Talk:Khasi Hills
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Khasi Hills is a Growing Area in the Shillong Plateau growing region. It treats cannabis in the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya: the plots destroyed since 2018, the colonial evidence on hill ganja, and its uses. The districts as administrative units belong at their own pages (East Khasi Hills District and the others). Places more local than the range, such as Laitlulong in the Sohiong area, would be appellations. The neighbouring ranges have their own pages at Jaintia Hills and Garo Hills.
Data verification
Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the area's extent, its sites, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.
Discussion
Why the area is on the map
- Laitlulong, 21 October 2025. The East Khasi Hills police, with the district administration, the forest and excise departments and the state Anti-Narcotics Task Force, destroyed about 10 tonnes of cannabis on nearly five hectares at Laitlulong, Hima Sohiong, Sohiong block, East Khasi Hills. Nine outlets reported the same operation; the article cites The Shillong Times, Hub News, Millennium Post and the Highland Post editorial. Hub News says the team found cannabis in household courtyards, backyards and fields.
- Laitumkhrah, Shillong, September 2026. Cannabis plants in a walled, abandoned plot were cut down after residents complained (Highland Post, 5 and 8 September 2026). The 5 September report says it was unclear whether the plants grew wild or were cultivated.
- Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Hill ganja reached the Gauhati district, believed from the Khasi Hills (G. Godfrey, Vol. IV, p. 530). Outside Shillong and the Jaintia Hills subdivision, the Khasi Hills were "practically foreign territory", where cultivation was not prohibited (same page). The province's memorandum (Vol. III, p. 18) attributed falling sales of excise ganja in the Khasi Hills to cheap wild hemp.
- Seed lot. The Coco Genes listing Meghalaya Khasi Hills places its cultivar in Shillong. It is filed in this area.
How the border is drawn
- The border is a proxy: the Khasi Hills range as its five present districts, East Khasi Hills, West Khasi Hills, South West Khasi Hills, Eastern West Khasi Hills and Ri-Bhoi, from their OpenStreetMap administrative relations (2027522, 2027525, 9522352, 14723470, 2027524). The outline measures about 10,400 km², the figure in the infobox.
- Ri-Bhoi is included because it was carved out of East Khasi Hills in 1992 and is made up of parts of the Khasi states (Ri Bhoi district administration).
- The 2025 and 2026 sites both lie in East Khasi Hills. The reports since 2000 name no site in the other four districts; they are in the border as parts of the range.
- Where this border meets the Shillong Plateau border or the border of a neighbouring growing area, the two share one line, drawn once.
Growing status
The status is Active: cannabis was destroyed at Laitlulong in October 2025. No source says that growing in the Khasi Hills has ended.
Where the sources disagree
- Cultivated or self-sown at Laitlulong. The police and most reports describe the cannabis as illegally cultivated, and Hub News describes households growing it. The Highland Post editorial reports the village authorities' claim that the plants grew by themselves on potato fields and were cut for compost. The article gives both, attributed.
- Cultivation in 1893. The Commission reasoned that smuggled hill ganja must have been "to some extent cultivated", and Godfrey said cultivation was not prohibited in the Khasi states. J. D. Anderson (p. 537) said that he had never heard of cannabis being cultivated in the Khasi Hills. W. W. Hunter (1879) wrote that the Khasis did not use intoxicating drugs.
Other reports
- A VICE article of 10 January 2019, a first-person account by an unnamed farmer near Mawphlang who says he grew a small patch for sale. It cannot be checked, and it names Wangala, a Garo festival, in a Khasi village.
- P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis (1907 and 1914), does not mention hemp or ganja.
- J. D. Hooker's Himalayan Journals (Khasia chapters) and H. Yule's "Notes on the Kasia Hills" (1844) do not mention it either.