Talk:Cannabis in colonial India
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Scope
The article is organised by systems of control and the arguments about them, not as a chronology of rulers. Section 5 compares the provinces as the Hemp Drugs Commission found them in 1893; Burma and the princely states, which fit none of its groups, have sections of their own. The detail of Burma's prohibition belongs to a separate article on cannabis in colonial Burma. Events after 1947 are carried only as far as the end of the Naogaon trade and the repeal of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1930.
Sources
- The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1893–94): the report (vol. I), the appendices (vols. II and III), the evidence of witnesses (vols. IV to VII) and the two confidential supplementary volumes of 1895 (the Native States evidence and the answers from the Native Army). They were read in the text layers of the Internet Archive and Gokhale Institute scans; figures used in the article were read on the page images.
- Government papers: the Government of India's Collection of Papers relating to the Excise Administration of India (1890); the Commons return of 1893 on the consumption of ganja, which prints the papers of 1871–73 and Hem Chunder Kerr's report of 1877; the Government of India's Resolution No. 1369 Ex. of 21 March 1895; the report of the Indian Excise Committee (1905–06), the Government of India's orders on it (1907) and the two volumes of excise correspondence of 1914, all in one bound volume at the Gokhale Institute; the report of the Assam committee on opium and ganja consumption (1913).
- International control: W. W. Willoughby's Opium as an International Problem (1925), which prints the conference proceedings and the Indian Delegation's note in part; the 1925 Convention in the League of Nations Treaty Series; the Dangerous Drugs Act, 1930, in the India Code print; the United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics (1953 and 1957) in its web edition.
- Secondary works: Utathya Chattopadhyaya, Ganja Matters (2026); the chapters by Peter Hynd, Jamie Banks and Haggai Ram in Cannabis: Global Histories (2021); the chapters by Lambros Comitas, Michael Beaubrun and Jean Benoist in Cannabis and Culture (1975); James H. Mills, Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism (2000); R. N. and I. C. Chopra (1957); the two papers by A. M. Rahman and colleagues on the Naogaon trade (2022, 2023). Claims that rest on one of these alone are attributed in the article.
- Not used: James H. Mills's Cannabis Britannica (2003) has not been read for this article, and nothing is cited from it, including through other authors who rely on it.
Where the sources disagree
The Bengal model
The licence fee of 1860–61. The Commission's report (vol. I, para. 640) and the Bengal Excise Commissioner's historical sketch (vol. III, app. A) say a fixed fee of Rs. 4 "per mensem" was levied for each ganja licence. The dissents of Raja Soshi Sikhareswar Roy and Lala Nihal Chand say Rs. 4 "per maund". The article states the amount and the licence, not the period or unit.
The Governor-General's reply of 1798. Roy's dissent dates the Governor-General in Council's reply to the Board of Revenue's proposal to 22 March 1798; Nihal Chand's dissent dates it to 2 March 1798. Both, and the Commission, agree on the Board's letter of 29 May 1798, which the article quotes.
Duty or taxation per seer. The Government of India's despatch No. 29 of 1890 says the "rate of duty on ganja" rose from R2-6 a seer in 1870–71 to R8-5 in 1889–90. Its own table calls the same figures "taxation per seer", and they match the incidence of all taxation (duty and licence fees together), not the fixed duty. The Commission's table separates the fixed duty from the average total taxation, which it puts at Rs. 4-0-2 a seer in 1876–77 and Rs. 10-15-1 in 1892–93. The article quotes each in its own words.
Ganja shops in 1882–83. The Government of India's note of 1887 gives 3,126 ganja shops in Bengal for 1882–83; despatch No. 29 of 1890 and the Commission's table give 3,271. The article uses only the Commission's twenty-year comparison, from 4,398 to 2,672 shops.
Bengal's hemp-drug revenue in 1892–93. The Bengal Excise Commissioner's memorandum (vol. III, para. 60) gives the hemp drugs' share of an excise revenue of 115 lakhs as 24¼ lakhs, about 21 per cent; the fraction reads ¼ on the page image.
Colonial medicine
"Delirium" in 1839, "insanity" in 1842. O'Shaughnessy's Calcutta pamphlet of 1839 heads the passage "Delirium occasioned by continued Hemp Inebriation" and speaks of "the singular form of delirium". The reprint in The Bengal Dispensatory (1842) heads it "Insanity occasioned by continued Hemp Inebriation" and speaks of "the singular form of insanity" and "any other species of madness"; the clinical description and treatment are unchanged. The Hemp Drugs Commission (vol. I, para. 491) quotes the 1842 wording as O'Shaughnessy's and judges the cases "probably more of the character of intoxication than of insanity". The article gives both wordings with their dates.
How well the drug worked. In 1839 O'Shaughnessy wrote that the resin could arrest tetanus "in a large proportion of cases" and effect "a perfect cure"; the 1842 text says "in many cases" and drops the cure, adding Raleigh's fatal cases in footnotes. The Commission (vol. I, para. 461) says he used the resin "with more or less success in hydrophobia and cholera"; his 1839 text records one hydrophobia patient, who died, and calls the cholera cases "inconclusive". The article quotes O'Shaughnessy's own texts.
The Commission's quotations. Where the Commission's report quotes O'Shaughnessy, its wording follows the 1842 Bengal Dispensatory in some places ("to us", "insanity", "in many cases") and neither text in others ("crowded the brain" for "crowded the mind"; "easily roused" for "readily roused"). It names no edition. The article quotes O'Shaughnessy from his own texts, not from the Commission.
Insanity, crime and the enquiries
The share of 1892 admissions due to hemp drugs. The Commission (vol. I, ch. XII) accepted 98 of 1,344 admissions in 1892 (7.3 per cent), or 4.5 per cent without the "mixed" cases, after re-examining the 222 attributed to hemp drugs. Nihal Chand's dissent takes the 222 as recorded (16.5 per cent) and gives 238 of 1,266 for 1893 (18.7 per cent). The gap is the 124 cases the Commission rejected. The article states both, attributed.
The Central Provinces reply of 1872. The Chief Commissioner's letter says the popular belief in permanent insanity is "not altogether borne out" by the asylum statistics; the Government of India's Resolution of 17 December 1873, summarising it, says "not borne out". The article quotes the letter.
The 1873 Resolution as quoted. Resolution No. 3773 says it was not "specifically proved" that hemp incites to crime and that "there is some evidence" of occasional useful use. The Government of India's letter of 9 August 1892 quotes the passage with "there is evidence"; the Commission (vol. I, para. 556) with "specially proved". The article quotes the Resolution itself.
Dr Penny's report of 1872. The 1893 return prints J. C. Penny's figures in the Punjab reply, signed as Civil Surgeon, Delhi. James H. Mills (2000, p. 52) calls it a report on the Patna asylum and later (p. 59) places it at Delhi. The article follows the return.
Four systems of control
The four groups. The article sorts the provinces of 1893 by what their law did: whether cultivation was licensed and confined with a duty taken at source (Bengal, Assam, the Central Provinces, Berar), free with only the sale controlled (Madras, Bombay, Sind, the North-Western Provinces and Oudh), absent with the supply imported (the Punjab, Ajmere-Merwara, Coorg, Quetta-Pishin), or prohibited (Burma). The Commission's report does not group them this way; its chapters XV and XVI take the provinces one by one. The grouping follows the report's own summary of each province's control of cultivation, manufacture and duty (vol. I, para. 632).
Charas imported into the Punjab. The Excise Commissioner, T. G. Walker, put the import at "about 4,000 maunds" a year, close on 5,000 in the year before he wrote (vol. III, p. 46). The Commission gives 5,000 maunds for 1892–93, ordinarily 3,000 to 4,000 (vol. I, para. 300). An Amritsar witness, Lachmi Sahai, estimated nearly 4,900 a year (vol. V). The article gives Walker's figure as his.
Charas into the North-Western Provinces. The registered import was 2,251 maunds, which the Commission thought "probably unduly enhanced"; it adopted the Excise Commissioner's 1,100 or 1,200 maunds a year (vol. I, para. 293). The article gives neither figure.
Bombay's area under ganja. The Commission's report gives Bombay's cultivation as 874 acres on a five-year average in one chapter (ch. XV) and 1,000 acres on a five-year average in its summary table (ch. IV), and about 1,100 acres for the Deccan with its states (ch. VII). The article gives no acreage for Bombay.
The Khandwa crop. The acreage under ganja in Nimar is given differently by the Commissioner of Excise, the Deputy Commissioner of Nimar, a Nagpur excise officer and the Commission's own chapters (for 1891–92 alone, 653 or 963 acres). The article gives no acreage for Khandwa.
Who smoked ganja in Assam. Officers in 1893 disagreed. J. D. Anderson, the Excise Commissioner, wrote that ganja was consumed in the Assam Valley "chiefly by foreigners", meaning immigrant labour, and others called the Assamese non-consumers; some witnesses said the Assamese were taking to it. The article leaves the question aside.
Bombay's sea export. The Commission's table of exports from Bombay ports gives an average of 3,246 maunds a year by sea for 1890–91 to 1892–93. The paragraph that follows it, distributing the Presidency's own produce, gives 1,500 maunds "exported by sea". The article gives the table's average.
Burma
When the prohibition began. The Government of India's Resolution No. 3773 of 17 December 1873 says that the cultivation and consumption of ganja in British Burma had been prohibited "from the beginning of the year 1873-74". The article gives that wording. The other sources date it differently; none of them notes the difference:
- 1872: the Chief Commissioner, quoted in the Government of India's note of 1887, says licences were issued "up to the year 1872", after which cultivation, sale and possession were prohibited.
- 1872-73: the Commission's report, vol. I, ch. III para. 73 ("Ganja was made contraband in Lower Burma in 1872-73") and ch. XVI p. 341.
- 1873: vol. I ch. XVI para. 692 ("put into force in the year 1873") and the 1878 letter it quotes; ch. XIV para. 556 and the 1895 Resolution para. 32 ("total prohibition was introduced in 1873"); Lala Nihal Chand's dissent ("from the beginning of 1873"); E. Lewis's report in vol. III; and, in vol. VII, D. Sinclair and K. G. Burne.
- 1872-74: S. H. T. de la Courneuve, Deputy Commissioner of Pakokku (vol. VII).
- "Twenty years" before 1893, a round figure: C. B. Cooke, G. S. Eyre, H. Adamson and J. S. D. Fraser (vol. VII).
The prohibition order itself (its number, date and text) is printed in none of these volumes. Two witnesses, H. R. Spearman and C. B. Cooke, name Ashley Eden as its author.
Whether the prohibition worked. The officers who gave evidence in 1893 divided. H. Adamson, G. S. Eyre, W. N. Porter, S. H. T. de la Courneuve and J. K. Macrae judged it effective, at least among Burmans. J. E. Bridges, A. M. B. Irwin and H. R. Spearman saw little or no effect. A. L. Hough thought it successful on the whole but asked whether opium had taken ganja's place. C. B. Cooke and J. S. D. Fraser separated the two populations: effective for Burmans, not for "natives of India". The Commission found it "not effectual"; Lala Nihal Chand's dissent called it "successful and of immense benefit to the country". The article gives each judgement to its author.
Where the smuggled ganja came from. The Commission names ports on the Madras coast, with Pondicherry prominent. R. G. Culloden of the Rangoon customs said the ganja came "principally from Madras, Cocanada, Bimlipatam, and other ports on the Madras Coast" and had not known it come from Pondicherry. E. Lewis, the Rangoon excise officer, said "The Madras smuggling is principally from the French settlement of Pondicherry." The article says only that it came chiefly from ports on the Madras coast, which all three accept.
The princely states
The groups in the table. The table groups the states by their part in the supply of hemp drugs, from the Commission's descriptions of each. The Commission itself groups only the Himalayan states in this way (vol. I, para. 697). It treats Nepal, which was not a princely state, alongside them. The table follows it. The Feudatory States of the Central Provinces sit with the regulated systems, not with the producers, because the Commission says cultivation there had stopped and the ganja came from the Government storehouse at Khandwa.
Gwalior and Dholpur. The 1895 Resolution (para. 14) lists "the Native States of Dholpur and Gwalior" among the places where cultivation was forbidden except under licence. The Commission's report says that "There appears to be no restriction of cultivation in the Central India Agency" (para. 703) and for Gwalior finds no restriction beyond a tax on the land (para. 143). For Dholpur the report says permission was needed to cultivate (paras. 141, 721), while the Dewan of Dholpur told the Commission that no hemp grew in the state at all.
Indore's export duty. The Commission's report (para. 704) and the Central Provinces excise memorandum give a duty of Rs. 7 a maund on exported ganja, fixed by the Darbar in 1879. The article uses that figure. The Indore State memorandum (vol. III) gives inward and outward duties on ganja of between 12 annas and Rs. 3-12-0 per rás of three maunds.
Hyderabad. The report says "There is no restriction of cultivation", though the growers had to sell to the licensee. E. J. Stephenson, Assistant to the Inspector-General of Police, told the Commission that "the plant is not grown except by licensed growers"; the state's own memorandum says both that no licence is required and that not everyone may grow hemp. The report and the state memorandum give a frontier duty of Rs. 10 a maund on ganja; the Deputy Commissioner of Customs gave Rs. 30 per pulla of 120 seers; the Director of Agriculture and Commerce gave Rs. 10 a maund on export. No source gives the number of seers in the Hyderabad maund, so the figures are not converted into one another.
Mysore. The report follows the Excise Commissioner, L. Ricketts: cultivation allowed under licence, licensed growing practically abandoned and illicit cultivation and smuggling not carried on "to any appreciable extent", though the report adds that "there seems some doubt". J. G. McDonnell, Special Assistant Excise Commissioner, said "Clandestine cultivation is, however, on the increase"; the Deputy Commissioners of Bangalore and Shimoga said cultivation was prohibited; the Tumkur officer said any agriculturist might grow hemp. The report quotes McDonnell on the state's dues as "Rs. 24 per Indian maund"; his memorandum printed in vol. III gives "Rs. 15 per maund of 25 lbs." and lacks the sentence on Mysore being "heavily handicapped" by smuggling, which appears in his answers in the Native States volume. The article quotes that sentence as the report gives it.
Travancore and the Madras states. The report says that "In the Native States under the Madras Government the system is much the same as in the Presidency itself." The two Travancore Dewan Peishkars describe a state monopoly under Regulation VI of 1063 (1888), with the right to deal in the hemp drug and opium sold by auction for two or three years. The sources do not settle whether that arrangement matched the Presidency's.
Kashmir. The report says Kashmir "apparently produces no charas properly so called"; the state's witness, a member of the State Council, describes a local preparation called garda, made from the wild plant. The state memorandum puts the yearly preparation at about 70 maunds and the yearly consumption at "about 63 maunds", calling that "the entire quantity".
Feudatory States of the Central Provinces. The report has ganja supplied to the chiefs at cost from the Government storehouse at Khandwa. The Raja of Bamra told the Commission that all the ganja used in his state came from the Government stores at Sambalpur. Neither source says whether Bamra was supplied differently from the other states. H. V. Drake-Brockman's memorandum (vol. III) gives a different account: under arrangements of 1880 the chiefs were to prohibit cultivation, three of them had not done so by 1887, and the chiefs drew their ganja from the wholesale vendors of the neighbouring Khalsa districts, selling it at no less than Rs. 3 a seer. The table follows the report.
Excise after the Resolution
Madras: the law and the confinement of cultivation. Peter Hynd writes that restrictions on hemp cultivation "existed in law from 1889" but that cultivation was confined to particular tracts only from 1898. Utathya Chattopadhyaya dates the licensing law to Act I of 1886 and says production moved within North Arcot to the Padavedu plains by 1907 and to Santaravur by 1911, moves within a system already confined. The Commission's report (vol. I, paras. 622–623) cites the Madras Abkari Act (I of 1886) but found that no rules on the drugs had been made under it and that cultivation was "not controlled" in 1893–94. Hynd places the confined tract at Bapatla in Guntur district; the Commission's witnesses place Bapatla in Kistna. The article gives Hynd's 1898, attributed.
Bombay: when cultivation was restricted. Hynd dates the restriction to two tracts in Satara and Ahmednagar to the Bombay Abkari Act Amendment of 1901. Chattopadhyaya writes that under Bombay Act V of 1878 cultivation was already restricted to Ahmednagar and Satara, where cultivators could get permits without a fee until 1896. The Commission's summary (vol. I, para. 632) says that in Bombay "Cultivation and manufacture not controlled", and T. D. Mackenzie's memorandum of 1893 says cultivation "is not prohibited by law in any district". Neither Act has been read. The article gives Hynd's account, attributed.
Madras consumption in 1913. The Madras Government's letter of 1913 gives consumption rising from 47.6 to 52.4 thousand seers. The Government of India's statement of hemp-drug consumption by province, printed with the 1914 correspondence, gives about 49.3 and 52.5 thousand seers for 1905–06 and 1912–13, read with difficulty on a poor scan. The Government of India's letter says its statements were recast and may differ from earlier provincial figures. The article gives the Madras letter's figures.
International control
Was India a separate signatory in 1925? The preamble of the Dangerous Drugs Act, 1930 says that India was "a State signatory" to the Geneva Convention. The signature list of the Convention printed by Willoughby has a line for the British Empire, signed by Malcolm Delevingne, and none for India, though the earlier agreement of 11 February 1925 in the same appendix carries an Indian line. Delevingne declared at signature that his signature did not bind those parts of the Empire that were separate members of the League. The signature pages of the League of Nations Treaty Series would settle the point; the article quotes the Act's preamble.
How the 1930 Act defined cannabis. The Act defines "hemp", taking in the leaves, small stalks and flowering or fruiting tops of the plant, "including all forms known as bhang, siddhi, or ganja", and charas, the resin; it does not use the words female or pistillate, which belong to the 1925 Convention's definition of "Indian hemp". Ganja Matters (2026) describes the Act in three ways: as using "hemp drug" to define the entire plant, "now placed in the same schedule as opium and cocaine" (p. 218); as a definition that "named only the female flowering cannabis plant" (p. 225, of a 1982 scheme for growing male plants); and as defining ganja, bhang and charas "as intoxicating and dangerous" (p. 227). The same book says bhang's religious use left it in a "gray zone" of the Act and that India argued at Geneva for excepting bhang; the Indian Delegation's note as Willoughby prints it cites "social and religious customs" and does not use the word bhang, and Willoughby may not print the note whole. The article follows the Act's text.
Did the 1930 Act prohibit hemp drugs? Ganja Matters says on p. 218 that "hemp drugs" became prohibited substances except for controlled research and small religious use, and on p. 227 that "under colonial rule the state did not prohibit hemp drugs". The Act licenses import, export and transhipment, licenses external trade and saves provincial law that restricts consumption or traffic more strictly; its cultivation clauses concern coca and the poppy. The article states what the Act provides.
The League and the export of charas. In the Bengal Legislative Council in 1931 Keshab Chandra Banerji said, as Chattopadhyaya reports him, that the "League of Nations has prohibited the export of charas to all countries". Article 11 of the 1925 Convention prohibits the export of the resin only to countries that have prohibited its use and requires import certificates elsewhere.
How much debate the hemp article had. Ganja Matters says cannabis was scheduled with opium and cocaine "without much debate at the League of Nations". Willoughby's record has the question raised at one meeting, disputed, sent to a sub-committee whose stricter text was dropped, redrafted by a special sub-committee and adopted at the last meeting, with Siam signing under a reservation on hemp.
A ban or a trade control? Haggai Ram calls the 1925 Convention "the 1925 ban on cannabis". Its Article 11 controls international trade, and Willoughby concluded that no undertaking limited or controlled production. The article quotes both.
When and why charas imports ended. The United Nations Secretariat's article of 1953 traces the end of the licit import to the Chinese authorities: the provincial government of Sinkiang prohibited the export of charas in 1934, though the full effect was not felt for several years. It quotes India's annual report for 1942, "Supplies of the drug have now ceased", and gives 1945 as the last year of licit consumption in India. R. N. and I. C. Chopra (1957) say instead that the import was "entirely prohibited by the Government of India", in one place "nearly two decades ago" and in another "about 1934-35". The article gives both accounts.
Hemp drugs and indentured emigration
Prohibition in Trinidad and Mauritius in 1893. Nihal Chand's dissent lists Trinidad and Mauritius among the countries where hemp drugs were prohibited, citing the Trinidad commission's report (para. 9); it suggests that the Commission's own list of precedents came from the temperance journal Abkari of July 1893. The Commission was "not sure" about Trinidad. Jamie Banks writes that Mauritius had prohibited cannabis in 1840 and legalised it again in 1883, and that Trinidad prohibited it in 1894 after the licence ordinance of 1885. Banks also quotes the Commission's own words on Trinidad ("hemp drugs are prohibited") as the words of Dr Thomas Ireland.
The Natal commission. The Commission's report and Nihal Chand's dissent name the Indian Immigrants Commission, Natal, 1885–87. Banks's text calls it "Natal's Wragg Commission of 1891", though his own note gives the report as that of 1885–1887. The article uses the dates of the Commission's report.
Partition
When cultivation ended in Bangladesh. Rahman and colleagues (2022) say in their text that ganja has not been grown in Naogaon since 1987; their Table 1, from an earlier Bengali source, has cultivation banned in 1984 and sales in 1987; their 2023 paper says both 1989 and 1987. Chattopadhyaya writes that the government and the courts "rigorously clamped down" after 1974. The article says only that cultivation ended in the 1980s.
Losses after 1947. Chattopadhyaya, citing Mohammad Afzal's history of 1970, has more than three-fourths of the licensed ganja products burnt or lost between 1947 and 1950. Rahman and colleagues give Naogaon's production as 170 tonnes in 1947 and about 21 tonnes in 1951. The two measure different things and are not set against each other.
Limits of the record
- Before Company rule. The article gives no tax on hemp drugs before British rule: the dissents of 1894 that argue the question cite law books and Persian histories on liquor, not on hemp drugs. The account of a Mughal market tax is the historian Utathya Chattopadhyaya's, without a primary source named.
- Two European travellers not used. John Fryer (1698) mentions bang at Surat and a drink of hemp juice and datura given to prisoners; the Dutch traveller Linschoten's English translation (1598) lists bangue among traded drugs. Both passages have been read on page images, but the title pages of the copies, and in Linschoten's case the page that names the market, have not yet been checked, so neither is cited.
- O'Shaughnessy's case details. The dates and doses of O'Shaughnessy's individual cases in 1838–39 are known from the text layer of the scan only; they are left out of the article until read on the page images.
- The asylum reports themselves. The provincial asylum reports of the 1860s and 1870s (Bengal 1868, 1870, 1874, 1875; Cuttack 1875; Dullunda 1867; Central Provinces 1880) are known here only through the 1893 return, the Commission's report and James H. Mills's book; the article cites the first two.
- Banks's "30 per cent". Jamie Banks (2021) writes that Robert Grieve, of the Berbice asylum in British Guiana, cited a suggestion by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal that 30 per cent of the lunacy in the province came from cannabis. No such statement appears in the Bengal papers of 1871–73 printed in 1893; the nearest is the Bengal Government's report that asylum officers believed "a considerable proportion" of their patients had gone mad from ganja. The figure is not used.
- The 1895 order for Sind. The Resolution's list of measures (para. 47) names Bengal, the Central Provinces, the North-Western Provinces, Madras, Bombay, Berar, Ajmere, Coorg and the Punjab, but not Sind; the table says "Not named".
- Duties in the small administrations. The report gives no duty rate for Ajmere-Merwara, Coorg or Quetta-Pishin; their revenue came from the sale of the vend monopoly.
- Burma after 1895. The 1895 Resolution referred licensed sale to "natives of India" in Burma to the Chief Commissioner. The outcome of that reference is not in the papers used for the article. The article says nothing about Burma between 1895 and its separation from India in 1937.
- Burma before the prohibition. No area, yield, licence or revenue figures for the licensed vend before 1872 were found in the volumes used.
- The princely states' own memoranda. The confidential volume of 1895 prints a state's system only where a witness answered the Commission's questions 58 to 70; it carries no state memorandum. Several state memoranda in vol. III (among them Gwalior, Bhopal, Rewa, Bundelkhand, Nepal, Travancore, Kolhapur and most of the Rajputana states) were not read for the article, so the table gives the report's account of those states.
- The princely states after 1895. The sources used for this section cover neither how far the states adopted the 1895 order nor their arrangements up to 1947.
- Fasli years. Hyderabad's revenue figures are dated in Fasli years in the evidence; they are not used in the article.
- The 1930 Act's text. The date of assent, the long title and preamble, section 2(c) (the definition of hemp, including charas), section 7 (import, export and transhipment) and section 39 (the saving of provincial law) were read on the page images of the Act's original print, as published in the India Code. The Act did not fix the date on which it came into force: section 1 left it to a notification, which was not read, so the article gives none.
- Willoughby's figures. The dates of the Geneva meetings and other figures in Willoughby's book are known from the text layer of the scan only; the article leaves them out and dates the Convention from the League of Nations Treaty Series.
- The Dangerous Drugs Bill. The Legislative Assembly debates on the bill are not in the volumes of 1930 that were read.
- Statements of 1914. The Government of India's statements of hemp-drug consumption and taxation by province, 1905–06 to 1912–13, are printed on a poor scan; the article uses the provincial letters' own figures instead. Burma's row in the consumption statement is blank.
- Consumption after 1912. R. N. and I. C. Chopra (1957) give consumption figures for British India from 1912–13 to 1954, which are known from the text of the web edition only; they are not used, and the paper's two totals for 1954 differ (924,051 and 924,015 lb).
- Bengal politics, 1921–1949. The Bengal Legislative Council proceedings, the Congress resolution of 1931, the Constituent Assembly debates and H. C. Mookerjee's articles are known only through Ganja Matters; the article attributes them.
- Ganja shipped toward the colonies. The Commission's trade tables name London, Liverpool, Marseilles, Aden, Muscat, Zanzibar and unnamed foreign ports, and no colony of indenture. Kerr's report of chur sold to the crews of Mauritius-bound ships is the only Indian record of supply toward such a colony in the volumes used. The colonial records that Jamie Banks cites have not been read.
- After 1947. Rahman and colleagues' figures rest on the Ganja Society's stock book and on Bengali works that have not been read; Mohammad Afzal's history of 1970 is known through Ganja Matters.
Images reserved in the article
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File:Cannabis-colonial-India-systems-of-control-1893.jpg(lead), a map to be drawn: British India and the princely states around 1893, each province of the article's first table shaded by its group in section 5 (cultivation confined and taxed at source: Bengal, Assam, the Central Provinces, Berar; cultivation free and the sale controlled: Madras, Bombay, Sind, the North-Western Provinces and Oudh; supplied by import: the Punjab, Ajmere-Merwara, Coorg, Quetta-Pishin) and Burma hatched for prohibition. Labels from the table only.File:OShaughnessy-1839-On-the-preparations-of-the-Indian-hemp-title-page.jpg(Hemp in colonial medicine): the title page of O'Shaughnessy's On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah (Calcutta: Bishop's College Press, 1839), from the Wellcome Library copy (archive.org b29342648, Public Domain Mark).File:Cannabis-colonial-India-asylum-admissions-1892.jpg(Insanity, crime and the enquiries): a diagram of asylum admissions in British India in 1892: 1,344 admissions; 222 attributed to hemp drugs; of those, 98 accepted by the Commission and 124 rejected (vol. I, ch. XII). Every label must match the article's figures.File:Spontaneous-growth-of-bhang-public-gardens-Amritsar-1894.jpg(Four systems of control): the Commission's plate "The spontaneous growth of bhang in the public gardens, Amritsar", 23 April 1894 (vol. I; Wellcome scan of the 2010 facsimile, page image n52, CC BY 4.0; the original is in the public domain). The caption in the article repeats the plate's printed caption; the alt text should describe the plants and the garden as the plate shows them.File:Cannabis-colonial-Burma-ganja-smuggling-routes-1890s.jpg(Burma), a map to be drawn: Burma and the Bay of Bengal around 1890, with arrows for the routes officials described to the Commission: by steamer and parcel post from the Madras coast ports (Madras, Cocanada, Bimlipatam) and from Calcutta to Rangoon, Moulmein and Akyab; from Chittagong into Arakan; overland from the Shan States towards Mandalay; and across the Siamese frontier in Mergui district. Elephant Point, at the mouth of the Rangoon river, may be marked as the place where steamer crews were said to throw floating tins of ganja overboard.File:Cannabis-princely-states-hemp-drug-roles-1893.jpg(The princely states), a map to be drawn: an outline of British India around 1893 with each state named in the article's table as a dot, coloured by its group: producing and exporting (Gwalior, Indore, Hyderabad, the Orissa Tributary States), regulated excise systems (Mysore, Baroda, the Feudatory States of the Central Provinces, Travancore), supplied by import (the Rajputana states, the states of the Punjab) and Himalayan (Kashmir, Tehri Garhwal, Nahan, Nepal). Labels from the table only.File:Cannabis-colonial-India-hemp-drug-sea-exports-and-indenture-destinations.jpg(Hemp drugs and indentured emigration), a map to be drawn: lines from Calcutta and Bombay to the ports the Commission names for ganja shipped by sea in the early 1890s (London, Liverpool, Marseilles, Aden, Muscat, Zanzibar), and dots at the colonies named in the section (Trinidad, British Guiana, Jamaica, Mauritius, Réunion, Natal), with no route drawn to them.