Talk:Khandwa

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Discussion for: Khandwa • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Khandwa treats the licensed ganja tract of the Central Provinces in the Khandwa tahsil of the Nimar district, as the Hemp Drugs Commission and the Government of India described it in 1893–95. The district as an administrative unit is treated at Khandwa District. The region it belongs to is Nimar.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the area is mapped

The Government of India's resolution of 21 March 1895 (para. 9) says that cultivation in the Central Provinces had been restricted since 1890–91 to the western half of the Khandwa tahsil of the Nimar district, on about 950 acres in a normal year.
Robertson's note (Hemp Drugs Commission, Vol. III, pp. 236–237) puts the cultivation in 60 or 70 villages of that half of the tahsil and names the seed villages; Drake-Brockman's memorandum (p. 238) names the Dhargaon station-house circle.

Growing status

The status is Historical. The sources that describe the tract date from 1893 to 1895, and none read says that the cultivation ended.
First grown: 1871. The earliest year a source records the crop grown, not the year it began. Drake-Brockman's evidence (Vol. VI, Central Provinces witness 9) finds the Nimar district already a chief place of cultivation in 1871–72, the first year with a separate excise report; the figure is for the district, not only the tahsil. Both witnesses say the cultivation is older (Robertson: "established here before we took over the country"; Drake-Brockman: grown "for generations"), but neither gives a year.
Last grown: 1895. The latest year a source records the crop grown, not a year it ended. The resolution of March 1895 describes the cultivation in the present tense, and it is the latest source read that describes the cultivation. The Imperial Gazetteer of India volume for Berar (1909, p. 54) still names the government warehouse at Khandwa as Berar's source of ganja and bhang, but it says nothing of cultivation at Khandwa, so it does not move the year.
The Central Provinces District Gazetteers: Nimar (1908) and later excise reports of the province would be the next sources for when licensed cultivation in the tahsil ended; they have not been read.

How the border is drawn

The border is Khandwa District in OpenStreetMap (administrative relation 1976214), simplified, about 7,500 km². It is a proxy: the sources give the western half of the Khandwa tahsil of the 1890s, and no source read maps that tahsil onto a unit below the present district.
Burhanpur District, named for the Burhanpur tahsil of the old Nimar district, is outside the border; see the talk page of Nimar.
The old Nimar district also had a detached Kanapur-Beria tract beyond the Indore State's Sanawad pargana (Central Provinces memorandum, Vol. III p. 73). No source read says whether it lay in the Khandwa tahsil or in the ganja-growing half, and its present district has not been checked.
The map point (21.83, 76.25) is west of Khandwa town, in the half of the old tahsil the sources name; the border is not drawn from it.

Sources

Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894. Robertson's table (Vol. III, p. 237) and Drake-Brockman's memorandum (p. 238) were read on the page images, and the rest of both in the OCR text; the Central Provinces memorandum (pp. 57–74), Robertson's evidence (Vol. VI, pp. 10–12) and Drake-Brockman's evidence (pp. 12–17) were read in the OCR text. The OCR misreads the area for 1881–82 in Robertson's table as 98.15 acres; the page reads 78.15.
The male plant has a second name, bhangra in Robertson's note and bhingera in Drake-Brockman's memorandum. The article gives only naria, the name both use.

Where the sources disagree

How many villages. Robertson gives 60 or 70 villages; Drake-Brockman's memorandum gives about 100 villages and 600 or 700 licences a year. The article gives both.
Acreage. Robertson's table (p. 237, read on the page image) gives the area actually planted; Drake-Brockman's evidence gives different figures for the same years: 1888–89, 833 against 858 acres; 1889–90, 916 against 954; 1890–91, 477.91 against 521; 1891–92, 963 against 653; 1892–93, 984.34 against 940. Robertson notes that licences were usually taken out for more land than was planted. The article uses Robertson's table.
Seed prices. Robertson gives 8 annas a ser for ordinary seed and Re. 1 for Dhakalgaon seed; Drake-Brockman gives 12 annas for local seed and at least Re. 1, sometimes Rs. 2, for Dhakalgaon seed. The article attributes "twice the price" to Robertson.
Rainfall. Robertson gives a 25-year average of 32.76 inches at Khandwa; Drake-Brockman gives 33 inches for the tahsil. The article gives both.