REPORT BY MR. B. C. BASU.
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11. I have so far dealt with the circumstances under which the wild hemp plant grows
spontaneously in Purnea and Bhagalpur. It is clear that the plant is never found on land
that remains long under water, that it is as a rule found on homestead lands, such as are
either cropped with mustard and tobacco, or are used as bathan for cattle.
12. There can be no doubt that Government is now foregoing what may prove to be an
important source of excise revenue owing to the free use of bhang in those districts where the
hemp plant grows in a state of nature, and, what is more serious is that no attempt is made
to check the use of this noxious drug. The working man often stands in need of ganja, but
bhang is the beverage of the comparatively well-to-do and lazy classes, and it is only reason-
able that they should be called on to pay their share of taxation instead of altogether escaping
from it, as is the case at present in many of the districts of North Behar. I have considered
the possibility of exterminating the wild bhang plant, and if this can be done, as I believe it
can, bhang may be grown under the same restrictions as ganja is at present cultivated in
Rajshahi. I have said that the plant grows very seldom at a distance from the raiyats' houses,
so that if the responsibility for eradicating the plant is thrown upon the immediate occupier
of lands, I have little doubt that the weed can be exterminated in the course of a few years.
If the plant grow like many other weeds in all circumstances of soil and situations, its exter-
mination would be a work of great difficulty; but, confined as it is to lands immediately adjoin-
ing the raiyats' homesteads, its eradication need not entail undue hardship on the cultivators.
The plant comes up in November and occupies the soil till May, and although each
weeding causes fresh plants to come up, yet two or three weedings given in suc-
cession cannot fail to free the land for the year from this noxious weed. The point to
be insisted upon is that the. plants should never be allowed to flower and seed. The
seeds of the plant are easily carried from place to place; they are easily transported by wind and
water, and cattle and goats, which occasionally browse on bhang, may drop seeds with their
excrements in fields that may be previously free from the pest. The total extermination of
the plant may therefore require several years of determined and continued effort. Efforts have
been made from time to time to exterminate wild hemp in several police circles through the
agency of village chowkidars, but they were of an extremely desultory character and conse-
quently failed to produce the desired effect. In case it be decided to have the plant extermi-
nated, I may suggest that an experiment may be made in a small isolated tract of country for
two or three years in order to see if the plant can be wholly destroyed by a continued course
of eradication.
In continuation of my letter No. 1258-A., dated the 18th instant, I have the honour to
submit, for the information of the Commission, the following facts which came to my notice
in the course of my enquiries with regard to the spontaneous growth of the wild hemp plant
in Purnea and North Bhagalpur.
2. I could find no evidence of the hemp plant being actually cultivated in any part of
Purnea and Bhagalpur: everywhere it came up as a weed. In some places, however, where
the plant did not grow in abundance and would, therefore, seem to be an object of considerable
value to bhang drinkers, I observed signs of its having been looked after with some degree
of care. As a rule, the people of these districts could not distinguish between male and female
plants, the leaves of both being used as bhang, but one man pointed out to me a plant which
was a female and said that this class of plants produced the best drug. It is not uncommon
to see a few selected plants, mostly females, left on the ground; these acquire a nice bushy
appearance, not unlike that of the ganja-bearing plant. All this made me suspect that the
people knew a great deal more about the bhang plant than they were willing to avow.
3. I was told by several persons, among them a European gentleman who has long resided
in North Bhagalpur, that bhang is often used to adulterate ganja. I am unable to vouch
for the accuracy of the statement, but if it be true it will furnish a strong argument in favour
of the extermination of the hemp plant from those districts in which it grows spontaneously
at present.
4. Besides yielding the intoxicant drug the wild hemp plant is used in Purnea and North
Bhagalpur as fuel, and occasionally, though seldom, the green plants are twisted in the
absence of other materials at hand into a rough sort of rope for binding bundles of wheat and
barley and carrying them from the field to the threshing-floor.