When salt was smuggled
RADHA H.S.
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Can you believe it? A hedge that was 2,400 km long, 14 foot wide and 12 foot high!
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Photo: Shaju John
SALT PAN: Inexpensive and easily available. Photo: Shaju John
Chips without salt? Difficult to imagine.
Try this: Find out how much salt your family requires in a year. Next find out how much this would cost. And finally, what part of your parent's annual salary goes towards buying this. Work it out.
You will find that salt hardly makes a dent in a family's yearly expense.
Now imagine a situation where a family has to spend two months salary on a year's supply of salt.
It took two months of an agricultural labourer's wages in Bengal, in 1788 to buy one year's supply of salt.
Worse, in 1823 in many parts of India the price of adulterated salt went even higher: half a year's wages for a year's supply of salt.
India had produced cheap and good salt for centuries. It had been taxed by Indian kings, but never harshly. In the 1760s when tax on salt was increased to one of the highest ever anywhere in the world, Bengal was being administered by the British East India Company and after 1857 by the British government.
Unjust tax
Through these years, the British made fantastic profits off the salt tax and this money was taken back to Britain leaving India poorer than before.
People started smuggling salt in from the neighbouring states, which were not administered by the British.
Losing revenue the British decided to curb smuggling by marking a customs line around their boundaries. To further stop smuggling, the British put up a fence of thorny bushes. As the maintenance costs increased and strong winds across the flat lands carried away miles of hedging, the British decided to grow a hedge.
Money and effort was poured in to growing this hedge. In some parts, it stood at 14 feet wide and 12 feet high: very difficult to get through. By the 1850's this expensive hedge was 2,400 kilometres long patrolled by 12,000 people. It was perhaps the longest hedge in recorded history!
The money earned through the salt tax easily covered the expense. But, this super-high tax on salt took a terrible toll on the health of the people in the tropical heat which requires salt for re-hydration. Even during the great Bengal famine the tax was never lowered. Millions died and it has been said that the lack of salt was a big contributor.
In 1879, this Customs line was abolished as the salt-tax became more or less the same all over India as more parts of the country were administered by the British. Gandhiji's famous march to Dandi to make salt in defiance to the salt laws is an important part of India's struggle for independence.
The actual salt tax was abolished just before India's independence. Along with the customs line went the hedge, of which few traces can be found today.
Reference: The Great Hedge of India, by Roy Moxham 2001, Harper Collins Publishers India Pvt Ltd.
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