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Bhang, Ganja & Co. Anand K Bhatt Anand Kumar Bhatt is a former IAS officer. He is a passionate blogger and a bird watcher. He lives in Gwalior and spares no efforts to make his city green by donating tree saplings and proecting the existing trees.

Someone visiting Nepal was tempted to carry back some leaves of Cannabis sativa (Bhang) growing wild there. That encouraged me to search for bhang and its close kins ganja and charas on the net. I often come across reading material about hashish, marijuana, and also heroin and cocaine but I was never sure of their Hindi equivalent. Gone are the days when one went to a library and search for the relevant books. Net is the mantra now!

Cannabis sativa

Cannanbis (Hemp) or Bhang is just the dried leaves of the plant. I have found it growing wild in Dehradun and also in Darbhanga, and so I feel that the entire terai belt will have it in the wild. I read in some magazine that there is a cluster villages in the interiors of Himachal where some foreigners have been living for years, and experiencing nirvana by growing bhang and probably opium. No outsider is welcome.

I spent most of my childhood and young days in Eastern part of U.P. before getting into the rut of government service. In those parts bhang is a normal drink on the festive day of Holi, as well as a favorite of many a people. Thandai is a delicacy of Varanasi and more often than not it is laced with bhang paste!

Once during the summer vacation I did take bhang for a few weeks followed by long swim in the Ganga which was only a kilometer away from our place. The result was adding a few kilos which I could not shed even later in life.

Erythroxylum coca

Bhang is made into a paste in a stone grinder (sil-lodha), adding small quantity of water. They say that the longer the bhang is ground, the more intoxicating it becomes. It is also said that rubbing it with copper coin makes the intoxication deadly. I have no way to confirm it.

I have had people talk during Holi festival time that if you take sweets after bhang pakora or thandai, the intoxication is higher. Bhang makes your senses slow. If you laugh, you keep on laughing, even though it registers somewhere in your brain that you cannot stop laughing. This is very unlike the intoxication caused by alcohol which makes you aggressive.

Ganja is top leaves and unfertilized flowers of young female plants. This is either smoked or brewed like tea. Marijuana is a close relative which is leaves and flowers of both male and female plants. My wife says that marijuana is a good sleep inducing drug, and it also protects against Alzheimer in old age. I haven't read the article from which she is quoting, but its sleep-inducing quality is well-known.

Then there is charas (hashish) which is resin extracted from the top leaves and unfertilized flowers of young female plants. It is smoked in a clay smoking pipe known as chillum. All the three are not addictive.

An opium field

Opium is a different kettle of fish. There used to be some opiates in our country who were beyond rehabilitation at least during those days, and they were issued a quota of opium every month by the government. They were known as 'afimchis' and the bliss after having it was known as 'pinak'. Ghazipur in Eastern U.P. had a govt. opium factory where opium was further processed into morphine and codeine. Opium cultivation is officially allowed in Mandsaur district in western part of M.P. Government collects from the permitted cultivators a prefixed amount of opium (latex collected from a slit in the opium pod) based on average yield and there is always the rumor that every cultivator saves some on the sly which goes into the illegal drug market. But India is nowhere on the opium map, with Afghanistan ruling the roost these days, totally illegal.

The British tried to earn money off the Chinese by pushing opium sale to them. The Chinese government was alarmed and tried to ban the import and use of opium. This resulted in two opium wars in late nineteenth century in which the Chinese were squarely defeated. The result was that by 1905 about a quarter of the Chinese male population was addicted to opium. How they got rid of this habit and rose to be what they are today says something about the resilience of an old civilization which has not decayed like many others.

One has also learnt that in some parts of Rajasthan on festive occasions including marriage ceremony etc. the guests are welcomed with opium in very small quantity heavily diluted in water.

Opium contains morphine and codeine. And it is morphine which is further processed into heroin which is twice more potent than morphine.

Heroin is so addictive that even three days' sustained use can cause addiction and withdrawal symptoms if discontinued.

Coca plant

Cocaine is an alkaloid which is made from the leaves of coca plant.

Some people are in favor of legalizing marijuana and hashish at least in the US which is the biggest market for these and other drugs.

About cannabis I can safely say that it is not addictive. The same I have heard about ganja and charas as well (marijuana and hashish). But about heroin and cocaine I admit that I have written what I read. Unfortunately (or should I say fortunately!) I haven't seen any case of addiction to the two most dangerously addictive drugs in the world. Of course one can be rehabilitated. There is the story of an Indian film star whose parents were also stars in their own right who was a druggie but got rid of the habit. One of the ideas behind writing this piece was to distinguish clearly between cannabis group of drugs/herbs and opium derivatives.

Yes, I suspect that if one is a druggie, the longer period one has used the two drugs, the more difficult it is to get out of the habit. One has also read (in fiction maybe) about the bad effects the two drugs have on physical and mental make up.

It should be a good research topic to understand the large number of intoxicating herbs and drugs. One hears about the intoxication by the intake of Dhatura (Datura fastuosa) seeds which is considered a poison.

There have also been stories about Vish kanyas (Poison girls) who were given small doses of snake venom from early childhood which was increased gradually and ultimately they were made to be bitten by venomous snakes. They were used for killing the Ruler's enemy as the lady's whole body was venomous (something like AIDS?)

Poison arrows were used in the olden days, especially by the primitive tribes. But they are different as they were not used as recreational drugs.

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