Wednesday, November 8, 2023

[New post] Maharajas of Colonial India and the Opium Trail: Manu Pillai and Amitav Ghosh

Maharajas of Colonial India and the Opium Trail: Manu Pillai and Amitav Ghosh

Jeemol

Nov 8

False Allies: India's Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma by Manu S Pillai, Juggernaut, September 2021, essays the story of the Princely states of India. His pickof states seems random, powerful dynasties such as the Maharajas of Travancore (Kerala), the Wadiyars of Mysore (Karnataka), the Gaekwads of Baroda (Gujarat) and the Maharanas of Mewar (Rajasthan). The odd one out is Pudukkottai (Tamil Nadu). The choice of these different locations are loosely connected through the travels of the portraitist and painter Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906).

Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh follows the trail of the opium industry across China, India, Britain and America during the colonial times. It provides the background to his novels the Ibis Trilogy, Flood of Fire, Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke. I am a great admirer of the work of Amitav Ghosh and read his trilogy and most other novel with great interest.

So what is the similarity between Manu Pillai and Amitav Ghosh? The colonial period to begin with, India in Pillai's account and mainly India and China in Ghosh's account. China was not colonised, except parts of it, but the opium trade was deeply controlled by the British.

I first read Manu Pillai's portrait of the Princely states cover to cover, in a manner of speaking, on Kindle. Then a friend gifted us Amitav Ghosh's historical record of the opium trail. While I had never read Manu Pillai earlier, Amitav Ghosh's story was familiar territory bringing back memories of the various episodes in the Ibis trilogy. I have read almost all his novels and written a few reviews too.

We have been given to believe that the Maharajas of the erstwhile Princely states of India were a set of decadent, drunken, lecherous set. In False Allies Pillai argues that a number of them were in fact progressive and later even patriotic nationalists. They worked for the good of the people of the state and were assisted by learned forward looking Dewans/administrators/prime ministers. Not all the Princely states came under the rule of the British. Some of them were strategically and politically able to assert their independence from colonial rule.

In Smoke and Ashes there were a few interesting accounts by Ghosh where I noted a similarity with Pillai's account of the colonial period.Amitav Ghosh compares the working of the opium trade in Malwa in Western India with that in Eastern India. Trade in opium in the eastern region was fully controlled by the East India Company, which ended up squeezing the cultivators and small farmers of poppy and the traders of opium. In the Western region opium trade was controlled by a number of castes, religions and communities like the Parsis, Hindus, Jains and Muslims, Marwaris, Bohras and Ismailis. While in the East the British were the main beneficiaries of this trade, while in the West all communities involved were able to gain. Amitav Ghosh attributed this to the more loosely held reign of power by the Princely states of the Western region which allowed the communities to benefit, just as pointed out by Manu Pillai. This form of governance in the Western Princely states also allowed commercial networks to grow further benefiting trade and allowing the communities to prosper. The profits generated by the opium trade in the Western region trickled down with a larger share remaining with the local people. The businessmen also gained entrepreneurial skills and developed networks in far flung regions.

A comparison of the cities of Bombay in the West and Calcutta in the East makes for an interesting contrast in Ghosh's story. Bombay developed into a commercial centre with the local businessmen gaining self-confidence over time. Compared to Calcutta, Bombay also had longstanding contact and trade with other European firms. Indian merchants dealt in foreign trade through them over a long period giving them commercial and entrepreneurial experience. In Bombay opium trade was openly acknowledged and visible, allowing various segments of the society to benefit from it. In contrast in Calcutta, under the dominance of the British, even very wealthy businessmen did not have access to the supply chain of opium. Further, the British employed covert 'exclusion policies' to keep the Bengali businessmen in a subordinate position. 'So while Bombay prospered, Calcutta's economy remained quintessentially colonial, structured around racial and communal hierarchies'.

And so I note a similarity in the assessment of a positive role of the Indian Princely states in the colonial era by Pillai and Ghosh in their treatises. In regions where the Princely states were progressive and able to maintain their independence from colonial rule, trade, commercial networks and entrepreneurship flourished.