Opium, British Occupation of India, Indian Farmers and World’s First Drug Cartel

 

प्लासी च्या लढाई नंतर काय काय झाले ते पहा... 

 

Amitav Ghosh, 'Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey Through Opium's Hidden Histories', 2023:

 

"... Equipped with English weaponry, the army of the Bengal Presidency marched steadily westward, at the expense of the increasingly enfeebled remnants of the Mughal Empire. In 1757 and 1764 the East India Company defeated the tottering indigenous powers in two decisive battles. The territories that came with those victories were quickly incorporated into the Company’s Bengal Presidency, which from then on extended deep into the Gangetic plain, well past the city of Patna. This meant that much of the hinterland of the military labour market, as well as most of the opium-producing region of Bihar, was now in English hands; both would prove strategically crucial to the fortunes of the East India Company.

 

The English, like the Dutch and the French, had long maintained a ‘factory’ or trading station in Patna, so its officials were intimately familiar with the workings of the opium business. For a few years after the British conquest, the Europeans competed against each other in procuring opium, with the result that the acreage under poppy cultivation in the region soared from 283,000 hectares to 303,500 hectares in just one year. ‘This large-scale conversion of paddy fields into poppy cultivation,’ writes the historian Emdad-ul Haq, ‘contributed to a famine in Bengal in 1770. This famine caused the death of 10 million people in an area that had been traditionally known as the “Golden Bengal” due to its natural resources...."

 

इंग्रज आणि इतर युरोपियन सत्तांमुळे भाताऐवजी अफू चे पीक घेणे वाढले आणि त्याचे पर्यवसान १७७० च्या बंगालच्या दुष्काळात होऊन १ कोटी लोक मृत्यमुखी पडले ( त्या दुष्काळाची इतर कारणे पण दिली जातात)... आणि तरी १९व्या शतकातील काही भारतीय इंग्रजांचे कौतुक करत होते!

 

घोष यांचे पुस्तक वाचताना लक्षात येते की १८व्या शतकापासून आपण अफू हा भारतीय इतिहासातील फार मोठा घटक मानला पाहिजे... भारतात गांजाचा प्रसार सर्वदूर असला तरी बहुतेक भारतीय लोक युरोपियन लोक येई पर्यंत अफू पासून दूर होते (त्यांना जवळजवळ अफू माहितीच नव्हती)... पण ते झपाट्याने बदलले...

 

अलीकडे अनेक कारणांमुळे आपण भारतातील शेतकऱ्यांचे महत्व जाणतो किंवा जाणायला लागलो आहोत. अलीकडे त्यांच्या जीवनातील अनेक गोष्टी आपल्या समोर येतात- भाजीमालाचे भाव, पिकाची निवड, निसर्गात झालेल्या उलथापालथीचा त्यांना बसलेला फटका ... वगैरे. 

 

शिवाजी महाराजांनी लिहलेली, शेतकऱ्यांच्या संबंधातील त्यांची अपार संवेदना दाखवणारी, पत्रे आपण वाचली असतात... बाकीच्या राज्यकर्त्यांचे काय? 

 

मागच्या पोस्ट मध्ये बंगालमधील १७७०च्या दुष्काळाबद्दल लिहले, आता वाचा दुष्काळ नसताना इंग्रजांचा बिहार मधील शेतकऱ्यांच्या संबंधातील कारभार... इंग्रजांनी त्यांच्यावर अफूचे पीक लावायची आणि आलेली अफू त्यांना इंग्रजांना उत्पादन शुल्काच्या कमी किमतीत विकायची सक्ती केली होती... 

 

"... So, far from making any money by growing this hugely valuable commodity, the poppy farmers of eastern India actually made significant losses on their harvest. Why, then, did they grow this crop? The reason was succinctly explained in a petition signed by hundreds of farmers: ‘We cultivate the poppy under pressure from Government, otherwise we would not do it, and our prayer is that we may be released from this trouble.’

 

The system was, therefore, coercive to its core: not only did farmers have to deal with the ever-looming threat of violence, but they also had no choice other than to plant poppies because the Opium Department stipulated that nothing else could be grown on land that had been earmarked for that purpose. Farmers could be evicted if they planted any other crop, and since most poppy growers were ‘tenants at will’, they were in constant danger of losing their land. So strict and punitive were the laws of the Opium Department that farmers were essentially trapped within a net of legal obligations and debt bondage. Even in times of famine, they had no recourse but to grow poppies in order to slake the British Empire’s inexhaustible appetite for opium."

 

दुष्काळात सुद्धा त्यांना अफू लावणे सक्तीचे होते!

 

"Through the first half of the eighteenth century exports of opium to China had seldom exceeded 200 chests, but by 1767 the number had increased to 1,000.49 With the setting up of the Opium Department, the figure grew to 4,570 chests in 1800, and was stable at around 4,800 for a while. But after 1830 exports grew rapidly, and opium soon became the keystone of the colonial economy: ‘like the yeast in bread dough’ it was the substance ‘upon which the entire structure depended’. Or, as an article in a journal published by the US National Defense University notes: ‘English merchants, led by the British East India Company, from 1772 to 1850, established extensive opium supply chains … creating the world’s first drug cartel.’..."

 

१७७२-१८५० काळात इंग्रज सरकार जगातील पहिले ड्रग कार्टेल होते, जे भारतीय शेतकऱ्यांचे रक्त पित होते.... 

 

"... This system was, therefore, on its own terms, one of the most successful commercial ventures in human history, producing immense profits for the British Empire for well over a hundred years. The opium trade was thus an essential element of an emerging capitalist system that was then spreading rapidly across the globe. Yet, far from being a free market, this system was firmly founded on colonialism and race; in that sense it was an instance of what Cedric J. Robinson called ‘racial capitalism’..."

 

जवळजवळ १०० वर्षे, इंग्रजांचा मुख्य धंदा आणि उद्दिष्ट होते भारतात अफू बनवून चीनला विकणे आणि त्या बदल्यात तिथे चहा विकत घेऊन तो ब्रिटन ला पाठवणे....

 

(Amitav Ghosh, 'Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey Through Opium's Hidden Histories', 2023 वर आधारित)

 

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