Talk:Kashmir Valley

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Discussion for: Kashmir Valley • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Kashmir Valley treats cannabis in the Kashmir Valley: the wild hemp cut under the Kashmir State's lease in the 19th century, and the cultivation reported in the valley since 2011. The union territory as an administrative unit is treated at Jammu and Kashmir, and the wider disputed region at Kashmir. The region this area belongs to is Western Himalayas.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Why the area is mapped

The Kashmir State memorandum to the Hemp Drugs Commission (Vol. III, pp. 128–129) says hemp was not cultivated, but that the wild stands of the Wantipora, Haripore and Anantnag tahsils and the Nagam tahsil were cut every Kartik for the State's lessee and made into gard bhang, about 70 maunds a year. Stands that are named and harvested count as a growing area here, so the 19th-century tract qualifies on its own.
Thomson (1852, p. 455) saw the riverside hemp harvested and stored whole in 1848.
Cultivation since 2000 is reported by Kashmir Life (December 2011, the Bijbehara belt), The Statesman (June 2018, south Kashmir orchards), Greater Kashmir (September 2018, Malhara, Shopian), Kashmir Life (July 2019, the Lolab forests), the Daily Excelsior and The Kashmir Walla (April 2021, Pahalgam), the excise commissioner through PTI (October 2022), Kashmir Reader (June 2026, Marhama) and Kashmir Life (August 2026, the figures for April–June 2026 and satellite imagery of six districts). That makes the status Active.

Growing status

The status is Active. The 2026 reports describe cultivated cannabis destroyed in the valley; the destruction drives are not a reason to call the tract no longer grown.
No first or last year is entered: they are kept for Historical and No longer grown areas.

How the border is drawn

The border is the union of the ten districts of the Kashmir Division in OpenStreetMap (Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama, Shopian, Srinagar, Budgam, Ganderbal, Baramulla, Bandipore and Kupwara; relations 1944955, 9547248, 1944956, 9547249, 9544370, 1944967, 9544371, 1944971, 9544369 and 1944978), simplified, about 15,900 km². It is a proxy: no source read maps the tract onto a smaller unit, and the reports since 2011 name places in at least six of the ten districts.
The proxy takes in Gurez and Karnah, beyond the ranges north of the valley, where no source read places cannabis.
The map point (33.95, 74.95) is near the middle of the valley floor; the border is not drawn from it.
Where this border meets the Western Himalayas border or the border of a neighbouring growing area, the two share one line, drawn once.
Since October 2026 the map line leaves out ground above 4,000 m (SRTM elevation) and land that ESA WorldCover 2021 maps as bare or sparse vegetation, permanent snow and ice, or open water at its outer edge only: land of those kinds that the kept ground encloses is inside, pieces less than 5 km apart are joined, and pieces under 25 km² with no accession in them are left out. About 15,470 km² of the 15,920 km² inside the ten districts are inside the line.

Sources

Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894. The Kashmir State memorandum (Vol. III, pp. 128–130) is cited from the OCR text, and paragraphs 3–9 from the page image (p. 128). The OCR reads the ordinary output as 74 maunds; the page reads about 70 maunds. Vol. I, ch. III, paras. 81–82 (pp. 32–33) and ch. IV, para. 148 (p. 57) are cited from the OCR text and the National Library of Scotland's page text.
Thomson 1852 is cited from the Project Gutenberg text (ch. XIV; the index gives p. 455 for "Hemp in Kashmir").
McPartland and Small 2020 and its Supplementary material 1: Table S4 (p. 25) gives the Thomson, Jacquemont and Lawrence entries, and p. 70 the 1868 and 1916 notes on garda charas and churu. Jacquemont's and Lawrence's own books were not reached, so the article gives them only as the supplement reports them.
Frederic Drew's The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories (1875) was searched in full and says nothing of hemp, bhang or charas.
Spelling. The Daily Excelsior writes Ladroo and The Kashmir Walla Lidroo for the Pahalgam village; the article gives both. The 1893 memorandum writes Wantipora and Shopayan; these are kept in the quotations and in the account of the memorandum.

Where the sources disagree

Cultivated or wild. The 1893 memorandum and the commission's report say hemp was not cultivated in Kashmir; the same memorandum describes the wild stands being cut every year under the State's lease. McPartland and Small list Lawrence (1895) for both wild and cultivated plants in the valley. In 2021 the Range Forest Officer at Pahalgam said cultivators planted scattered patches so that the crop would look naturally grown. The article sets these out as each source gives them.
Producer or intermediary. A Real Seed Company blog post of June 2023, cited on Pakistan, describes Kashmir as historically an intermediary in the charas trade rather than a producer. The 1893 memorandum also records Yarkand charas passing through, but describes gard bhang made in the valley from its own wild hemp.
Scale. The excise commissioner's figure of 4,143 kanals for 2022 and the quarterly figure of 1,157 kanals for April–June 2026 come from different offices and periods; they are not summed.

Not used

The Daily Excelsior report "Admn fails to act against cultivators of Bangh, opium" could not be retrieved in full and is not cited.
The 27 August 2026 drive at Lar, in Ganderbal, destroyed cannabis growing wild along the roads and reported no harvest or cultivation; its news item is not filed under this growing area.
The two Schlagintweit sheets from the environs of Srinagar (1856) and the Young sheet from the road between Kampur and Baramula (1880) carry no note of cultivation, so they are not given a growing area.
The Tribune report of December 2023 on Doda concerns wild cannabis outside the valley.