Along the “Hippy Hashish Trail” and the history of Cannabis production and use – India and Afghanistan
Cannabis – The Oldest Farmed Crop In The World
Cannabis is the oldest agricultural crop in the world, dating back 8500 years in the past, and was the world’s biggest cultivated crop from 1000BC to 1900. And while it has been used for centuries as medicine, food, textile, rope, and for other industrial purposes, its ‘recreational’ intoxicating properties are what cannabis is most (in)famous for.
Up to the 1930s cannabis was grown throughout the world and was considered an essential part of medicine. The intoxicating properties of cannabis were also interesting to many different cultures worldwide, going from ancient Egypt to various shamans and medicine men in Africa. As well as being used as medicine, cannabis was often a part of various spiritual and religious processes and practices.
Using cannabis ‘recreationally’ though was never a hugely popular trend or a part of daily leisure for most nations and cultures in the past. People always preferred alcohol because it was easy to get a hold of and cheap. Many cultures used other plants such as tea, coffee, coca, salvia, or various mushrooms but their use was never as popular or mainstream as cannabis use is today as it was mostly reserved for special occasions or rituals.
Spreading throughout the world
Going from Nepal and India, wherever people went, cannabis followed and a certain percentage of plants were always of the intoxicating variety. With time certain cultures developed more affinity for them and dedicated their time to growing and breeding of just those sorts. Historically, places in India, Afghanistan, Morocco, and other countries have been growing cannabis for centuries and even developed their own techniques and methods in processing the raw flowers. Bhang, a popular cannabis drink is still popular and used in India, Afghanis used to mix their hash with opium and used it that way while farmers in the Rif mountains in Morocco made hash.
With the colonization of the world, cannabis spread to both North and South America and West Indies, mainly because of the colony’s need for hemp. But, cannabis also went together with the slaves, who used cannabis in their home countries and brought that practice with them. Because they weren’t allowed to indulge in alcohol, cannabis provided them with a way to get away from the harsh realities of slave life and provided them with comfort, pain relief and other medical benefits.
India
The latest research shows that cannabis originated from the plateau of Mt. Everest and the mountainous regions of India and Nepal are considered to be the “birthplace” of cannabis. The earliest mentions and records of cannabis use in India date back to before 1000 BC.
The use of cannabis and its tradition in India dates back thousands of years and some researchers found evidence of ritual and religious use and mentions in Vedas, dating back to 2000 years B.C.. Tantric Cannabis use in India rose in about the 7th century A.D. and reached its height in medieval Bengal and the Himalayan kingdoms. The first ‘magical’ and ceremonial use of cannabis can be traced back to Atharva, the fourth Veda, which treated Cannabis as a special plant and one of the five sacred plants of the Atharvan magicians and shamans.
Chikitsa-sara-sangraha from the late 11th century by Vangasena is the first uncontested Indian text that mentions the use of cannabis. It mentions bhanga (or Bhang) in two recipes for a “long and happy life” as a digestive and appetiser. Nagarjuna’s Yogaratnamala, from 12-13th century, suggests cannabis smoke can be used to ‘make one’s enemies feel possessed by spirits’ and Sharngadhara Samhita mentions cannabis as one of the drugs which ‘act very quickly in the body’.
Ayurveda refers to Cannabis in various recipes as an ingredient in small quantities for pain relief and aphrodisiac. It notes that larger quantities of Cannabis or long-time consumption can be addictive, even more dangerous than tobacco for the lungs and liver. Many tantric texts mention cannabis as ‘samvid’ while Ayurvedic texts mention Cannabis as ‘vijaya’.
With time, cannabis use became normal and spread all throughout the region and cannabis was used not only for ceremonial and religious purposes but also for medicinal and ‘recreational’ uses. Cannabis soon spread from the Tibetian plateau into all parts of India and people started to produce hashish, or charas as it’s called in India by rubbing the live cannabis plants and collecting the sticky resin.
The use of both cannabis and hashish became a tradition in India and hash became one of the most important import goods coming into India, mostly from the Turkestan region. The import of hash continued up until India banned its use in the 20th century, providing hashish both to India and to a smaller part, the rest of the colonial empires that ruled India.
With time Cannabis became a mainstay of traditional folk medicine, first used as a remedy for rheumatism by Buddhist monks and prescribed by Hindu physicians as an anti phlegmatic agent. Since then, Cannabis appears regularly in medical and religious texts, where it’s closely associated with Shiva.
In fact, the use of Cannabis in Western medicine spread from India, thanks to an Irish physician Dr. William Brooke O’Shaughnessy who developed new cannabis extraction methods, which he used to treat epilepsy, rheumatism, cholera, tetanus and analgesia.
Throughout history, cannabis use in India has been well documented, both by numerous Indian researchers and chronicles as well as conquering Portuguese and British empires. After the Portuguese conquest of Goa in 1510, the Portuguese became more familiar with cannabis customs, tradition, and trade in India. Garcia de Orta, Portuguese doctor and botanist wrote about the uses of cannabis in “Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs and Medicinal Matters of India and of a few Fruits”, published in 1534. He noted that bhang was used to improve appetite and enable labour as well as increase work, stating “I believe that it is so generally used and by such a number of people that there is no mystery about it”. In 1550, Cristobal Acosta, Portuguese doctor and natural historian outlined the recipes for bhang in his work – ”A Tract about the Drugs and Medicines of the East Indies”
The British tried to ban cannabis cultivation on several occasions, first by enacting the tax on bhang, ganja, and charas in 1798 and then later in a few more instances in the 19th century but to no avail. In 1894, the British Indian government completed a wide-ranging study of cannabis in India. The reports’ findings stated:
“Viewing the subject generally, it may be added that the moderate use of these drugs is the rule and that the excessive use is comparatively exceptional. The moderate use practically produces no ill effects. In all but the most exceptional cases, the injury from habitual moderate use is not appreciable. The excessive use may certainly be accepted as very injurious, though it must be admitted that in many excessive consumers the injury is not clearly marked. The injury done by the excessive use is, however, confined almost exclusively to the consumer himself; the effect on society is rarely appreciable. It has been the most striking feature in this inquiry to find how little the effects of hemp drugs have obtruded themselves on observation.”
- Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, an international treaty from 1961, classed cannabis together with hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine which brought additional pressure on traditional cannabis cultivation regions to stop and ban its production. This was in direct conflict with India’s traditions and social and religious customs but as a compromise, India promised to limit the export of Indian hemp in return for a 25 year exemption period, in which they were to ban recreational drugs. Finally, in 1985, India passed the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act which banned cannabis cultivation and use.
But, the ban didn’t include bhang, a traditional cannabis beverage made by mixing cannabis and milk. Although its legal status varies from state by state, its use is mostly tolerated if not allowed, as well as cannabis use in general. Even in Assam, where bhang has been explicitly banned since 1958, it is still consumed by thousands during the Ambubachi Mela, an annual Hindu gathering or “mela”.
Although technically banned, cannabis cultivation and use in India is tolerated, especially in rural regions where you can still find feral and wild cannabis growing on its own. Many western travelers were drawn to India and for a lot of them, cannabis was an important part of the lure. Numerous travelers, party seekers, and hippies visited India on their way through the Hippie (or Hashish) trail and collected and brought back cannabis seeds with them on their way back. Many Indian/Pakistani/Nepalese landraces became a cornerstone in modern-days cannabis breeding and are parents or grandparents of various cannabis strains we use today.
With the global re-legalization or decriminalization of medicinal use of cannabis, the first attempts to re-legalize cannabis in India started in the mid-2010s. Numerous initiatives started pushing for legalization which ended with the Delhi High Court agreeing on hearing the petition challenging the ban of cannabis.
Along the Hippy Hashish Trail and the history of Cannabis production and use India and Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan has been a traditional cannabis producing country for centuries and its people have been using every part of the cannabis plant – its oil-rich seeds as food, its fibers to make clothes, ropes, and textile, and of course, its leaves, flowers, and resin as medicine, as well as a psychoactive drug. Afghani hash, traditionally called chars, is among the world’s best-known globally as Afghan Black.
Acting as a transit country for loads from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and other central Asian countries to British owned India and China at first, hashish production in Afghanistan began expanding beyond the country’s traditional markets in the second half of the 19th century and especially in the late 20th century when it started to go West.
Hash use in Afghanistan dates back to the 15th century when it was used in “majoun” – an edible mix of dates, honey, spices, oil, and hashish, or sometimes opium. Many western travelers and writers described hash use by the Afghani people, usually smoked in traditional pipes or chillums. Depending on their preferences and outlook on life, they describe Afghani people indulging in hash either as lazy and unmotivated for any work or as romantic, “living in the moment”, warm and welcoming.
The arrival of tobacco in Asia and Europe and the invention of modern dry-sift techniques that substituted the previously hand rubbing methods, used to this day in India, contributed to the drastic increase of both hash production and use in the 16th century. Hash produced in traditional cannabis growing regions of Samarkand and Bukhara was thought of as the world’s best and it was a major import both for Indian and European markets.
Afghanistan switched from being a transit country for hash to being one of the world’s biggest producers after a series of Russian invasions from 1860 onwards. Driven by the invasion and instability in their own regions, people from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan moved south, populating the northern parts of Afghanistan and western parts of the Yarkand area in Chinese Turkestan. The Turkestan people brought cannabis seeds and their genetics with them and Afghani people soon learned how to grow and process cannabis and as a result became the world’s biggest producers and exporters of hashish. India was the biggest market for hash and it’s estimated that 80-90 tons of hashish were legally imported each year, mostly from Afghanistan and Yarkand.
Another big boom in production came in the 1930s along with the second wave of immigrants from, now Russian, Turkestan – causing a huge spread in cannabis and hashish production that went deep into the south of Afghanistan and neighboring Iran and Pakistan.
The beginning of the 20th century brought numerous laws that started regulating drug use and production. Signed by close to 60 countries, the League of Nation’s International Opium Convention came into force in 1928 but Afghanistan didn’t become a member until 1934 and ratified the convention in 1944. Convention was among the first global attempts to regulate and ban cannabis/hashish production but in reality, it had very limited control, mostly due to the fact that hash use and production has been ingrained in many countries and cultures.
After the Chinese ban on cannabis cultivation and hashish production, the Yarkand region and its cannabis farmers hugely decreased its production, leaving Afghanistan, Nepal, and northern India as the sole producers and exporters for the Asian and global markets.
The man greatly responsible for our knowledge of both cannabis genetics and evolution and cannabis and hash production in the Afghanistan region is Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian geneticist and botanist. Vavilov was the head of the Soviet Research Institute in Applied Botany and New Crops from 1920-1940. He first noticed and recorded the difference in Afghani varieties of cannabis – its broad leaves, compact structure, harder buds, tighter internodal spacing, shorter flowering time, and bigger yields – compared to the Indian Sativas. During his travels and research, Vavilov made two divisions of the Afghani cannabis variety, naming them Afghanica and Kafiristanica sub-varieties, both of which became what we know call Cannabis Indica.
Up until the middle of the 20th century and the increase in hashish production, Cannabis Indica was confined just to the mountainous regions of the Hindu Kush valley. The increase in demand led to the spreading of Indica genetics, both planned and through accidental pollination in the neighboring regions in Afghan and Pakistani territory, that were dominantly growing Sativas up until then. This also caused the mixing of Indica and Sativa varieties and created numerous hybrids that still exist in those regions today.
With a slight interruption during the Second World War, hash production continued and thrived despite international efforts to prohibit cannabis production in Afghanistan. Cannabis image was revitalized during the 1950s and 1960s by the “Beat Generation” of writers like Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ginsberg while Afghanistan became a spot on the famous Hippie or Hashish Trail that went from Istanbul to Nepal and India.
With the “war on drugs” and piling international pressure, Afghanistan was forced to deal with its cannabis production and trafficking. Backed by 47 million USD in funding from the United States, Afghanistan’s King Zahir Shah outlawed cannabis production and committed to eradicating cannabis production in 1973. Of course, eradication programs were hard to implement, mostly because of corruption and inaccessible mountainous areas where different tribes ruled but also proved pointless and futile just because of the sheer volume of cannabis grown and a very limited police force that was supposed to implement the program.
Up until the early 1980s and the arrival of large-scale production of Morrocan hash, Afghani along with Lebanese and Pakistani was dominating the world’s underground hash and cannabis markets. The Afghani-Russian war caused the cannabis and hash production to once again shift from the north to bordering areas with Pakistan and increased the production in Pakistan itself. In the following years, much of the hash produced was coming from Pakistan but it was the same Afghani genetics and dry-sift techniques. When Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1980, cannabis production almost came to a halt but quickly recovered and grew in volume as soon as the Russians left.
The Taliban regime that came to power after the Russians left didn’t look kindly at drug production of any kind and imposed harsh, even extreme punishments for both traffickers and cultivators. After a few decades of Taliban and various tribal leaders taking turns on various regions of Afghanistan, the American invasion started the “War on Terror”.
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