68 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. V.
the same season as wheat
and barley, and mixed in patches with these crops.
It is harvested in May after the other crops have been taken off
the ground.
There is no evidence of the male plant being eradicated.
Secret cultivation.
176. The homestead or
desultory cultivation for the production of ganja
seems
to be carried on for the
most part secretly. Mr.
Bruce of Ghazipur, referring to his own district of
course, states that the cultivation is not carried on openly, and
it is therefore
difficult to obtain any particulars about it; that the seed is sown
broadcast in good
soil, and the plants afterwards moved to some enclosed place, such
as the courtyard
of a house, and carefully tended; and that the female plants are
used for ganja.
Regarding the practice of eradicating the male plant, the evidence
is not de-
cisive, and what there is refers sometimes to the tending of wild
growth, and
sometimes to the more methodical cultivation. Thus Mr. Ferrard,
Magistrate
and Collector of Banda, referring to the spontaneous growth on the
Gumti river,
says that, in spite of close police supervision, "the people
continue to keep some
plants and leaves, and prepare drugs from them. In such cases the
male and
female plants are kept separate." He may be talking in this place
of the drugs
and not the growing plants, for he says further that he has been
told that "the
male plants are cut down when young and dried, and its leaves form
bhang.
Ganja is made from the female flower and petals when almost ripe.
The plants
can grow together until the period of fertilisation." Witness (48)
has been
told that the male plants are extirpated. On the other hand, the
drug contractor
of Moradabad (248) had never heard of the male plant being
extirpated.
Cultivation for ganja in
former
days.
177. The information
regarding bygone cultivation throws some light on the
knowledge of the people and
the practice in respect
of the removal of the male plant. Witness (61)
states that there was a good deal of cultivation formerly at
Loohaisar, tahsil
Fatehpur, in Barabanki, but it was forbidden. Witness (249),
referring to
the same cultivation, seems to say that it was grown in a tract
called Mahadeva,
and this must have yielded the ganja which other witnesses speak of
as Mahadeva.
Witness (61) gives some details of the methods then employed. The
seed
used to be sown with wheat and other crops, and when the plants had
attained
a little growth, the Kabariyas, and they only, were able to
distinguish which were
ganja and which bhang plants, i.e., female and male
respectively. The ganja
plants were then transplanted to some suitable spot. He mentions
also the
practice of twisting the leaves (sic) to make the plant
produce ganja.
Principal features of
irregular cul-
tivation.
178. It is not worth
while discussing the evidence of individual witnesses
further. It may be inferred
from the whole that the
distinction between the male and female plants is
pretty widely known; that where the spontaneous growth is in small
and manage-
able quantity, and where plants have been sown in suitable places,
or transplant-
ed into such places, the female plants often receive special care
and have the
males removed from among them; and that for the more desultory sort
of cultiva-
tion it is not very material whether the seed is taken from the
cultivated or wild
growth, from ganja or from bhang.
Tehri Garhwal and Rampur.
179. There is no
information of any methods in vogue in the States of
Tehri
Garhwal and Rampur different
from those of the
province generally.