The Forbidden Game
Brian Inglis
7. Indian Hemp
Hemp drugs; the legends
THE LONG STRUGGLE TO END THE OPIUM TRAFFIC FROM INDIA TO China
had one curious and revealing by-product. When the Government
was compelled by the vote in the House of Commons to concede a
Royal Commission into opium, there was an immediate protest: why
single out opium when there were other drugs in common use in
India? For many years, the opium lobby had contended that hemp
was the more dangerous of the two. In 1840 the banker W. B. Baring
had told the Commons that if the traffic were suppressed, it might
simply lead to the adoption in the Far East of drugs 'infinitely
more prejudicial to physical health and energy than opium', citing
as an example 'an exhalation of the hemp plant, easily collected
at certain seasons, which was in every way more injurious than
the use of the poppy'. Reminded of hemp's existence, the Government
decided on what appears to have been a diversionary tactic. On
March 2nd, 1893 the Member of Parliament for Bradford East, W.
S. Caine—a persistent antidrug campaigner—asked for an enquiry
into the use of hemp drugs in India; and the Under Secretary of
State for India was able to assure him that the Viceroy was setting
it up, and would be glad if the results 'show that further restriction
can be placed upon the sale and consumption of these drugs'.
There was a mass of evidence available about their effects, but
little of it which could be described as scientific, apart from
some experiments conducted in the 1840s by Dr. W. B. O'Shaughnessy,
Professor of Chemistry in the Medical College of Calcutta. He
had begun with animals, finding that they reacted in much the
same way as humans. A middling-sized dog, given ten grains of
hemp, 'became stupid and sleepy, dozing at intervals, starting
up, wagging his tail, as if extremely contented; he ate some food
greedily; on being called to, he staggered to and fro, and his
face assumed a look of utter and helpless drunkenness. These symptoms
lasted about two hours, and then gradually passed away.' Finding
that no harm came to the animals, O'Shaughnessy next tried the
drugs on patients suffering from disorders for which there was
no effective remedy—rheumatism, tetanus, cholera, convulsions—with
results which led him to claim in the Transactions
of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta that 'in hemp,
the profession has gained an anti-convulsive remedy of the greatest
value'. With hemp, though, as with coca, it was difficult to make
up pills or potions which were of consistent purity and strength;
and the essential drug element in the plant eluded researchers.
It remained in general use in medicine in India, particularly
at the village level; but it did not elsewhere establish the reputation
O'Shaughnessy expected.
In Britain, the drug—hashish, as it was loosely described—tended
to be thought of as sinister; not on the basis of experience or
experiment, but because of the reputation it had derived from
legends. One had come down from Marco Polo, who had heard it on
his voyage to China in the thirteenth century. The 'Old Man of
the Mountain', he was told, had desired that his people should
believe that a valley which he had enclosed, and made into a garden,
was Paradise; 'so he had fashioned it after the description that
Mahomet gave of his Paradise, to wit, that it should be a beautiful
garden running with conduits of wine and milk and honey and water,
and full of lovely women for the delectation of all its inmates'.
A selected youth would be given a drug to put him to sleep, and
carried into the valley, so that when he woke up he would find
himself, as he thought, in Paradise, and would enjoy its sybaritic
delights. He would then again be put to sleep, and transported
back out of the valley, 'whereat he was not over well pleased'.
All he had to do if he wished to return, the Old Man of the Mountain
would tell him, was to perform the service required of him: 'go
thou and slay so-and-so; and when thou returnest, my angels shall
bear thee into Paradise. And shouldst thou die, nevertheless even
so will I send my angels to carry thee back into Paradise.' So
great was the desire to get back that the initiates would face
any peril to do so; 'and in this manner the Old One got his people
to murder any one whom he would get rid of'.
In Marco Polo's account, therefore, the drug featured only as
a way to enable the Old Man of the Mountain to transport the youths
to and from the valley. But the legend became embroidered in the
telling; the drug used to put the youths to sleep was given a
very different role. The murderers used it—the story ran—to
nerve themselves to carry out the Old Man's commands. When, early
in the nineteenth century, the French etymologist Sylvestre de
Sacy identified hashish, the drug, with haschishin—assassin—this
was taken to be conclusive evidence that the members of the
Order of Assassins had derived their name from the drug they took
before committing their atrocious crimes. And the idea that hashish
could be taken for this purpose appeared to be confirmed when
it was learned that the 'whirling dervishes' used it, and when
Livingstone reported that the 'pernicious weed' was used by African
tribes to help them work themselves up into 'a species of frenzy'.
It was difficult, though, to reconcile the effects of the drug
in the legend, with the effects of the drug as actually observed
in most of the countries of the Middle and Near East, where it
was in common use. The drinks which the Arabs made from the hemp
plant, the French traveller C. S. Sonnini noted on his tour in
the late eighteenth century,
throw them into a sort of pleasing inebriety, a state of reverie
that inspires gaiety and occasions agreeable dreams. This kind
of annihilation of the faculty of thinking, this kind of slumber
of the soul, bears no resemblance to the intoxication produced
by wine or strong liquors, and the French language affords no
terms by which it can be expressed. The Arabs give the name of
kid to this voluptuous vacuity of mind, this sort of fascinating
stupor.
Most observers echoed Sonnini; but this did not do much to redeem
the reputation of the drug. To the English, as they entered upon
the Victorian era, it was no recommendation to say that hashish
induced 'voluptuous vacuity', the secondary reputation it now
began to acquire—nourished, doubtless, by Dumas's account of
its effects on the Baron Franz d'Epinay, in The Count of Monte
Christo
... there followed a dream of passion like that promised by
the Prophet to the elect. Lips of stone turned to flame, breasts
of ice became like heated lava, so that to Franz, yielding for
the first time to the sway of the drug, love was a sorrow and
voluptuousness a torture, as burning mouths were pressed to his
thirsty lips, and he was held in cool serpent-like embraces. The
more he strove against this unhallowed passion, the more his senses
yielded to the thrall, and at length, weary of the struggle that
taxed his very soul, he gave way and sank back breathless and
exhausted beneath the enchantment of his marvellous dream.
The translators of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
confirmed the reputation of hashish, not simply as a drug by which
husbands could be put to sleep so that lovers could enjoy their
wives, but also as an aphrodisiac—as illustrated in the translation
by Sir Richard Burton in the story of the lover who was about
to consummate his design when he woke up to find that it was all
a hashish-induced dream, and that he was surrounded by a crowd
of people laughing at him, 'for his prickle was at point and the
napkin had slipped from his middle'. The versions which circulated
in England might omit or bowdlerise such episodes, but the reputation
of hashish spread by hearsay, leaving the impression that even
if some doubt might remain about what precisely its effects were,
they were certainly deplorable.
Perhaps because of this reputation, the British Raj tended to
be more suspicious of Indian hemp drugs, as they were described
there, than of opium. They had been subjected to an enquiry on
more than one occasion in the past, the latest investigation having
been conducted as recently as the 1870s. Its report had claimed
that hemp drugs were less dangerous than their reputation suggested,
and that in any case prohibition was impracticable. The Liberal
Government decided to ignore these inconvenient findings, and
set up a fresh enquiry.
The members of the Commission were appointed in July 1893, under
the Chairmanship of the Hon. W. Mackworth Young, first Financial
Commissioner for the Punjab. Their terms of reference indicated
what was expected of them. They were to examine the trade in hemp
drugs; its effect on the social and moral condition of the people;
and 'the desirability of prohibiting the growth of the plant'.
The Commission was composed of three British colonial officials,
three 'native non-official gentlemen', and a Secretary, H. J.
McIntosh—to whom much of the credit for the eventual report
was probably due.
Hemp drugs: enquiry
The Commission had been warned that it might have difficulty in
finding witnesses willing to come forward and tell what they knew
about the use and abuse of hemp drugs. No such difficulty was
experienced. Civil servants, army officers, magistrates, doctors,
lawyers, and business men filled in the questionnaire which was
circulated, and a gratifying number of them agreed to give verbal
evidence in amplification. One group only, the Commission was
surprised to find, appeared reluctant to offer their services.
A significant proportion of the missionaries who were sent the
questionnaire returned it without their answers. Their common
excuse was that they did not have a sufficient knowledge of the
matter. This was in striking contrast to the attitude of the missionaries
to opium, particularly in China, where they had been in the forefront
of the agitation to suppress the traffic. Why—the Commissioners
wondered—should the Indian missionary show such little concern?
Pondering that question, they picked up an early clue. If the
missionaries, of all people, disclaimed knowledge of the effect
of hemp drugs, the drugs could hardly be a very serious threat
to the social and moral condition of the Indian people.
The terms of reference had referred to 'drugs' in the plural;
and the Comrnissioners' first task was to try to sort them out—which
was not easy. There was ganja, made from the dried flowering
tops of cultivated plants; charas, the resinous matter
scraped off them; and bhang, the dried leaves. But as Watt
had just pointed out in his study of Indian plants, and as witnesses
were to confirm, the distinctions in practice had little meaning.
One man's charas was another man's ganja, and the
drink made out of either was commonly called bhang. The
Commissioners heard witnesses who assured them that smoking bhang
was more dangerous than smoking ganja; 'but there are many others
whose experience is precisely the reverse'. Some witnesses thought
smoking less harmful than drinking; 'but there is a great deal
of evidence to a precisely opposite effect'. In the end the Commission
cautiously accepted the common opinion that the flowers and resin
might produce a more powerful drug than the leaves, but for the
purposes of its enquiry it seemed simpler to take them together
under the general label, hemp drugs.
How extensively—the Commissioners next had to consider—were
hemp drugs consumed? Putting this question to witnesses revealed
just how sparse the information was on the subject, even among
those whose duties were 'believed to bring them into close and
constant contact with the people'. It was possible to make a tentative
estimate of the minimum quantity of ganja and charas
used, because a duty was payable on the manufactured product;
but it could safely be assumed that far more was used illicitly.
As for bhang, made from the leaves, much of it came from
the wild hemp plant, and there was no way of telling how much
of it was smoked, eaten and drunk, except observation—and observation,
the Commissioners found, was a highly unreliable guide. Men who
offered themselves as knowledgeable witnesses might turn out to
be relying on hearsay; and those who claimed to have observed
their use and effects had often derived their information only
from visits to shops and shrines where smokers congregated—the
equivalent, the Commissioners felt, of a man claiming to be knowledgeable
about the use and effects of alcohol in England, who had derived
all his knowledge from visits to pubs.
From the evidence, however, one thing was obvious; that hemp drugs
were far more extensively used than the average British, or even
Indian, official realised. They were taken as medicine, not only
for specific disorders, on prescription, but as tonics, and aids
to digestion. Drunk with meals, bhang was the equivalent of the
English labouring man's glass of beer. They were also generally
taken among the Hindus on family party occasions, and in connection
with religious observances—particularly those linked with Shiva
who, according to legend, had greatly appreciated the effects
of hemp. But by far the commonest use was by workers to give them
staying power. 'Gymnasts, wrestlers and musicians, palkibearers
and porters, divers and postal runners are examples of the classes
who use the hemp drugs on occasions of especially severe exertion
... all classes of labourers, especially such as blacksmiths,
miners and coolies, are said more or less generally to use the
drugs, as a rule in moderation, to alleviate fatigue.'
A medicine; an aid to endurance; a drink on family or religious
occasions: in none of these capacities, the Commissioners felt,
could the effects of hemp drugs be regarded as menacing. Even
when used as an intoxicant, its consequences generally appeared
innocuous—where they could be assessed: the Report quoted
an unnamed writer as saying, 'the action of hemp on a man is so
various that when we read the several descriptions given, differing
so widely, we would scarcely suppose we were considering the same
agent'. In so far as they could be summarised, though, the immediate
effect of a hemp drug was
refreshing and stimulating, and alleviates fatigue, giving rise
to pleasurable sensations all over the nervous system, so that
the consumer is 'at peace with everybody'—in a grand waking
dream. He is able to concentrate his thoughts on one subject;
it affords him pleasure, vigour, ready wit, capacity for hard
work, and sharpness for business; it has a quieting effect on
the nervous system and removes restlessness and induces forgetfulness
of mental troubles; all sorts of grotesque ideas rapidly pass
through the mind, with a tendency to talk; it brightens the eyes
and, like a good cigar, gives content.
In young men, too, it might give rise to sensual thoughts. But
considering the drugs were so widely used, there was no evidence
to justify their ugly reputation. How had it spread? The reason,
the Commissioners decided, was because the drugs had no observable
effects when they were taken in moderation. Even those witnesses
who most disapproved of them had had no conception just how extensive
that consumption was. It was only the rare examples of immoderate
use that were seen by doctor or magistrate; 'the ruin wrought
in certain cases by excess has alone attracted their notice. They
feel towards drugs as a man feels towards alcohol, whose experience
has been mainly gained among the social wrecks of the lowest parts
of a great city.'
The evidence obtained from replies to the questionnaires revealed
that the proportion of men who took hemp drugs immoderately must
be very small. It was nevertheless desirable, the Commissioners
decided, to investigate the allegations that had been made about
their effects on this minority; in particular, that the drugs
were responsible for much of the insanity in India, and for much
of the crime.
Hemp drugs and insanity
There was no shortage of witnesses to testify to the way hemp
drugs caused insanity; a few even expressed the view that to reopen
this particular line of enquiry was stupid, implying 'wilful blindness
to what has been abundantly proved'. And so the evidence at first
suggested. Statistics sent in from mental hospitals all over India
showed that for years, hemp drugs had been one of the chief causes
of mental breakdown. The foremost expert on the subject, Surgeon
Lt. Col. Crombie, had already shown in an article in the Indian
Medical Gazette that a third of the inmates of the Dacca hospital
of which he had been Superintendent had smoked ganja; and
in a very large proportion of cases, he believed, it had been
'the actual and immediate cause of their insanity'. The 1871 Commission,
which in other respects had tended to play down the danger of
the drugs, had accepted that their habitual use did tend to produce
insanity; and the Government of Burma had just put a ban on hemp
drugs largely for that reason.
There was no reason to doubt the validity of the statistical evidence;
nor was it challenged. Nevertheless the Commissioners decided
that it ought to be checked. Taking the last year for which full
statistics were complete, they ordered a re-examination of the
records of every patient admitted to a mental hospital in India,
where that admission had been attributed to hemp drugs, in order
'to ascertain how far the statistics were reasonably correct,
and, if possible, also to arrive at some conclusion as to whether
hemp drugs have any real connection with insanity'.
The first discovery the check provided was that what was entered
in the asylum records of admission as the 'cause' of insanity
was not derived from a diagnosis made at the asylum. It was simply
taken down by a clerk from the description given by the policeman
or whoever was responsible for bringing the patient to the asylum,
at the time. Examining magistrates, whose duty it was to check
the admissions book, insisted that some specific cause should
be shown; and it had become standard procedure—Major Willcocks,
of the Agra asylum, admitted—to enter 'hemp drugs' as the cause,
wherever it was found that the patients took them; 'I cannot say
precisely why it has come down as the traditional practice.' He
had seen no reason to worry about the attribution, he explained,
as he had assumed the drugs were poisonous; 'my ordinary medical
practice did not bring me into contact with them at all. I only
came into contact with them in the asylum. I had no idea they
were used so extensively as I find on enquiry to be the case.'
Of all the asylum superintendents, only three claimed responsibility
for the diagnosis entered in the admission books—one of them
being the acknowledged authority, Surgeon Crombie. But when they
examined the admissions book for the Dacca asylum in the last
full year when he had been superintendent there, the Commissioners
found that it did not bear out his claim. In Dacca, as elsewhere,
the entries had been based on whatever explanation had been given
by the people who brought the man to the asylum. The Commission
therefore decided to check each individual patient's record. In
nine out of the fourteen cases of insanity attributed to hemp
drugs that year, and accepted as such by Crombie, the check showed
that hemp drugs could not have been responsible, as Crombie himself,
confronted with the results, had to admit. The idea which he had
publicised from his original figures—that hemp drugs were responsible
for a third of the insanity cases in asylums in India—had therefore
to be revised; the proportion was fewer than one in ten. Crombie
had apparently formed the view, the Commission observed, that
his experience had given his evidence about the danger of hemp
drugs a special value. This view had not been borne out by their
enquiry. Charitably, however, they ascribed his lapse to 'a mistake
of memory'.
When the follow-up was complete, it was found that insanity could
be related to hemp drugs in only forty cases from the whole of
India, in the year chosen—less than seven per cent of admissions;
and even then, there was usually another possible cause. And 'cause',
the Report added, was a risky term to apply; 'intemperance
of any kind may sometimes be not the cause of insanity, but an
early manifestation of mental instability'. In such cases, over-indulgence
in hemp drugs could be regarded not as a cause but as a symptom
of some underlying predisposition to insanity.
Here, then, was evidence given by expert witnesses, accepted for
years, used as the justification for campaigns in other countries
to ban hemp drugs—in the case of Burma being accepted as responsible
for the success of such a campaign—now shown to be worthless.
How had the mistake been made? The explanation, the Commissioners
decided, was simple. There was a natural tendency to look for,
and blame, a specific physical cause. Hemp drugs had been an obvious
choice, because as intoxicants they could sometimes produce symptoms
similar to those of insanity.
This popular idea has been greatly strengthened by the attitude
taken up by asylum superintendents. They have known nothing of
the effects of the drugs at all, though the consumption is so
extensive, except that cases of insanity have been brought to
them attributed with apparent authority to hemp drugs. They have
generalised from this limited and one-sided experience. They have
concluded that hemp drugs produce insanity in every case, or in
the great majority of cases, of consumption. They have accordingly
without sufficient enquiry assisted, by the statistics they have
supplied, and by the opinions they have expressed, in stereotyping
the popular opinion and giving it authority and permanence.
Hemp drugs and crime
There remained the other charge to be considered: that hemp drugs
bred crime. They did so, witnesses assured the Commission, in
three ways: by driving men to steal so that they could afford
to buy the drug; by releasing criminal instincts; or by destroying
a man's self-control, so that he 'ran amok'.
Hemp drugs users, some witnesses explained, progressed inexorably
from moderation to excess; excess made them too lazy to earn their
living; and when addicted, they had to steal to maintain their
supply. The Commissioners were unimpressed. The evidence they
had collected had established that of the vast number of hemp
drug users, only a tiny proportion used them immoderately. How,
then, could it be claimed that the slide from moderation to addiction
was inexorable? As for releasing criminal instincts, hemp drugs
appeared to have precisely the opposite effect; they 'tended to
make a man timid, and unlikely to commit a crime'. But the idea
that the drugs could cause men to run amok was not so easy to
dispose of, based as it was on common knowledge.
Witness after witness confirmed its truth. R. D. Lyall, with over
thirty years of varied experience as an official and as a magistrate
in India, told the Commission about the cases of such temporary
homicidal frenzy, which he had personally had to deal with. So
did W. C. Taylor, a veteran of almost half a century's experience
of Bengal. Surgeon Crombie treated the Commission to a description
of how a Bengali babu, 'as the result of a single debauch, in
an attack of ganja mania slew seven of his nearest relatives
in bed during the night'. And an Assam tea planter described another
such ganja-induced frenzy which he had good reason to remember
vividly, as it had happened on his own estate.
Again, the Commissioners decided to check the information, and
asked the witnesses to provide the relevant records or references.
Some immediately admitted that their information had been at second-hand,
and could not be checked. Others promised to send along the details,
from newspaper files; and then could not find them. R. D. Lyall
was unable to trace a single case of those he had had to deal
with; and the only one which W. C. Taylor was able to recall of
the 'numerous cases' he had claimed to have been concerned with,
turned out when checked to have had no connection with hemp drugs.
An investigation of the records about Crombie's babu disclosed
that he had indeed been taking ganja, but he had also been taking
opium; that he had a history of insanity before drugs were implicated;
and that he had not been on a debauch before the murder, which
had been committed in a state of 'mere insane despair'. And when
the records of the case which the Assam tea planter had described
were re-examined, it was found that his account to the Commission
differed materially from the one he had given at the time; not
least in that he had made no mention, at the time, of ganja.
In the end, the Commission were able to find only twenty-three
cases of homicidal mania which it was possible to check; and in
eighteen of them there was nothing to suggest that hemp drugs
had been responsible. 'It is astonishing', the Report commented,
to find how defective and misleading are the recollections which
many witnesses retain even of cases with which they have had special
opportunities of being well-acquainted. It is instructive to see
how preconceived notions based on rumour and tradition tend to
preserve the impression of certain particulars, while the impressions
of far more important features of the case are completely forgotten
... the failure must tend to increase the distrust with which
similar evidence, which there has been no opportunity of testing,
has been received.
Hemp drugs: verdict
The Report concluded with the Commission's verdict on the
issue which they had been brought together to consider: should
hemp drugs be banned, in India, as they were in Burma? The answer
was an emphatic no. The drugs were not a serious hazard—except
for a tiny majority of the idle and dissolute whose excessive
consumption endangered only themselves. Banning them would be
politically dangerous, because it would constitute an unpopular
interference with Hindu religious and family observances. In any
case, prohibition would be unworkable—for reasons which Watt
had just pointed out; it would be impracticable to hold a man
responsible for the existence of a wild plant growing near his
hut, 'and it would be impossible to prohibit him from gathering,
from such a plant, the daily quota used by him and his family'.
And even if prohibition could be enforced, it would lead only
to the increased consumption of more dangerous drugs, opium and
alcohol. Why—a Madras missionary had asked—should the Government
of India be concerned about hemp, rather than about 'the widespread
and rapidly increasing and much more injurious habit of alcoholic
drink?' Other witnesses had suggested an answer: it was a plot
on the part of the liquor manufacturers. Graphs of sales figures,
the Commission found, lent confirmation to the view that consumption
of the hemp drugs and of alcohol were intermeshed. If hemp drugs
ceased to be so readily available, the sales of alcoholic liquor
could be expected to rise.
Summing up, the Commissioners in their Report could claim
that they had carefully examined the physical, mental and moral
effects of hemp drugs used in moderation, and that no observable
adverse effects had been discoverable. There was no evidence that
hemp drugs were habit-forming, in the way alcohol and opium were.
A man who consumed the drugs even in moderation might feel uneasiness,
or even a sensation of longing, if deprived of them. But that
was not in itself a reason for depriving him of them—any more
than it would be in the case of tobacco.
The Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission was later
to be rescued from oblivion by the campaigners against the prohibition
of cannabis in America and Britain, in the 1960s; but its verdict
on that drug of 'not guilty' is of less importance than its analysis
of the remarkable irrelevance of accepted opinions about a drug,
even when they are supported by men who are supposedly experts
on the subject. Surgeon Crombie was a notable example of the kind
of man who has so often helped to translate public preconceptions
and prejudices on to Statute Books by lending the weight of his
authority to them, when in fact he has never bothered to examine
the evidence in front of him, in his job; he has simply rationalised
it to fit those preconceptions and prejudices.
By painstakingly going behind such opinions, and scrupulously
checking the records, the Commission were able to acquit hemp
drugs of the charges laid against them—as they were used in
India. It does not follow that a similarly honest committee would
have come to the same conclusion in, say, the Cameroons, where
German officers in the 1880s reported that they found hemp being
taken for its 'stimulating effect on the nervous system, so that
it is highly valued on long tiring marches, on lengthy canoe voyages,
and on difficult night watches'—where, in other words, it was
being used for the same purpose as coca in Peru, or opium in Formosa.
And Livingstone may perhaps have been right when he reported that
certain tribes in Africa took it to work themselves up into a
suitable state of frenzy before going into battle—though this
is more doubtful, because his description of the process suggests
that they may have been taking it to calm their nerves. Indian
hemp drugs were taken for very different purposes, in different
parts of the world; and they appear to have performed whatever
service was expected of them.