Yarkand charas trade

The Yarkand charas trade was the overland trade in charas, cannabis resin, from the oases of Southern Xinjiang over the Karakoram to Leh in Ladakh, and from there through Kulu or Kashmir to the markets of the Punjab. In 1894 the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission called charas "practically a foreign article" in India, most of it brought "from Yarkand through the Himalayan passes" and "the principal import from Yarkand". Indian goods went north by the same road, among them cotton cloth, spices, red goatskins and tea.^: 299–300

British officers at Leh reported on the trade each year from 1867 to 1873, the first of them sent there to protect the Punjab merchants. In British territory the drug was weighed and sealed before it could be sold. Charas made up nearly half the value of everything Yarkand sent to Leh in 1870.^{: 53, 277, 341} In the 1890s between 3,000 and 4,000 maunds reached the Punjab in an ordinary year.^: 48 The trade ended in the 1930s, when the authorities of Xinjiang prohibited the export of charas. The last licit charas in India was consumed in 1945.

Names

Traders on the road generally called the drug bhang. Henry Cayley, the officer on special duty at Leh in 1867, wrote "Churrus or Bhang"; the trade reports printed with Aitchison's handbook use both words for the same import.^{: 279–280, 315} The Turki name for the plant was kandir and for the resin nasha. Inferior grades were made up into parcels called pai, two of which made a Yarkand horse-load.^: 52–53 In the Punjab's trade returns the "Ladakh" trade was whatever the Kulu registration post recorded crossing the Rohtang pass. The Punjab's excise memorandum to the Commission pointed out that the charas entered under Ladakh and under Kashmir came alike from Yarkand. It quoted Captain Ramsay, the British Joint Commissioner at Leh, that in Ladakh it "of course could not be grown".^: 48 S. S. Thorburn, Commissioner of Rawalpindi, called Kashmir and Ladakh "merely channels of import".^: 361

Where the charas came from

In 1881 the British Joint Commissioner in Ladakh wrote that the charas of the Ladakh road was produced at Yarkand, Yengi Hissar, Kashgar and Khotan. Ramsay wrote in 1888 that it was produced "chiefly in the vicinity of Yarkand". Aitchison wrote in 1874 that the ruler of Yarkand had forbidden the plant in regular fields, so that it was grown in single rows round fields of other crops. Each farm made a little resin, put up in small balls, which middlemen collected from farm to farm.^: 51–52

Aitchison placed the finest resin at Karmak near Yengi Hissar and wrote that all of it went as balls to Bukhara and Kokand: "none of the really good quality ever comes to Leh".^: 52 In 1869, when duties were high and the road through Kokand unsettled, merchants bound for Ladakh bought up the Yengi Hissar resin. Charas "far finer than anything ever before seen in Ladakh" fetched double the usual price at Leh.^: 315

The road

Yarkand to Leh

Cayley put the distance from Leh to Yarkand at about 350 miles, or 30 marches, over five high passes, the lowest of them nearly 18,000 feet, three covered with snow or glacier all year. He reckoned that nearly 20 per cent of the horses died on the journey and that on nearly all the passes the loads had to be moved from horses to yaks.^: 277–278 In Janet Rizvi's account the road was a complex of routes, with different lines for different seasons, crossing at least four passes, all but one above 4,500 m and the highest at 5,580 m. The march took about a month, 12 to 15 days of it through uninhabited country. Caravans carried their own food and fodder for 12 days on the summer route and 17 on the winter route, which followed the river valleys when they could be passed and avoided the glaciers altogether. The glaciers that could not be avoided, on the Khardung La and the Saser La in Ladakh and the Sanju pass in the Kunlun, lay within reach of villages or Kirghiz camps whose people hired out yaks to the caravans.

The embassy of 1873–74 to Kashgar met charas on the road. At the foot of the Sanju pass H. W. Bellew found a caravan of Afghans from Bajaur loading about sixteen horses with charas they were taking from Yarkand to Ladakh. On the way down to Sanju the embassy passed three or four more charas caravans climbing towards the pass. When summer floods closed that defile, the Kulik and Kilian passes were used instead.^{: 207, 217} Until the last decades of the 19th century raiders in the service of the Mir of Hunza crossed the Shimshal pass to plunder caravans on the Leh road.

In the 1860s and 1870s the British authorities tried to open a line east of the Karakoram Pass, by the Changchenmo valley, the Lingzi Thang plateau and the Karakash river. Cayley found it practicable for camels in 1868 and hoped that camels would bring down the cost of carriage.^: 305 The attempt failed.

Leh

Leh was the chief emporium of the trade. Yarkandi traders generally sold their goods there. Indian merchants came up with cloth or tea in the spring and took the charas down in the autumn. Trade at Leh was by barter. Cayley warned that merchants who would not take goods in exchange had no business going to Leh.^: 300–301 Ramsay wrote in 1888 that each side overvalued its goods by 10 to 20 per cent, so that the recorded value of charas at Leh was "fictitious" and its price "almost entirely speculative". In late seasons charas stayed at Leh over the winter. Of 1,830 maunds that reached Leh in 1867, about 817 went on to the Punjab and 8 to Kashmir; the rest was held in Ladakh because the season was late. Nearly 800 of the 2,587 maunds of 1870 were left at Leh until the next season for want of buyers from the Punjab. The Yarkandis had arrived late, met early snow and gone no further.^{: 279–280, 324}

Leh to the Punjab

From Amritsar to Leh was about 525 miles, or 42 marches, over five high passes, all but one above 13,000 feet. Cayley found the road generally easy in summer and passable everywhere for laden ponies.^: 277 Rizvi gives the two ways down: through Kargil and Srinagar to Rawalpindi, or over the Taglang, Lachalung, Baralacha and Rohtang passes and down the Kulu valley to Hoshiarpur. In the 1890s the main road through Kulu was fit for horses and mules. It was kept up partly at the government's expense and partly by the labour of the valley's people. It was carried on through Lahaul to the border of Ladakh "for the benefit of merchants carrying on trade with Central Asia".^: 106

Most of the charas went by Kulu. In the early 1890s about 500 maunds a year went by Kashmir while "six or seven times as much" came "direct through Kulu to Hoshiarpur": 2,201 maunds in 1890–91, 3,242 in 1891–92 and 3,932 in 1892–93. At Sultanpur in Kulu traders took out transport permits before going on to the markets of Amritsar and Hoshiarpur.^: 100 When the Dussehra fair fell as late as the middle of October, Yarkandis and Ladakhis who had just finished their journey from Central Asia came to it with ponies, charas, silks and carpets for sale in the plains.^: 44 On the Kashmir road the consignments passed through without changing hands. The Kashmir State's memorandum to the Commission said that the contractor for customs and octroi saw to it that the Yarkand charas left the state "sealed intact", since he was owed duty on any sold in the city. Kashmiris, it said, did not like it. In the Punjab, Amritsar was the chief depot, from which the North-Western Provinces drew their supply.

Traders and money

Cayley expected the trade between India and Eastern Turkestan to remain "chiefly carried on by Yarkandis", since merchants from the plains were not used to such long journeys or to the hardships of the march over the Himalaya and the Kunlun. He named a handful of Punjabis who had gone through to Yarkand, among them agents of the wazir of Mandi and some Gaddis from Kangra.^: 333 The Punjab's trade report for 1891–92 divided the traders on the Kulu road into four classes. The merchants of Hoshiarpur, Amritsar and Sultanpur, many of the last Lahulis, sent up piece-goods or tea in the spring and brought down "chiefly charas" in the autumn, using mules for carriage. Some Yarkandis came on to India with charas, carpets and felts. Many sold the horses that had carried their goods and went home empty-handed. Baltis from Baltistan came down to work as road labourers. Bhotis from Ladakh, Zanskar, Tibet and Lahaul brought wool on sheep and goats. J. R. Drummond, Deputy Commissioner of Gurgaon, told the Commission that the charas had been brought "by Kashgaris, Andijanis and others, and by Sikh traders" over the Karakoram, Bara Lacha and Ketang passes. He believed the trade had been diminished in 1883 by Chinese trade policy.^: 384 Bhagat Hira Nand of Rawalpindi, who had gone to Yarkand with Douglas Forsyth's mission of 1873–74, remembered Yarkand charas first being imported in 1852. He named a relative, Sardar Tara Singh, as the first of the Hindu traders to travel to Yarkand. Lachman Das, a merchant in the Ladakh trade, told the Commission that some of the charas reached the Punjab by Kulu and some by Kashmir and Rawalpindi.

Most of the Punjabi traders worked on borrowed money. R. B. Shaw, the British Joint Commissioner, wrote in 1872 that most of them paid 12 to 24 per cent a year for it and that even those who went no further than Leh could seldom repay a loan within a year.^: 340 Forsyth's mission to Yarkand of 1870 set out what a maund of charas cost and fetched. First-quality charas bought at Yarkand for Rs 50 cost Rs 30 more in hire and Rs 5 in duty and sold in India for about Rs 125. Inferior charas bought for Rs 10 cost Rs 42 delivered and sold for about Rs 50.^: 37 Jawala Bhagat, a licensed drug vendor of Hoshiarpur who had traded at Kulu, Ladakh and Yarkand, told the Commission that about 8,000 carriers went every year from the Jullundur and Hoshiarpur districts and that the Yarkand carriers and traders brought "about 18 or 20 thousand pony loads" of charas a year.^{: 518, 520} About two lakhs of rupees' worth reached the city of Hoshiarpur each year, according to a Hoshiarpur pleader. The excise contractors of the Punjab and the North-Western Provinces carried it on to those provinces.^: 493 Hermann Kreutzmann names the financiers of the trade as money-lenders from the Punjab and Sindh and the traders as communities of Amritsar and Hoshiarpur with some from Bajaur and Kashmir.^: 79 In 1937 the British consul-general at Kashgar, Kenneth Packman, counted about 130 traders among some 600 British subjects in Xinjiang, "mostly Hoshiarpuri Hindus, with a few Kashmiris and some Bajauri drug-pedlars". He wrote that they regarded 500 per cent as a fair profit.^: 79

Packing, quality and price

The resin travelled sewn in coarse cloth under a raw hide, in oblong packages of 60 seers (120 lb) with the corners of the cloth left free as handles. Aitchison wrote that loads that fell into a torrent were often recovered, being too heavy for the water to carry away.^: 53 It did not keep. In the heat of the Punjab, Aitchison wrote, charas lost its oil and turned into something like dry mud; adulterated charas did so faster.^: 52–53 By 1872 he found it adulterated with the mealy coat of Elaeagnus seed. He also found inferior lumps with pieces of good charas set into them to deceive buyers at Leh.^: 358–359

Prices swung from year to year. After two years of poor sales, Shaw reported in 1872, loads that sold for Rs 50 or 60 at Leh had lately fetched Rs 100 to 150 in the Punjab.^{: 339, 341} In 1892–93 charas sold at Kulu for Re 1-4 a seer against Rs 3 to 4 the year before; it usually entered the Punjab at Rs 2 to 4 a seer and was retailed at Rs 7 to 10.^: 49 Ramsay put the swings down to the licensing system. Only licence-holders could sell charas in the Punjab. Since the drug spoiled within about a year and could not be carried back up the passes, the traders had to take whatever the licence-holders offered.

Quantities

The returns counted different things and are not strictly comparable: charas arriving at Leh from Yarkand for 1867 to 1873, charas entering the Punjab in the 1890s and imports into British India by all routes for 1930 to 1932.

Year	Quantity	Value	What was counted
1867	1,830 maunds	Rs 68,590 at Leh	arrivals at Leh from Yarkand: 279–280
1868	1,136 maunds	Rs 42,600	arrivals at Leh from Yarkand: 301–302
1870	2,587 maunds	Rs 1,29,317	arrivals at Leh from Yarkand: 324
1871		Rs 74,320	arrivals at Leh from Yarkand: 358, 377
1872		Rs 53,425	arrivals at Leh from Yarkand: 358
1873		Rs 39,063	arrivals at Leh from Yarkand: 377
1874–75	615 maunds		imports from Yarkand, Joint Commissioner's statistics: 68
1875–76	1,147 maunds		imports from Yarkand, Joint Commissioner's statistics: 68
1890–91	2,201 maunds		into Hoshiarpur by the Kulu route
1891–92	3,242 maunds		into Hoshiarpur by the Kulu route
1892–93	3,932 maunds		into Hoshiarpur by the Kulu route; nearly 5,000 maunds by all routes: 48
1930	91,471 kg		into the Punjab from the Leh warehouse (1,976 maunds) and in bond from Chitral into the Punjab and Peshawar
1931	97,949 kg		imports into British India
1932	62,380 kg		imports into British India, the last year reported

In 1870 charas made up nearly 50 per cent of the value of imports from Turkestan to Leh; by 1873 it was less than 12 per cent, while gold, horses, jade, shawl wool and raw silk increased.^: 376–377 Kreutzmann's series of Xinjiang's exports to British India from 1895 to 1939 shows silk yarn and charas as the two largest by far.^: 80

Control

Seals, passes and licences

In the early 1870s, Aitchison wrote, all charas entering British territory had to be taken to the nearest magistrate to be weighed and sealed. The owner received a certificate of its weight. He could sell it legally only to a licensed wholesale purchaser, whose licence was bought at a public auction and credited to the excise revenue. He also needed a magistrate's permit to take it on to a market.^: 53 Rules framed under the treaty with the ruler of Yarkand, which eased the import of charas over the passes, were approved in 1873–74.^: 63 Under the Punjab's excise rules a merchant bringing charas over the passes needed a pass from the British Joint Commissioner at Leh, or from his Kashmir colleague or the deputy commissioner of the frontier district, giving the weight of the packages and of the charas. Charas that reached Kangra district without one was covered by a provisional pass from the tahsildar of Kulu until a regular pass could be issued at Dharamsala.^: 98 By the 1890s the pass was countersigned in every district the charas passed through and the package carried the deputy commissioner's seal. It could be opened only to sell part of the contents to the excise farmer. A package found open was liable to confiscation.^: 52 The traders themselves held no licence.^: 52 Jawala Bhagat described the procedure from the trader's side: the charas came from Yarkand into Ladakh without any permit, was weighed at Ladakh and given a permit there. It was weighed again on arrival at Rawalpindi, Kulu, Simla, Abbottabad or Sialkot, where any discrepancy was put right and the government seal was put on the consignment.^: 520

Within the limits of the annual fair at Palampur in Kangra the wholesale trade in charas was free. During the fair it could be bought and sold without passes.^: 98–99 A proposal of 1881–82 to put an import duty on charas was dropped. Sir Robert Egerton would not advocate it, since the drug was "a convenient article of merchandise for transport over mountainous roads" and its use in the Punjab was not increasing; Sir Charles Aitchison agreed. The Government of India accepted their view.^: 76

The treaty of 1870

On 2 May 1870 Douglas Forsyth, for the Government of India, and Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Jammu and Kashmir signed a treaty "for the development and security of trade with Central Asia". It provided for a survey of the routes from the British frontier at Lahaul to Yarkand, a free highway along whichever route was chosen and two Commissioners appointed each year, one by the British government and one by the Maharaja. The Maharaja agreed to abolish transit duties on goods carried through his territory in bond between Central Asia and India, on which bulk was not broken.^: 393–396 Under it Joint Commissioners were appointed to Ladakh, Cayley for the British and Pandit Bakshi Ram for Kashmir.^: 320

What officials thought of it

Ramsay wrote in 1888 that he and two predecessors had opposed fostering it because "all charas dealings partake rather of the nature of a gambling transaction than of legitimate trade". Aitchison called charas "this noxious poison" and urged an import duty heavy enough to end the trade almost entirely.^: 53–54 In his report for 1872 he judged the trade "doomed".^: 359 Shaw, in his report for 1873, called it "the bane of the trade" and "a perfect lottery", but advised leaving its decline to "the workings of natural causes" rather than discouraging it through the rules under which it was sold in India.^: 377

G. M. Ogilvie, the officiating Second Financial Commissioner of the Punjab, told the Commission that a duty "so high as to be practically prohibitive" would badly injure the Yarkand trade, because the Yarkandi trader took Punjab goods back in exchange for his charas. Since Yarkandi traders were said to be unable to pay a duty at the frontier and "it is the policy to foster this trade", he favoured taxing the drug where it was sold.^: 360–361 Thorburn suggested bonded warehouses (golas) where the tax could be collected from the buyers.^: 362 The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission concluded in 1894 that the import could be stopped without much difficulty, with the co-operation of the Kashmir Darbar, but that because charas was "the principal import from Yarkand" its prohibition "would paralyse, if not extinguish, the trade with this country". A Hoshiarpur witness told the Commission that the heaviest loss from prohibition would fall on "the traders of Hoshiarpur and Amritsar, who take merchandise to Ladakh and Yarkand and bring back charas".

Warehouses and the duty cut of 1928

By 1923, according to the Government of India's annual report, charas from Yarkand was deposited in a special warehouse at Leh and distributed from it. In 1930 it was brought into the Punjab under transport-in-bond passes issued by the British Joint Commissioner at Leh, by persons licensed by the Punjab government. Charas also came from Central Asia by way of Chitral, where a second warehouse was opened in 1926 to stop smuggling on that route. The annual report for 1928 recorded the duty in the Punjab, Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province and Delhi cut from Rs 60 to Rs 20 a seer to undercut the smugglers. Kreutzmann, from the Kashgar trade reports, gives the cut as from Rs 60 to Rs 20 a maund. He finds that charas exports from Xinjiang nearly doubled from 1927 to 1928.^: 80

The end of the trade

An end to charas cultivation in Yarkand was announced in 1909 and denied the next year.^: 82 The United Nations Secretariat, writing in 1953 from India's annual reports, concluded that the provincial government of Xinjiang, then romanised Sinkiang, prohibited the export of charas in 1934 on the instructions of the Chinese government, although the effect was not felt for several years. Kreutzmann dates the decisive steps to 1936: the export duty was raised from Rs 20 to Rs 200 a pony load. In January the head of the Kashgar administration announced that "the sale and transmission (export) of opium, Charas and wine is prohibited from today". Exports of charas then "nearly collapsed and never recovered".^{: 80, 82–83} The Central Charas (Import by Land) Rules came into force on 1 October 1935 and allowed imports only by prescribed routes and under authorisation.

Licit supplies in India lasted some years longer. In 1936 the Punjab rationed issues from its warehouses to other provinces and states on the basis of their average monthly consumption. Licit consumption in British India fell from 59,800 kg in 1937 to 33,884 kg in 1939 and 565 kg in 1944. The last 49 kg was consumed in 1945. In 1940 and 1941 the government of Kashmir State considered making charas itself because of the Chinese ban on exports from Yarkand. Smugglers turned to opium and to an inferior "garda charas" from Gardez in Afghanistan. India and Pakistan both prohibited the traffic after 1947. The Secretariat concluded that "the great charas traffic is now extinct".

See also

• Charas
• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission
• Karakoram
• Kullu Valley
• Ladakh
• Southern Xinjiang
• Yarkand