A HISTORY OF INTOXICATION: OPIUM IN ASSAM, 1800-1959, BY KAWAL DEEP KOUR, PH.D (2019)
The Assamese call it Kanee/Kappa, following the mode of its preparation and intake (being reduced to a dry state, the opium paste was spread on narrow slips of cloth and later rolled into small bales).For many years before the British occupation of Assam, the “hubble-bubble” had served as a favourite pastime after a hard-day’s labour at the swampy rice fields. Alongside paan-tamul (betel-leaf and nut), kanee emerged as a stimulant and social lubricant as well. Small gardens of the white and red flower adorned the bari (homstead) of most households. They grew “luxuriantly” as affirmed by a colonial correspondence in 1793.An interesting conjecture attributes that the habit of opium smoking was introduced to the Chinese by the tribes of Assam who had long been addicted to its use. Whatever may have been the mode and method of its spread, opium eating and smoking found a devoted cult in the Brahmaputra valley. However, it never attained the status of connoisseurship as in China, where the Chinese perfected and refined opium smoking into an art and craft. Contrast it with the penny-wise Assamese peasant –he grew poppies and savoured his daily dose of mild stimulation. To him, it entailed recreational and pharmacological properties; the aesthetics neither interested nor enthused him.
This study of the history of intoxication focusing on opium in Assam for the period 1800-1959, narrates the trajectory of opium consumption and its regulation in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. Moving away from being trade and production centric –the present study attempts to address the centrality of opium in the socio-economic and political life of the people during the period within the scope of the study. The focus of this book is the opium eaters of the Brahmaputra valley of Assam, covering the ryotwari areas of Kamrup, Darrang, Nowgong, Sibsagar and Lakhimpur- majority of who were the small peasants.
Don Sinibaldo De Mas, “England, China and India,” trans, Hartmann H. Sultzberger, All about Opium reprint (England: BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2009), 102.
Hubble-Bubble refers to smoking of tobacco with a hookah-a long pipe attached to a container filled with water which was used to cool the smoke. Due to the presence of water, on smoking, the pipe let out a gargling sound.
