Ganja Society
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Ganja Society, formally the Naogaon Ganja Cultivators' Co-operative Society Ltd (Bengali: নওগাঁ গাঁজা চাষি সমবায় সমিতি লিমিটেড), was the growers' cooperative that held the licensed ganja monopoly of the Ganja Mahal, the Bengal Presidency's sole permitted cannabis-cultivation tract, from its registration in 1917 until the prohibition of cultivation in 1987. Formed when the Naogaon cultivators collectively withdrew their cultivation licences in 1916, the society took over the purchasing, grading, warehousing and sale of ganja that had until then been managed through licensed brokers under direct Excise Department supervision, the member-cultivators thereby holding the monopoly collectively.[1][2]
The society was based at Naogaon, in what is now north-western Bangladesh. Its relationship to present-day West Bengal follows that of the Ganja Mahal itself: the cultivation tract and the cooperative both lay in the territory that became East Pakistan in 1947, while the downstream consumption markets and the wholesale and retail trade remained with West Bengal and Calcutta.[2] The cooperative outlasted the end of cultivation and continued in a reduced, custodial form into the twenty-first century.[2]
Formation
Before 1917 the cultivators of the Ganja Mahal worked within a monopoly administered directly by the Excise Department, selling their manufactured ganja at the Naogaon warehouses to licensed wholesale dealers, commonly through brokers, and depending on larger landholders and moneylenders for credit and for access to those buyers.[1] In 1916 the Naogaon growers collectively withdrew their cultivation licences, and in the following year they registered the Naogaon Ganja Cultivators' Co-operative Society under the Co-operative Societies Act, 1912.[1][2] The registration completed the transfer of the monopoly into the cultivators' own hands: thereafter the society, rather than individual brokers, held the right to purchase, grade, store and sell the tract's entire output, under the continuing supervision of the excise authorities.[3]
Organisation and governance
The society was run by a managing committee to which each of the Mahal's three cultivation circles, Muradpur, Kirtipur and Gobindapur, elected its own representatives, carrying the tract's existing three-circle structure into the cooperative's administration.[1][3] Grading of the ganja was handled by a separate committee of six members elected by the cultivators together with one manager appointed by the society, which classified the product into first, second and third grades.[3] The cooperative was monitored both by the government's co-operative administration and by the department responsible for narcotics and excise, reflecting its dual character as a registered cooperative and as the licensed holder of a narcotics monopoly.[3]
The society replaced the earlier temporary arrangements with a permanent office at Naogaon. Its foundation stone was laid in 1919 by the Excise Commissioner, and the completed building was opened on 16 February 1921 by Syed Nawab Ali Chowdhury, then a minister in the Government of Bengal.[2]
Operations
The society's commercial role lay within the same monopoly system that had operated before 1917, now run for the cultivators' collective account. It bought the manufactured ganja from the licensed growers, graded it, held it under bond in the Naogaon warehouses (gola) and sold it to wholesale dealers licensed in the consumption districts, the duty being levied as the drug left the warehouse.[3][2] The cultivation and manufacturing practices behind that output, and the downstream movement of the drug to market, are treated in Ganja Mahal and Bengal Presidency cannabis trade respectively. The profits of the trade, after the government's duty, were distributed among the member-cultivators.[2]
Socio-economic role
The wealth generated by the monopoly allowed the society to act well beyond a purely commercial body. Its funds supported schools and a dispensary in the cultivating area and provided stipends for students.[2] During a famine in Bengal in the 1940s the society drew about Rs 2 lakh from its funds to buy rice for the cultivating community, which is reported to have suffered fewer deaths than neighbouring areas as a result.[4] Much of the processing and packing labour on which the trade depended was done by women of the landless Santal community, who held no cultivation land in the tract.[3][4]
Decline and present status
The partition of 1947 placed the whole cultivation tract, and with it the society, in East Pakistan, while the consumption markets and the wholesale and retail trade remained in West Bengal; the loss of those markets sharply contracted the society's business.[2] The society's registered name was changed in 1965, and much of its pre-1951 documentation, including the records of the colonial and early Pakistan periods, was lost during the 1971 war of independence.[2][1] Cultivation continued, much reduced, until it was prohibited in 1987 in compliance with the obligations of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and licensed sales ended in 1989.[2]
After the end of cultivation the society continued to exist as a custodial body, its office run by a small staff and its warehouses and other properties no longer used for their original purpose.[2][4] Its surviving stock books and resolution books have become a principal source for the modern study of the Mahal, in the field-based work of A.M. Rahman and colleagues and the historical research of Utathya Chattopadhyaya.[3][5]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Chattopadhyaya, Utathya, "Naogaon and the world: Intoxication, commoditisation, and imperialism in South Asia and the Indian Ocean, 1840–1940," PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Rahman, A.M., Nemoto, K., Matsushima, K., Uddin, S.B. & Sarwar, A.K.M.G., "A History of Cannabis (Ganja) as an Economic Crop in Bangladesh from the Late 18th Century to 1989," Tropical Agriculture and Development 66(1), 2022, pp. 21–32.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Rahman, A.M.D., Matsushima, K., Uddin, S.B., Sarwar, A.K.M.G. & Nemoto, K., "Traditional Cultivation and the Production System of Cannabis by the Ganja Society in Naogaon, Bangladesh," Tropical Agriculture and Development 67(4), 2023, pp. 99–109.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Rahman, A.M.D., Matsushima, K., Uddin, S.B., Sarwar, A.K.M.G. & Nemoto, K., "Studies on Ethnobotany of Folk Customs for Cannabis in Naogaon, Bangladesh," Tropical Agriculture and Development 69(1), 2025, pp. 1–8.
- ↑ Chattopadhyaya, Utathya, Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India, University of California Press, Oakland, 2025. ISBN 978-0-520-42568-2.