Sadhu
More actions
A sadhu (Sanskrit sādhu; a woman is a sādhvī) is a Hindu renouncer, a holy man or woman who has left household life for a religious discipline. Many sadhus smoke ganja or charas in a clay chillum or drink bhang. The historian of religion Stuart Sarbacker finds routine cannabis use "extensive among renouncer (sādhu and sādhvī) communities in India as a sacramental substance and a social glue". He also finds "debate within and among sādhu communities", some of which prohibit it.[1]: 79 Ascetics held the hemp plant to be "a special attribute of the god Siva", the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission reported in 1894.[2] The place of cannabis in Hindu worship as a whole is the subject of Cannabis in Hinduism.
The Commission found that ganja and charas were chiefly used by "religious" persons, among them fakirs, wandering mendicants and sadhus. Most people, it found, were "even strongly in favour" of their use by religious persons.[3]: 194–195 Ganja and charas are now prohibited in India and Nepal. In Nepal the use of cannabis has been tolerated during festivals such as Maha Shivaratri at Pashupatinath.[4]: 10 In India a legal commentator wrote in 2026 that enforcement against ascetics at the Kumbh Mela is rare.[5]
Orders
John Campbell Oman, a former professor at Lahore who wrote on Hindu ascetics in 1903, divided the sects that made up "the great bulk of the wandering sadhus of India" into worshippers of Shiva and worshippers of Vishnu.[6]: 152 Among the Shaiva orders the sannyasis were "generally held" to fall into ten sub-orders, the Dashanamis, each with its own name: Giri, Puri, Bharati, Ban, Aranya, Parvat, Sagar, Tirath, Ashram and Saraswati.[6]: 153 The historian Sutapa Bhattacharya traces the rise of the Dashanami ascetics to military power in the 18th century, as the Mughal administration declined. Among them the celibate Nagas, named from nanga, "naked", took five gurus at initiation: the Mantra, Langoti, Bibhuti, Trishul and Bija gurus.[7]: 193, 204 A Punjab witness before the Commission found charas smoking "most common, and most carried to excess among the different Saiva orders of Hindu sadhus", naming the Nagas, gosains, bairagis and jogis.[8]: 384 In a survey of 200 sadhus at Pashupatinath in 2014, members of the Naga order were the more likely to give cannabis to devotees.[4]: 11
The yogis of the Nāth order trace their discipline to the teacher Gorakṣanātha, after whom cannabis is called in some contexts "Gorak's Root".[1]: 80 Oman saw yogis at the installation of a new head of a Gorakhnathi temple slip away "to have a pull at the churrus pipe".[6]: 256 Their legends of bhang are set out under Shiva.
The name bairagi (vairāgī, "without attachment") is applied to Vaishnava mendicants generally.[6]: 189 Oman called the bairagis "probably the most numerous order" of the Ramanandi sect and wrote that they "do not eat meat or drink spirits, but are commonly addicted to bhang".[6]: 189 N. K. Bose, a magistrate in the Noakhali district of eastern Bengal, told the Commission that "travelling bairagis" were the largest single group of ganja consumers in his district.[9]: 167
Oman counted the Aghoris among the Shaiva sects.[6]: 152 A Calcutta witness before the Commission set them apart from other mendicants: "A mendicant who does not belong to the Aghori sect or to the Tantrik liturgy would not touch wine, and with him, therefore, the only cheap intoxicating principle is ganja."[10] The Tantric use of cannabis is treated in Tantric cannabis use in India.
Chillum, bhang and the fire
Ganja and charas are smoked in the chillum, which is passed from hand to hand. R. N. Chopra of the Indian Medical Service wrote in 1940 that hemp smoking in India "is always preferred and enjoyed in the company of others", each smoker taking two or three pulls before passing the pipe on. Sadhus and fakirs visiting shrines, he found, usually carried bhang or ganja with them and were often seen "sitting in a circle and enjoying a smoke of ganja" near a temple or a mosque.[11]: 360–361 The Commission reported a custom at religious gatherings in Upper India by which mendicants hung "a huge chillum containing a ser or more" of charas from a tree "so that all comers may partake of it".[12]: 155
Charas smokers among the ascetics kept their chillums "stowed away somewhere about their persons", Oman wrote; "confirmed bhang-drinkers will not find a stone mortar and wooden pestle too burdensome, even when wayfaring".[6]: 42 One of the photographs in his book shows a bairagi outside his hermitage, "busy grinding, in a stone mortar, some dried leaves of the hemp plant (cannabis Indica) preparatory to infusion in cold water".[6]: 44 Shaiva sannyasis, he wrote, lit a fire wherever they sat and smoked ganja beside it.[6]: 154
Reasons given for the drug
A zamindar from Muzaffarpur told the Commission that sadhus took ganja against "the injurious effects of bad climate" on pilgrimage. For the tapasvi and naga sadhus who kept no clothes on their bodies and did not live in houses even in winter, he said, "ganja-smoking is a matter of necessity in order to warm them".[13] The Commission found the use of hemp to stave off hunger "especially found among wandering mendicants".[3]: 182 Chopra in 1940 put "religious mendicants (sadhus and fakirs) and the priestly classes" in a group of their own, who used the drugs "to overcome the feeling of hunger and in order to help them to concentrate on religious and meditational objectives".[11]: 366
An excise inspector gave the Commission a Bengali proverb: "The jogi smokes for the concentration of thought necessary for joge, and for pronouncing the name of Hari".[9]: 49 The Commission wrote that hemp drugs "are used by ascetics in this country with the ostensible object of destroying sexual appetite".[3]: 179 Sarbacker, citing Patricia Morningstar, reports a belief among some sadhus that cannabis calms "the vacillations of the mind" and supports chastity and the retention of the "seminal drop" (bindu) among practitioners of haṭha yoga.[1]: 79 Bhattacharya writes that ganja helped the celibate Nagas of the 18th century in a "psychic transcendence that mellowed and reduced their instinctive desire for physical pleasures". She also holds, from her own conversations with ascetics, that ganja and charas went with the ritual sexual practices of some sects.[7]: 205, 209
Of the 200 sadhus surveyed at Pashupatinath during Shivaratri in February 2014, 90 per cent reported daily use, most often for meditation. They also named relaxation, protection from the cold, digestion, concentration and the control of sexual urges.[4]: 11 A witness from the Allahabad district told the Commission in 1893 that hemp smoking, "though not considered right in a Brahman, is not considered to be disreputable or inconsistent in an ascetic" and was even held "necessary to the formation of his character".[14]
Other witnesses denied that the drug had any religious standing. A temperance secretary at Faridpur granted that many jogis, sannyasis and fakirs smoked ganja but held that it formed "no part of their religion".[15]: 275 A witness quoted by Lala Nihal Chand, one of the commissioners, wrote that "there is no social or religious obligation to take these drugs even amongst Bairagis and Gusains".[16]: 439 In the 2014 survey 13.5 per cent of the sadhus said that Shiva had said cannabis should be used.[4]: 12
Growing and giving
In the Punjab the Commission concluded that cultivation was "for the most part carried on by consumers, of whom a very large proportion are fakirs and religious characters".[17]: 70 In the hill villages of Garhwal the people made a little charas, which they "do not commonly sell, but give to fakirs visiting Badrinath and Kedarnath".[18]: 41 A Punjab official heard that the bhang reaching the south-east of the province came from Garhwal and that Hindu sadhus gathered hemp tops for sale to local dealers.[8]: 383 In Nepal in the early 1970s the anthropologist James Fisher found that "it is an act of merit for a layman to donate cannabis to a sädhu", so that many households kept a few plants to give to passing ascetics.[19]: 249–250 A verse text of the Trinath cult of Bengal, in Utathya Chattopadhyaya's translation, makes ascetics the bringers of the plant to India: "Ascetics who brought it, with purity of heart, / Fulfill their desires by consuming it."[9]: 165
Early accounts
A farce in Sanskrit, the Dhūrtasamāgama, dated by different scholars between the 14th and the early 16th century, has a Shaiva mendicant offer his bag of ganja to a judge as a deposit.[20]: 247–248[21]: 61
The Serampore missionary William Ward visited the island of Ganga-Sagar in January 1806. He found two bairagis living in log huts on the sands, one of whom sat on a deer's skin before a fire "squeezing the leaf of an intoxicating plant called ganja, which he afterwards smoked".[22]: 376–377 Ward wrote of the ascetics he called Ramatis, worshippers of Rama who wandered to holy places in large companies, many of them armed, that "they smoke intoxicating herbs to great excess". The Nagas, in his account, were "in almost every respect the same".[22]: 372 His sentence that "a great number of the Hindoo modern saints live in a state of perpetual intoxication" comes in a list of Hindu practices that he condemned.[22]: 358
George Weston Briggs, in his 1938 study of the Nāth yogis, wrote that "the Yogis are notorious as drug addicts", a judgement that is his own.[23]: 347
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission
The Commission reported "the almost universal use of hemp drugs by fakirs, jogis, sanyasis, and ascetics of all classes, and more particularly of those devoted to the worship of Siva".[2] In its chapter on the effects of the drugs it judged the use by other classes "generally moderate", except "in the case of religious mendicants".[3]: 194 It found that "by far the greater part of the community abstain from any disapproval, and in fact are even strongly in favour, of the use of these drugs by religious persons, although that use is so often excessive". Many witnesses, it wrote, shared the view that "Sanyasis are respected by the people; low caste people are not respected." A Bengal witness told of persuading the people of one town to dissociate ganja from holiness, so that a sannyasi he convicted of habitual ganja use "was laughed out of the town".[3]: 195
The Commission held that ascetics coloured the evidence of harm. Much of what witnesses said about injury to the constitution was "based on what the witnesses know of fakirs and wandering mendicants who consume the drugs". The use by such mendicants, it wrote, "is better known to the community generally than the use by any other class". The thin appearance that came from their life of exposure and privation was "often associated in the mind of the witness with the use of hemp and not with the life that really produces it".[3]: 202–203
Several witnesses and one of the commissioners warned that the ascetics would resent prohibition. A pleader from Patna wrote that it "will affect Naga Sadhus, who are very assertive of their rights and fearlessly bold" and might lead to "some sort of political danger".[24] A zamindar in the Central Provinces thought that the sadhus "would feel it an interference with their religion".[25] Raja Soshi Sikhareswar Roy, who favoured the eventual prohibition of ganja, would not advocate a sudden one, because of the "dissatisfaction which it may likely cause to a class of people known as sanyasis, bairagis, and fakirs, whose facilities for giving trouble are very great owing to their peculiar position and habits of life".[26]: 379 The Commission's general conclusion on interference with religious usage and the warning of J. M. Campbell in its third volume, are set out in Cannabis in Hinduism.
Fairs and pilgrimage
J. B. Thomson, the collector of Allahabad, told the Commission that anyone wishing to judge the physical effects of the drugs could look at "the fakirs at the Magh Mela in Allahabad", who were large consumers, "and you have only to look at them to see how robust and stout they are".[27] At the Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj in 2019 the journalist Aditya Iyer watched Naga sadhus in the camps of the akharas sit in circles round burning embers and light "clay pipes filled with hashish" before the royal bath, the Shahi Snan.[28]
Pashupatinath in Kathmandu draws sadhus from Nepal and the neighbouring Indian states for Maha Shivaratri.[4]: 11 There the sadhus' own smoking has been allowed in most years, and selling to visitors has not.[29][30] The festival and the arrangements at the temple are set out in Maha Shivaratri.
Law and policing
India's Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 defines ganja as "the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (excluding the seeds and leaves when not accompanied by the tops)", which leaves bhang made from the leaves outside the definition.[31] Producing, possessing or selling ganja or charas is an offence under section 20.[32] Consuming a drug other than those listed for heavier punishment carries up to six months' imprisonment, a fine of up to 10,000 rupees or both.[33] In a 2026 commentary for the legal news site LiveLaw, Teghveer Singh wrote that the open use of charas or ganja by Naga sadhus and other ascetics at the Kumbh Mela "falls within the scope of the NDPS Act", but that "enforcement in these settings is rare".[5]
In March 2025 a sadhu who had drawn press attention at the Maha Kumbh at Prayagraj was detained in Jaipur with a small quantity of ganja, booked under the Act and released because the quantity was within the legal limit. He called the ganja prasad, an offering blessed by the god. Almost every baba at the Kumbh, he said, took ganja in that way.[34] In 2023 the government of Odisha ordered that ganja be used in no Shiva temple in the state.[35]
In Nepal the Narcotic Drugs (Control) Act of 1976 made cannabis illegal; in 2014 the authors of the Pashupatinath survey wrote that its use was "essentially tolerated without sanction during festivals such as Shivaratri".[4]: 10
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Sarbacker, Stuart (10 September 2026). "Psychoactives and psychedelics in yoga: historical contexts and contemporary culture". Journal of Contemplative Studies (1): 73–100. doi:10.57010/exia6450.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IX, "Social and religious customs", para. 435, pp. 160–161 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. X, "Effects – general observations", paras. 451–498, pp. 167–204 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Acharya, S.L.; Howard, J.; Pant, S.B.; Mahatma, S.S.; Copeland, J. (2014). "Cannabis, Lord Shiva and holy men: cannabis use among sadhus in Nepal". Journal of Psychiatrists' Association of Nepal. 3 (2): 9–14. doi:10.3126/jpan.v3i2.12379.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Singh, Teghveer (11 August 2026). "Cannabis, caste, and NDPS Act's unexamined asymmetry". LiveLaw. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 Oman, John Campbell (1905) [1903]. The Mystics, Ascetics, and Saints of India (2nd impression ed.). London: T. Fisher Unwin.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Bhattacharya, Sutapa (December 2025). "Wanderers, warriors and threshold: situating ascetic militarism in eighteenth century South Asia". Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh (Humanities). 70 (2): 193–214. doi:10.3329/jasbh.v70i2.87529.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. J. R. Drummond, Deputy Commissioner, Gurgaon". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. V: Evidence of Witnesses from North-Western Provinces and Oudh and Punjab. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 13, pp. 383–384 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Chattopadhyaya, Utathya (June 2026). Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India. Oakland: University of California Press. doi:10.1525/luminos.276. ISBN 9780520425699.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Pratapachandra Ghose, Registrar of Calcutta". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 98, p. 259 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chopra, R.N. (June 1940). "Use of hemp drugs in India". Indian Medical Gazette. 75 (6): 356–367. PMC 5208024. PMID 29013991.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. VIII, "Extent of use and the manner and forms in which the hemp drugs are consumed", paras. 415–429, pp. 154–158 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Raghunandan Prasad Sinha, Brahman, Zamindar, District Muzaffarpur". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 171, p. 390 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. J. Cockburn, Assistant Sub-Deputy Opium Agent, Meja Road, Allahabad District". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. V: Evidence of Witnesses from North-Western Provinces and Oudh and Punjab. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 4, p. 43 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. XIV, "The policy of hemp drug administration", paras. 553–590, pp. 265–290 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. "Note of dissent by Lala Nihal Chand", pp. 383–477 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. V, "Methods of cultivation and matters connected therewith", paras. 181–182, pp. 69–70 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. ch. IV, "Extent of cultivation, and its tendency to increase or decrease", paras. 103–108, pp. 40–42 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Fisher, James F. (1975). "Cannabis in Nepal: an overview". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 247–256. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.247.
- ↑ Grierson, George Abraham (1894). "Note on references to the hemp plant occurring in Sanskrit and Hindi literature". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–1894. Vol. III. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. pp. 246–249.
- ↑ Wujastyk, Dominik (2002). "Cannabis in Traditional Indian Herbal Medicine". In Salema, A. (ed.). Ayurveda at the Crossroads of Care and Cure. Lisbon: Centro de História de Além-Mar. pp. 45–73. ISBN 972-98672-5-9.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Ward, William (1815). A View of the History, Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos. Vol. II (2nd ed.). Serampore: Mission Press – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Briggs, George Weston (1938). Gorakhnāth and the Kānphaṭa Yogīs. The Religious Life of India. Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Publishing House; Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Babu Purnendu Narayan Sinha, Kayasth, Pleader and Zamindar, Bankipur, District Patna". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. IV: Evidence of Witnesses from Bengal and Assam. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 207, p. 447 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Diwan Prem Singh, Zamindar, Bilaspur District". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. VI: Evidence of Witnesses from Central Provinces and Madras. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 57, p. 107 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. I: Report. Simla: Government Central Printing Office. "Note of dissent by Raja Soshi Sikhareswar Roy", pp. 363–381 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). "Evidence of Mr. J. B. Thomson, Magistrate and Collector, Allahabad". Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94. Vol. V: Evidence of Witnesses from North-Western Provinces and Oudh and Punjab. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India. witness no. 2, p. 3 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Iyer, Aditya (February 2019). "Kumbh Mela: leaps of faith". Open. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "Cannabis Ban Snuffs Out Celebration for Nepal's Most Holy". Medindia. Agence France-Presse. 5 March 2011. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "Shivaratri yes, ganja no". Republica. 9 March 2013. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985(Act No. 61 of 1985), 1985, section 2(iii).India.
- ↑ The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985(Act No. 61 of 1985), 1985, section 20.India.
- ↑ The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985(Act No. 61 of 1985), 1985, section 27.India.
- ↑ "'IIT Baba' Abhay Singh detained in Jaipur for possession of cannabis, released soon after". India Today NE. 3 March 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2026.
- ↑ "Odisha: Government bans consumption of Ganja at Shiva shrines". Free Press Journal. Press Trust of India. 24 May 2023. Retrieved 13 November 2026.