534
shown by the Statement* I now put in, are most
active in Sibsagar and Lakhimpur. These dis-
tricts have the largest foreign or imported popu-
lation. There is an account of a seizure of
fifty-nine seers in one case in paragraph 72 of the
Excise Report for 1887-88. It was in the La-
khimpur district. I was then Deputy Commis-
sioner. At times, in certain districts, considerable
energy has been shown. I do not believe it has
resulted in oppression or false charges. But it
has resulted in great increase of revenue. The
nature of the offence is such that you cannot easily
fix it on any one who has not the plant on his
land. The circumstances, of course, show whether
a plant has been accidentally or intentionally
sown. My position would be to throw the onus
on the accused of proving that the plant was
accidentally there if it was his homestead.
Question 20.—The Assamese rarely use ganja.
They are all opium-eaters. If I found the plant
growing in an Assamese homestead, I should not
conclude that the man was a consumer, but that he
was raising it for sale. In Goalpara the con-
sumption of ganja is larger than any other district
of the Assam Valley. The indigenous population
consume the drug more. The people of the
Dhubri sub-division, excluding the Eastern Duars,
are Bengalis. The rest of the district is As-
samese.
The hill people do not use the drug to any
extent. Very few of them take it. They are
more opium-eaters. These people grow hemp to
sell on the plains. There are political reasons,
set forth in the answer I have given to question
70, against strong measures of repression in the
hills. But the thing can, I believe, be done
gradually. That is what we are doing in getting
the Deputy Commissioner to use his influence to
prevent sales to the people of the plains. The
impossibility of making any great and rapid ad-
vance in the hills is no reason for not perfecting
the system on the plains. In fact, the more
perfect the system on the plains the less chance of
smuggling from the hills.
Question 24.—All wild ganja is known by the
name of bhang to distinguish it from excise ganja.
Bhang proper is not brought in from Bengal,
merely because no license is ever applied for.
That is no doubt, I suppose, because the wild
hemp is used for the beverage, and the Bengal
bhang is not required.
Question 45.—As a rule, a lunatic is sent in
(say) by a planter with a letter telling of his
violence. The man is put in the jail for observa-
tion, and the police are ordered to make enquiry.
They do so, and submit information in a pre-
scribed form. The cause is a point they have to
inquire into. If a man does not enter cause, I
know by experience that the District Superinten-
dent of Police gets a slip telling him to send a more
experienced man, or fine this man for carelessness.
The man must, therefore, look out for a cause.
The readiest is ganja. There is another difficul-
ty here, vi z., that many of the lunatics are from
other provinces, and nothing is known of them.
The safest thing to say is "ganja." The police
know that no further enquiry will be made, so
they stick it down. I think also that a police-
man would naturally tend to think rather of phy-
sical causes than of moral causes. If he did not
see an injury to the head by a blow or otherwise,
he would naturally look for something else that
but a man's head wrong. I think that this con-
* Not printed.
sideration may also, to a certain extent, explain
the popular idea. Ignorant people would look
most naturally for physical causes. I think the
causes assigned by the police here are generally
incorrect (1) because I do not think the police
have the ability required to make this enquiry,
and (2) because they so seldom see people who are
able to give them information. We have simi-
larly unreliable information about vital statistics.
There is no popular idea among the Assamese
that ganja causes insanity. But among planters
and others there is. This is due, I think, to the
old official idea, which is due to custom.
The constables of the force are mostly Assa-
mese. I have never had a case of any kind in
respect to ganja or bhang, so I know nothing of
their effects, on the force. We have no excise
establishment apart from the police. So also in
regard to the jail population the matter has not
come up.
Question 58.—There is one point in regard to
which there is some difficulty, viz., the uncertain-
ty of the price at which the drug is sold to re-
tail vendors. It has several times occurred to
me. The difficulty might be met by selling by
auction the right of wholesale vend with a fixed
price for supply to retail vendors. The price
should be fixed so high as to leave a considerable.
amount of profit to the wholesale vendor on his
transactions. The wholesale vendor is often the
retail vendor. Thus, where there are thirty
retail shops, the wholesale vendor may secure
fifteen of them. I do not think that this would
stand in the way of the introduction of the above
system. I do not think that this system would
affect the combinations among vendors referred
to in Mr. Anderson's note, if (as I suppose) he
means retail vendors. But no combination of
wholesale dealers would be possible to raise prices
if the price were fixed. As to combinations, I
may add generally that I believe their effects are
easily exaggerated. Some effort and care being
applied, they are soon broken up.
Question 69.—I remember a case in which a
planter, Mr. Spicer, one of the witnesses before
the Commission, asked to have a shop removed
from the neighbourhood of his garden. His re-
quest was refused, because the shop was an old
one of eleven years' standing. The quantity of
ganja consumed showed a real demand, and the
situation of the shop was such that if the licit
ganja was not supplied, illicit stuff from the hills
would be consumed. This is the only case I can
recall of a request to close a shop being refused.
We get more such applications about liquor shops
than about ganja.
Mr. Spicer was summoned to appear here. But
no letter or telegram has reached him apparently
on account of his absence from the district.
Question 59.—About the experiment made in
Shillong of issuing ganja from the Treasury re-
ferred to in paragraph (m) of Mr. Anderson's note.
In March 1892, when the Deputy Commissioner
of Shillong was settling his ganja shops, he
found that bidders had combined and would make
no proper offer. He knocked down the two
Shillong shops for Rs. 680 for 1893-94 against
Rs. 890, the upset price. I refused to sanction
this. There is no wholesale dealer in the Khasi
Hills and no warehouse. The retail vendors get
their ganja from the Gauhati warehouses on pass-
es issued at Shillong on payment of the duty
there. In order to break up the combination, I
issued a license free to an official retail vendor,