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Suppressed SMOKE AND ASHES of which was to be sur-
rendered to the Opium
history Amitav Ghosh Department for process-

HARPER COLLINS ing in its own facilities,” is
Rs.699 vividly recounted in this
NVIRONMENT and Pages 318 revealing history. And
climate warrior and given the vast difference
Eauthor of the Ibis in the price of the opium
trilogy of novels centred balls determined by EIC
around the history of the and the rock-bottom price
Indian diaspora in Mauri- thousands of acres of fer- The unwritten history paid to contracted farmers,
tius, South-east Asia and tile multi-crop farmlands of how the British a formidable network of
China, Amitav Ghosh is of Bihar were forcibly forcibly grew opium spies and informers was
one of the most celebrated converted into opium over vast swathes of maintained by the com-
writers in the English lan- poppy fields by the British the Gangetic plain and pany to ensure that none of
guage. Although the Ibis East India Company (EIC) dumped it on a weak the output was pilfered to
trilogy which comprised and opium was exported imperial China be sold in the open market.
Sea of Poppies (2008), to China to pay for tea And to dress up this sordid
River of Smoke (2011) imported into Britain after enterprise they established
and Flood of Fire (2015) the silver and bullion de- country never featured modern factories in Patna
were globally acclaimed, manded by imperial China in his school and col- and Benares to transform
this reviewer believes that began to run out. lege curriculums. Yet the poppy seeds into the high
Ghosh’s deeply researched It’s not as though there plain truth is that our two narcotic.
non-fiction works includ- was pre-existing demand countries have had a long The company’s monop-
ing Gun Island (2019) and for opium in imperial and troubled history con- oly of opium production
Nutmeg’s Curse (2021) China. Steadily incre- nected with opium grown in the north and Gangetic
recounting the rise of mental quantities of this in the poppy fields of Bihar plain and the huge profits
European and British highly addictive drug were and forcibly dumped upon accruing prompted an
power in the subcontinent exported from Calcutta the Chinese people for entrepreneurial response
and their discovery and to Hong Kong for forc- over a century. As Ghosh from “canny traders” of
exploitation of herbs and ible distribution within recounts, EIC took over the the Jain, Marwari, Bohra
spices — opium, nutmeg mainland China. When the fledgling opium industry of and Ismaili communities
and tea — to fund the Chinese government ob- Bihar in 1772 and in 1799, in the Malwa region in
rise and spread of their jected to this deadly, habit- established a dedicated Western and Central India.
empires, make infinitely forming and debilitating Opium Department to Despite opposition from
better reading, more so be- narcotic being imposed stabilise production and EIC managers who feared
cause they are suppressed, — under the marketing maintain “an output of over-supply to China and
unwritten histories. principle that supply often around 4,800 chests the Far East market might
In Nutmeg’s Curse, generates demand — upon (3.5 million kg) per year, prompt a crash in prices,
Ghosh focused on the the Chinese populace, Brit- almost all of which was opium produced in this
ruthless efficiency with ish gunboats sailed up the exported to the Dutch East region exported to China
which the Dutch upended River Yangtze to bombard Indies and China”. by private traders grew by
the lives and livelihoods the imperial capital Beijing The ruthless efficiency leaps and bounds. Interest-
of innocent islanders to for infringing the rules of with which the Depart- ingly, the learned author
establish a nutmegs mo- “free trade”. ment selected farmers over traces the rise of Bombay
nopoly. Native islanders The value of this wide- a vast region starting from into modern India’s com-
were uprooted and exiled ranging history is that it “Agra in the West to the mercial capital and some
to neighbouring islands covers previously untrod- borders of Bengal in the of the biggest names of
of Indonesia, to live lives den ground. As the author east” — a territory of ap- India Inc to their active
of poverty and misery writes in the very first proximately 500,000 acres involvement in running
as Dutch adventurers chapter of Smoke and Ash- — and imposed unequal opium to China.
established large nutmeg es, although Bengal shares contracts determining The merit of this re-
plantations. In Smoke and a border with China, in- “how they could plant and freshing and vigorous his-
Ashes, Ghosh describes formation and knowledge how much they would be tory of British exploitation
in gruesome detail, how about our neighbouring paid for them, the entirety of rural India — eastern

78 EDUCATIONWORLD MARCH 2024