Last month was spent working in Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, an opportunity to study one of the most fascinating aspects of history – the opium trade. Much of the opium was grown in Malwa, and transported by camel caravans through the Thar desert,

to Central Asia, Persia and beyond, to meet the Silk Route. Other stuff was traded – silk, spices, dried fruits, but the prize product was indisputably opium. One learns that an opium drink was a much valued product – our guide explained the traditional method of taking the drink, with ghee-based food. One of the most important reasons for the taking of opium was that it dulled the appetite, allowing travellers and caravanners to travel twice he distance on half the food that needed carrying.
The opium merchants of the Marwari city of Jaisalmer (10th century CE onwards) were fabulously wealthy, living in large delicate carved palazzos called havelis. Strictly vegetarian Jains, many of them, they had a curiously symbiotic relationship with the Hindus around them – the fantastically carved Jain temples were all sited within the desert fortress of Jaisalmer,

made from the distinctive golden sandstone to protect them from desecration by Islamic fanatics from Sind, Baluchistan and Afghanistan. The fort, and its temples was protected by Rajput warriors, whose wars the Jain and other merchants had to finance. The only other caste permitted to live in the fort were the Brahmin priests, who performed the holy temple rites for the Jain merchants (who had no priests of their own). The opium merchants palazzos were outside the fort. An example of an opium merchant’s haveli is the “Patwa ki Haveli”, family-owned until the 1940s, made of the same golden sandstone as the fort itself.

.

The meeting room has a particularly fine ceremonial opium pipe,

where business was conducted between the merchant and the camel caravanners, including agents of business houses from here and abroad up until the 1940s. The bedrooms of the merchants had richly carved silver beds with embroidered silk drapings.

.

Water was precious in these desert towns, and was served as a final grace drink from huge ceremonial goblets.

.

The 1000-year old Jain and Hindu trading communities were hit when the East India Company took over the economic reins of Jaisalmer in the mid 19th century, the Company having a monopoly on the opium trade, and also, exceptionally in India by taxing the salt trade (over which they also declared a monopoly). Traditional opium trading here slowed considerably in the 1940s with the Sino-Japanese War, and the focus of the Chinese Communists to liberate China from the forcible import of opium by the European Powers into China after their victory over the Kuomintang in 1949.
The Marwari trading communities of Jaisalmer and Jodhpur emigrated all over the world, virtually condemning Jaisalmer to a slow death, until its rediscovery by tourists from the 1980s onwards, its military importance on the borders, and now, curiously, as a place to site huge numbers of windfarms.

.

The communities emerging from their tough desert tradition, now developing into entrepreneurs and industrialists, are taking over trading here, and, increasingly, in the world. And the demand for opium, though very different to those of the mediaeval caravanners, in Central Asia and Persia continues, now met from the fields of Afghanistan.

Edit: Links
http://theforvm.org/diary/mmghosh/a-story-opium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaisalmer
http://www.jaisalmer.org.uk/index.html
http://www.rsmm.com/wind.htm
--

--

--