Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)
New Books in Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
Historian Utathya Chattopadhyaya discusses how ganja in British India tied together peasant livelihoods, colonial taxation, asylum medicine and religious practice. The conversation traces this history into modern international drug control and the war on drugs, highlighting how a single plant became central to debates about danger, order and everyday survival.
59:50•19 Aug 2026
Ganja, Empire and Everyday Lives in British India
Episode Overview
- Ganja is presented as a flexible, multi-layered category, making it hard for colonial authorities to define and control through tidy botanical and legal labels.
- British officials’ confusion over cannabis fed into taxation schemes, asylum diagnoses and racialised ideas about violence and irrationality, especially after the 1857 rebellion.
- Peasant families in Nauga grew ganja largely to pay off debts, showing how intoxicants can sit at the heart of survival strategies rather than simple leisure.
- The 1916 ganja workers’ strike forced the colonial state to concede a producers’ cooperative, which reshaped local infrastructure and public institutions through its profits.
- Later international drug regimes and the US-led war on drugs pushed South Asian states to adopt strict cannabis controls while awkwardly accommodating religious uses such as bhang.
“Ganja is a material complex.”
What can we learn from those who have battled addiction and control through something as ordinary as a plant? This conversation between historian Dr Utathya Chattopadhyaya and host Dr Miranda Melcher follows cannabis—known widely as ganja—from village fields in Bengal to imperial tax ledgers and modern drug laws.
Aimed at people curious about drugs, dependence, and control rather than a how‑to on quitting, the episode zooms in on how a single plant sits at the crossroads of pleasure, policing, medicine and everyday survival. Chattopadhyaya describes how ganja “is a material complex”, a slippery term used for the whole plant, specific products, and even as slang, which left British officials “thoroughly confused” as they tried to tax and classify it.
You’ll hear how rural peasant families in Nauga produced ganja as a cash crop, often not for their own use but to service crushing debts. That story crescendos in a remarkable 1916 strike, when ganja cultivators simply refused to grow the crop, forcing the colonial state to negotiate and eventually support a producers’ cooperative that funded roads, schools and even religious buildings. The episode also traces how imperial anxieties around intoxication fed ideas about insanity, violence and race.
Bhang, a drink made from cannabis leaf, was blamed for both the ferocity and the failures of the 1857 rebellion, shaping asylum diagnoses and later taxation policies. Listeners interested in contemporary drug debates will recognise echoes in Chattopadhyaya’s account of how US‑driven “dangerous drug” definitions and the later war on drugs pressured South Asian states to adopt harsh controls while awkwardly trying to preserve religious uses of cannabis.
If you’re curious about how ideas of intoxication, addiction and ‘dangerous’ substances are built into law, medicine and everyday life, this episode might leave you asking: whose interests are really being served when a plant is turned into a problem?
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