Talk:Garhjat

Talk

Discussion for: Garhjat • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Garhjat treats the cannabis growing region of the hill districts of northern and western Odisha: the ganja grown in house plots in the Orissa Tributary States (the Garhjat) and in the neighbouring Central Provinces States in the 1890s, and the cannabis fields reported in the same districts since 2000. Its growing areas are Angul and Sonepur (no longer grown). The districts as administrative units are treated at their own pages, such as Angul District and Boudh District. Kandhamal District belongs to Eastern Ghats.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the region is mapped

• The 1890s. The Hemp Drugs Commission's witnesses for Bengal describe ganja grown across the Orissa Tributary States: H. P. Wylly (Vol. IV, witness 91: "Is grown in all the Orissa Gurjat Mahals"), A. C. Mukerjee (witness 63: "Ganja is regularly cultivated in all the Gurjat States"), K. B. Sen (witness 62: plants seen in Keonjhar, Dhenkanal, Athgarh, Tigiria, Baramba and Khandpara), H. G. Cooke (witness 8) and, for Angul, N. C. Naik and N. Das (witnesses 73 and 34). The Commission's report (Vol. I, para. 96) concludes that homestead growing in the Garhjat was "quite uncontrolled and extremely common". On the Central Provinces side, the Diwan of Sonepur (Vol. VI, witness 13) describes growing in the Sonepur State until 1889 and in the Boad State after it, and the Central Provinces memorandum (Vol. III, paras. 64–65) describes ganja from Boad and Gangpur smuggled into Sambalpur.
• Since 2000. The Comptroller and Auditor General's audit of 2018 (para. 3.4.9) names Angul, Boudh, Deogarh and Sambalpur among the eight districts where cultivation continued from 2014–15 to 2016–17. OrissaPOST reports the 2017–18 destruction figures for Angul and Boudh (21 January 2018), the Handapa and Thakurgarh fields in Angul (26 November 2020) and 52,000 plants destroyed in Boudh (16 October 2026); OdishaTV reports fields destroyed in Sundargarh (11 November 2025) and Keonjhar (29 January 2026).
• No source read calls the Garhjat a cannabis region in so many words. The region is the frame that joins the 1890s tract and the recent fields, which lie in the same districts. The name is the one the 1890s sources use for the tract and its ganja (Garhjat, Gurjat).

Growing status

The status is Active: cultivation is reported from 2014–15 to 2016–17 and fields were destroyed in 2025 and 2026. No source read gives a first year for the growing. The earliest dated mention of it is the Government of Bengal's order of 19 October 1878 against cultivation within three miles of the British frontier (Mukerjee; Sen), which shows the crop was grown then. Sonepur, inside the region, is no longer grown: its Diwan said cultivation there stopped in 1889.

How the border is drawn

• The border is the union of ten districts in OpenStreetMap, simplified, about 58,200 km²: Angul (administrative relation 1984462), Dhenkanal (1984463), Keonjhar (Kendujhar, 1984465), Mayurbhanj (1984481), Sundargarh (1984039), Deogarh (Debagarh, 1984042), Sambalpur (1984036), Subarnapur (1984027), Nayagarh (1984066) and Boudh (1984065).
• These are the present districts that hold the places the sources name. 1890s: the Orissa States of Keonjhar, Dhenkanal, Mayurbhanj, Khandpara, Athmallik and Boad, the Angul district, the Sonpur, Bamra and Rairakhol States and Sambalpur district of the Central Provinces, and the Gangpur and Bonai States of Chota Nagpur (now in Sundargarh District). Since 2000: Angul, Boudh, Deogarh, Sambalpur, Nayagarh, Sundargarh and Keonjhar.
• Kandhamal District (the old Khondmals) is part of Eastern Ghats, and its recent eradication drives belong to that region. Where the two regions meet, this border follows the Eastern Ghats line, so the two do not overlap. Boudh is placed here: the sources name it in the 1890s (Boad) and since 2000.
• Cuttack District is left out, although it now holds three of the States where Sen saw plants (Athgarh, Tigiria, Baramba). Most of the district is the coastal plain of the old regulation districts, which in the 1890s consumed Garhjat ganja rather than growing it (Bengal memorandum, para. 18). Jharsuguda and Bargarh districts, formed out of Sambalpur district, are also outside the border: no source read names growing there. So is Balangir District (the old Patna State).
• The map point (21.40, 85.11) is the centre of the ten districts; the border is not drawn from it or from any news point.

Sources

• Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894–95. Read in the OCR text of Vols. I, III, IV and VI and the 1895 volume of evidence from the Native States, with the page images checked for every passage cited: Vol. III pp. 5, 10–11 and 74; Vol. IV pp. 18, 82, 150–151, 172, 209 and 247; Vol. VI pp. 20–21. The headings of two Vol. IV witnesses read "Wylly" (p. 247) and "Naik" (p. 209); the OCR text misreads both names.
• Prain, 1893. p. 10, on the page image.
• Press. Each article cited was read in full. Plant counts, acreages and values are those of the police or officials quoted.

Where the sources disagree

• The male plant. Wylly says the male plant was "emasculated" by cutting its stem and setting pieces of broken tile in the cuts; Prain says the male plant was apparently removed, though not as early or as fully as in northern Bengal; Sen says that "In the Gurjats the male plants are not extirpated". The article gives all three.
• How much was grown. Wylly calls the cultivation "fairly extensive" and Mukerjee says ganja was "regularly cultivated in all the Gurjat States". Cooke, Naik and Das saw only a few plants at a time, inside house enclosures. The Commission's reading (Vol. I, para. 96) reconciles them: no field cultivation, but homestead growing everywhere. The article follows the Commission and gives the witnesses.
• Restrictions. Wylly (answer 13) says no Gurjat State restricted cultivation or sale; Cooke (p. 21) says Mayurbhanj had carried out a prohibition. The article gives Cooke's statement as his.
• How many States. Wylly counts seventeen, Mukerjee nineteen. The article gives both.
• The decline in Angul. The Director General of Police's statement of January 2018 gives both 851 acres destroyed in Angul in 2017–18 and "a sharp decline" in cultivation there. The article gives both, as his.