Talk:Western Terai
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Why the region is on the map
No source read for this page records the cultivation of cannabis in this belt. The evidence is of a wild growth that was gathered. The North-Western Provinces excise inquiry of 1883 lists the Terai district, Pilibhit, Kheri, Bahraich, Gonda, Gorakhpur and eight other districts as places where the plant "grows wild, and is made into bhang" (Hemp Drugs Commission report, vol. I, para. 41). Two witnesses before the Commission describe abundant wild hemp in the Terai and Pilibhit, gathered for bhang, and say it was not cultivated in Rohilkhand or Bareilly district (vol. V, witnesses 35 and 239). The Commission's report adds that small amounts of charas were made from the wild growth of the Kumaon Terai and the Bhabar. The region was split from the Terai page, which covered the whole belt until October 2026, and it carries the Indian half of that page's colonial evidence.
Growing status
The status is Historical: the evidence is from 1883 to 1894, and no later source read for this page says either way whether cannabis grows or is gathered in the belt now.
Border
The border is the part of the Terai's earlier border that lies in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh: ground at or below 330 m within 32 km of the Himalayan foothills. The 330 m ceiling is the Terai of Nepal's (Kandel and colleagues, 2024), and the 32 km strip follows Hamilton's "about twenty miles" for the width of the Nepal Terai (1819). No source gives an extent for the Terai on the Indian side. The strip runs from the Dehradun valley in the north-west to the boundary with Bihar in the east, where the Eastern Terai begins. No elevation or rainfall figures are given in the infobox, because none was found for the Indian side. The area in the infobox (about 13,800 km²) is the area of that border.
Places named by the witnesses
Lala Bal Mokand names "Rampura, Sattarganj, and Nanak Mattu in the Terai" and the Puranpur tahsil of Pilibhit. Sattarganj and Nanak Mattu appear to be today's Sitarganj and Nanakmatta in Udham Singh Nagar District, Uttarakhand; the article keeps the witness's spellings. Which Rampura he meant is not clear. The 1883 list names "Terai" and "Naini Tal (Kumaon)" as separate districts; in 1893 Syed Ali Husen calls the tract "the Terai (now known as the Naini Tal district)".
Evidence not used
The Commission's fifth volume holds dozens more witnesses from the North-Western Provinces and Oudh who mention the Terai, among them witnesses from Kashipur, Kheri, Gorakhpur and the Kumaon Bhabar. The page cites two of them, read on the page images; the others have not been checked.