Britain may claim it gifted civilisation to India but we know for sure that the Raj transformed entire farming economies in Bengal and Bihar into opium-producing machines over the 18th and 19th centuries. British agents smuggled tons of opium into China in exchange for tea, legally and illegally, taking silver in return. Millions were turned into addicts in China and India even as laws were passed against opium in Britain. Journalist-playwright Thomas Manuel asserts in his packed-with-facts book Opium Inc: How a Global Drug Trade Funded the British Empire that the British Raj in the 19th century was a narco-state – a country sustained by trade in an illegal drug.
At its peak, opium was the third-highest source of income for the British in India – after land and salt. Thousands of farmers cultivated and harvested the milk of the poppy – on their own or due to coercion, but always trapped in indebtedness. This made the British East India Company, which entered the hugely profitable trade in the 1700s, a drug cartel. After 1857, the Raj took over, raining more misery on India and China before global events halted opium trade in the last century.
Of course, opium was produced even during Mughal times. By 1688, Bihar’s annual output was over 4,000 chests. The East India Company accelerated poppy growth. Between 1830 and 1839, the area under cultivation doubled. By 1860, it doubled again. In three years, it doubled yet again. So, over a century, the lands devoted to opium cultivation went up by
— source thewire.in | M.R. Narayan Swamy | 06/Sep/2021