Talk:Jaintia Hills
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Jaintia Hills is a Growing Area in the Shillong Plateau growing region. It treats cannabis in the Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, a subdivision of the colonial Khasi and Jaintia Hills district, from the evidence of 1879 and 1893–94 and a hemp proposal of 2021. The two districts as administrative units belong at their own pages.
Data verification
Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the area's extent, its status, and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.
Discussion
Why the area is on the map
- J. J. S. Driberg, Commissioner of Excise for Assam, to the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (Vol. IV, Assam witness no. 2, p. 532): "The Syntengs (the people of Jaintia) make their own spirits, and ganja grows in their hills." On the same page he names the Khasi and Jaintia Hills among the hill tracts from which ganja was exported to Sylhet.
- I. C. Patranavish, in charge of excise at Sylhet (p. 546): hill ganja "is sometimes smuggled from the Khasi and Jaintia Hills and Hill Tippera".
- K. C. Sanyal, Sylhet (p. 568), answering the Commission's question on where the plant grows spontaneously: "Rajshahi, Jaintia Hills, Laur in Sylhet".
- None of these says in so many words that cannabis was cultivated in the Jaintia Hills. Driberg's "grows" and Sanyal's answer concern the plant's growth there. The smuggled hill ganja may be wild or tended; the Commission (Vol. I, para. 102) judged hill cultivation in the province to be "of a very inferior sort, if indeed the plant is tended at all".
How the border is drawn
- The border is a proxy: the Jaintia Hills range as its two present districts, West Jaintia Hills and East Jaintia Hills (the Jaintia Hills District, divided on 31 July 2012), from their OpenStreetMap administrative relations (2027523, 9522423). The outline measures about 3,800 km², the figure in the infobox.
- The 1893 evidence names the Jaintia Hills as a whole, without places inside them.
Growing status
The status is Historical. The evidence is from 1879 and 1893–94, and no source read reports cannabis growing in the Jaintia Hills since 2000 or says that it ended. The infobox gives no years grown: no source gives a year in which cannabis was cultivated there. The 2021 hemp paper is a proposal, not a report of growing.
Where the sources disagree
- W. W. Hunter (1879, p. 243) says the Syntengs were "not addicted to the use of intoxicating drugs", and that the excise laws applied throughout the Jaintia Hills. Driberg (1893) says ganja grew in their hills, and witnesses at Sylhet describe hill ganja coming down from them. The article gives both, attributed.
Sources not used
- The 2021 Meghalaya Farmers' (Empowerment) Commission paper gives THC and CBD figures for hemp and marijuana; they are not used.
- A peer-reviewed study of Pnar plant use in East Jaintia Hills (2022) was searched: no mention of cannabis.
- Not read: B. C. Allen, Assam District Gazetteers, vol. X (1906), and A. J. M. Mills's 1853 report on the Khasi and Jaintia Hills.