Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)

So can you tell us about how and where ganja was produced? Obviously, the whole plant, not just the bit the Brits could classify.

Yes.

So I think there are six to seven known and identifiable kind of agrarian zones in subcontinental South Asia, which had historically produced well-known types of ganja.

They range between Ahmed Nagar, which is in Western India, Dagupad, which is in Southern India, parts of the Punjab.

But of them, Actually, let me just say besides those, there's also a lot of domestic production where people grow the plant mostly for domestic purposes.

There's local kind of very sub, you know, kind of like tiny forms of cannabis that are available in local markets or, you know, found in, you know, growing wild and then kind of grown very quickly or manufactured very quickly.

But I think the one agrarian zone that is the most important to the story is is Nauga in Rajshahi in eastern Bengal that I write about.

Ganja was produced there in this large agrarian tract right in the middle of this territory between two rivers, the Chhoto Jomuna and the Atrei.

And in this kind of tract of slightly elevated land, Many cannabis cultivators settled in the late 18th century, the early 19th century, and a lot of sandhal labor was employed seasonally to clear land to make cannabis cultivation possible.

So ganja products that were grown here started to become really popular in the 1830s and The people who were making them migrated into this region from south in the Bengal Delta.

And by about the 1850s or 1860s, governors in British Bengal were very, very aware of the fame, the reputation, the impact that Nauga and Rajshahi's ganja had in the wider regional economy.

Ganja was produced in the season, in the kind of winter season.

So between about December to March and April.

And as a crop, it isn't the kind of crop that the producers would consume.

So most farmers sold off the drug to people who could either manufacture it Or to wholesale buyers who would take it to other parts of British India and then sell it.

It was manufactured often in manufacturing yards, which were built right near the cultivation spot.

And there were seasonal workers who came, sorted out the crops.

the stalk, the buds, the leaves and different twigs.

And they produced about four types of known ganja products.

And their skills were very, very renowned and very famous.

And many people actually sought to kind of try and understand how they produced different kinds of ganja products from the plant.

The most important one in this story is a British botanist called David Crane.

who I write about.

And I think overall, this single tract around the town of Nauga supplied cannabis products to every major district in eastern India.

including parts of Assam, including parts of what were then the Northwestern provinces, all across the Gangetic Delta, to pilgrimage towns, to temple towns with Hindu religious festivities, and re-ran for the most of the 19th century, the economy in Ganja around Eastern and Northern India.