Talk:Kalat

Talk

Discussion for: Kalat • View • Links • Related changes

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

Page scope

Kalat treats Kalat District, in central Balochistan, as a cannabis growing area: the hemp grown for bhang and charas at Kalat and Iskalku in the Kalat State, as the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894) and the Kalat State gazetteer (1907) describe it, and the crops of bhang destroyed in the district in 2023 and 2025. The town of Kalat, the Khanate of Kalat and Kalat District as an administrative unit are separate subjects; a page on the town would take the title Kalat (city).

Data verification

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

Discussion

Why Kalat is a growing area

• In 1894 Babu Kedar Nath, head clerk to the political agent at Kalat, told the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission that hemp was grown "a little in Kalat territory" (Vol. VII, p. 370), and the Commission's report summarises the political agent's statement that "an insignificant amount is grown in the territory of the Khan of Kalat" (Vol. I, para. 135). Both speak of the Khan's territory as a whole, which reached well beyond today's district.
• The Sarawan volume of the Baluchistan District Gazetteer (1907) names Kalat and Iskalku, about 7 miles east of Kalat, as places where bhang was cultivated and charas made (pp. 91, 201–202, 225). Its text describes conditions in 1905 and 1906.
• Press reports of 2023 and 2025 describe standing or ready crops of bhang destroyed at Pandran (Daily Intekhab, 23 September 2023), Khadi (Jang, 3 October 2023), the Mangochar area (Daily Intekhab, 18 October 2023) and Zard Ghulam Jan and Zard Abdullah in the Mangochar sub-division (Express Urdu, 1 September 2025, more than 32 acres).
• The status is Active, on the reports of 2023 and 2025. The earliest year in the infobox, 1894, is the Commission witness's. The sources do not show growing going on without a break between 1907 and 2023, and the page does not say it did.
• The gazetteer names Mangochar as a place where opium poppy was grown, not bhang (p. 91). The places of the 2023 and 2025 reports are not those of the gazetteer.

Two statements in the gazetteer

• The gazetteer's chapter on agriculture calls the cultivation of bhang small except at Pringabad in Mastung, "the only place at which it is grown otherwise than for domestic use" (p. 91). Its account of the excise says that bhang was cultivated and charas made "in fairly large quantities" at Kalat, Iskalku and Mastung (p. 201). The page gives both.
• The gazetteer notes that the word ganja meant in Kalat an inferior grade of charas, not the flowering tops of the cultivated female plant as elsewhere in India (p. 201, footnote).

Extent and border

• The map border is approximate. It is drawn on Kalat District as mapped in OpenStreetMap (relation 16653615, "Qalat District"): the Kalat and Mangochar tehsils. Surab, which OpenStreetMap maps as a separate district, is not included; no report used here places a crop there.
• Mastung District lies outside the line. Pringabad and Mastung are named in the gazetteer, and Dasht and Khad Koocha in press reports of September 2023, but the district is a separate unit with its own sources.
• The map line keeps the land of the district below 4,000 m (SRTM elevation) that ESA WorldCover 2021 does not map as bare or sparse vegetation, permanent snow and ice, or open water; pockets inside the line are filled, pieces less than about 5 km apart are joined and the edge is smoothed. About 1,415 km² of the district's 9,949 km² remain, in five pieces, and the infobox area is rounded from that line.
• Mangochar lies inside the line. Pandran, Khadi, Zard Ghulam Jan and Zard Abdullah could not be placed on a map. Iskalku, about 7 miles east of Kalat at the foot of the Harboi hills, lies within Kalat District.
• The point in the infobox is the town of Kalat, not a field.

Sources

• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, Vol. VII. The printed heading of witness no. 3 reads "Babu Kedar Nath, Head Clerk of the Political Agent, Kalat" (p. 370); the scan's text layer garbles the name.
• Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, Vol. I, para. 135. The paragraph also covers Quetta-Pishin.
• Baluchistan District Gazetteer Series, Vols. VI, VI-A and VI-B (1907). The scan held by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics under handle 10973/36871. The repository catalogues it as the Kachhi volume, but it holds the Sarawan text, behind the title page of the combined volumes (Sarawan, Kachhi and Jhalawan; Bombay, Times Press). The preface is signed by Major C. F. Minchin. Pages cited are those of the Sarawan volume: 91 (cultivation), 184 (revenue), 201–202 (excise, charas), 225 (Iskalku).
• Express Urdu (1 September 2025). Byline Sardar Hameed Khan. The Associated Press of Pakistan, ProPakistani, Ummat, Daily Pakistan and Dunya carried the same report the same day; the Associated Press of Pakistan calls the crop "drug hemp".
• The Urdu reports use bhang for the crop, cannabis; the English titles in the references are translations.

Sources not used

• The gazetteer's Jhalawan and Kachhi volumes record bhang and charas at Nichara, Norgama, Surab, Khuzdar, Khari, Gajan and other places outside the district.
• A Daily Intekhab report of 13 October 2023 describes a jirga of Kalat's tribal leaders, held before the operations, and names no crop.