeling (p. 60). Supplementary volume (Native States), Bengal Native States: witness no. 1, Haridas Mukerji (pp. 135–136), and no. 2, Rai Calica Dass Dutt, dewan of the State (pp. 136–137). Names, titles and page numbers are those printed in the volumes.
Who the witnesses describe. The three Cooch Behar witnesses describe smokers and drinkers by class ("the agricultural and labouring classes") or by origin ("up-country"), not by community. Only Gobind Chandra Das (the Barind, Dinajpur, Rajshahi and Malda) and Greer (the Darjeeling Terai) name the Rajbanshi. The page does not attribute the Cooch Behar figures to the Rajbanshi in particular.
Madan Kam. Chuckerbutty says bhang was drunk on the day "the Madan, Kamdeb (the god of love) is worshipped" in Kuch Behar; he does not name the worshippers. The account reproduced by Hunter (1876, p. 378) makes the worship of Madan Kamdeo a Rajbansi festival, and Ryzhakova (2019) found bhang as the main prasad of the Rajbanshi Madan Kam rite at Bara Kodali in 2004. Hunter's passage dates the festival to Chaitra and glosses the month as February; Ryzhakova places the rite at Chaitra Sankranti in mid-April.
Spellings of Madan Kam. The sources write the name of the god and festival in several forms: "Madan Kamdeo" (the account reproduced by Hunter, 1876, p. 378), "the Madan, Kamdeb" (Chuckerbutty, 1894, p. 253), "Modon Kam" and "Madan Kam" (Ryzhakova, 2019, title and text) and "Madankam Puja" (Byapari and Barman, 2025). The page uses Madan Kam.
Svetlana Ryzhakova (2019) is in Russian, with an English title and abstract. The page paraphrases it; the gloss "a paste of sugar and pounded hemp stalks" translates the Russian on p. 165. She saw the rite in February 2004 in a performance arranged for her, which she says was shortened and altered in parts (pp. 162, 164). Ryzhakova does not say that the participants drank the bhang or that it caused the ecstatic states she describes.
Mandal et al. (2021) surveyed the Rajbanshi, Nepali, Bodo, Garo and Oraon of Alipurduar district together; its table of plants does not say which community uses which plant, so the page does not attribute the bhang entry to the Rajbanshi.
Colonial characterisations. Risley's 1891 entry classes the Rajbanshi in the racial terms of colonial anthropometry, and Gobind Chandra Das describes the Rajbanshi men of the Barind as "very indolent". The page attributes both to their authors. Das was hostile to ganja throughout his evidence.

Conflicts between sources

How many smoked ganja in Cooch Behar. Mukerji: about 60 per cent of the population. Chuckerbutty: about 65 per cent of the adult male population. The dewan: no more than 6 or 7 per cent of the 160,000 adult men, on the State's consumption of 70 maunds a year.
Ganja among the Rajbanshi. Das (Malda, 1894) counted the Raj Bangsis and Koches of the Barind among the regular smokers; Gruning (Jalpaiguri, 1911) found ganja "mostly confined to people from up-country". The two describe different districts at different dates.
Public opinion. Mukerji: ganjakhore was "a term of reproach and contempt". The dewan: ganja was "not held in very great disrepute among the natives of this State".

Gaps

The page cites no study of cannabis in Bhawaiya or other Rajbanshi song, in the worship of Shiva at Jalpesh, or in the Hudum Deo and Bishahari rites.
The page does not draw on Charu Chandra Sanyal, The Rajbansis of North Bengal (1965).
The page cites no modern survey of medicinal plants that records cannabis use by the Rajbanshi in particular.