Book Excerpt| Ananda: An Exploration of Cannabis in India by Karan Madhok

Ah, the humble, lovely kurta. Light, breathable, perfect for the high Celsius climates of the subcontinent. A tunic that is simple and affordable enough for the South Asian everyman and woman, a garb capable of being devastatingly fashionable under the right guidance, and a garment that is also aggressively embellished by our politicians. The kurta is equipollent, from the prime minister at his biggest campaign rallies to the local MLA invited to your interschool badminton tournament. Right, centre, left, conservative, liberal, communist, progressive, whatever.

Satpathy, who was a member of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) political party, is as progressive as they come, a rare species in a nation of politicians, who seems to be more concerned with challenges of the present than the imagined fictions of the past. A journalist by trade, Satpathy served as a Lok Sabha member for a decade and a half from Odisha’s Dhenkanal constituency. In his time as an elected representative, he supported bills to decriminalize homosexuality, called for a repeal of pornography bans, spoke in favour of a uniform civil code (instead of laws based on various religions), opposed the construction of nuclear power plants, batted for net neutrality, and raised privacy concerns about the Aadhaar card project.

It was Satpathy’s stand on cannabis that, briefly, made him a stoner viral sensation. In 2015, while serving his fourth term as MP, Satpathy held an ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) session on Reddit. When queried about the BJD’s stance on decriminalizing cannabis, Satpathy responded,

While in college, I have smoked (and unlike Clinton have inhaled)* cannabis many a times. In villages of Orissa, many people openly smoke and, as their representative, I am not entitled to be judgmental.

BTW cannabis, luckily, is legal in certain states in India, like Orissa. You can walk up to a government excise shop and buy your day’s need.”

In an interview that followed, Satpathy confirmed that he had no regrets or remorse about smoking pot in his youth. ‘I don’t support the ban on cannabis consumption,’ he said, and then added that there is an elitist bias in India that looks down upon cannabis smokers as compared to those that consume alcohol. Satpathy’s stand was one of the rare times since the NDPS Act was conceived that an Indian lawmaker openly spoke about the decriminalization of cannabis—and particularly, did so without basing his conclusions on retrograde pseudo-sciences.

I read the quotes above over and over again to believe my eyes. An Indian politician admitting to smoking weed? Admitting to not being judgemental? Is this even real life?

So, I give him a call.

‘I have not changed my stand [on cannabis],’ Satpathy tells me over the phone from Odisha. ‘It’s a god-given, natural product, which needs to be made available for people. I don’t think I will back down on this.’

In 2019, Satpathy retired from politics; now in his late sixties, he serves time as the editor of the Odisha-based newspapers Dharitiri and OrissaPOST. On social media, he continues to take strong political stances, often sharing memes and news reports from around the world that highlight his progressive sympathies.

These are the same sympathies that shade his opinion regarding the economy of cannabis, too. ‘I don’t approve of legalization,’ says Satpathy, ‘because it will mean that the big corporations will take thousands of acres and control the farming. I want decriminalization, so that the marginal, small farmer can grow the plant on site, on their fields, and sell a lot of it.’

For Satpathy, a ban on a naturally available product seems nonsensical. ‘If you go to the Himalaya, Uttarakhand, Kashmir, it grows all over,’ he says. ‘This is a very, very hardy plant. It grows on the hillside. Nobody waters it, nobody puts manure. It recreates itself with its own seeds and becomes a jungle. It doesn’t need much tending or care.

‘Just because it was told to some government bureaucrat, who was stuck-up in the mid-80s, they criminalized it,’ he continues. ‘If they think everyone can become a ganja abuser—that’s the height of stupidity. It has immense industrial and medicinal issues. Most people mistakenly think that it’s only an intoxicant that you smoke, or drink in shape of bhang. That, of course, is a part of it. But even your cough syrup contains codeine, which is habit-forming. There are so many habit-forming drugs that are medically prescribed. If somebody wants to abuse a certain thing, they can do it any which way, including clandestinely, through the black market. So, why not bring [cannabis] overboard? Why not bring it on the table and certify the product?’

While steady progress has been made state by state, Satpathy believes that a larger overhaul is needed at the centre. His suggestion is that the government needs to set up a relevant parliamentary committee which is empowered to review and revisit the old NDPS Act, and remove cannabis from its ambit. A new central policy will eventually guide the states to liberalizing their own narcotics acts. From there, he hopes that other ministries (such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare) can take the necessary steps forward, including empowering farmers to learn and earn more.

Decriminalization, Satpathy asserts, will also help thwart the ‘mafia operation’ around the cultivation and trade of cannabis in his home state, Odisha, and across the border in Andhra Pradesh— including in regions that produce the dominant Sheelavathi strain, where many tribal communities are entangled in the tussle between Naxalites, security forces, and the mafia.

‘See, if you criminalize rice, rice will go to the black market, too!’ says Satpathy. ‘They’re making something wild illegal. What if some leaders say that, for creating “So-And-So Rashtra”, you must not eat mango. Will you make mango illegal? So…if you bring [cannabis] upfront, the black market will collapse.’

‘My suspicion is that the mafia is fuelling and paying off bureaucrats and politicians. They want to maintain status quo. Quote me on this.’

Satpathy may have been the most outspoken Indian politician on this issue, but I would soon discover that he is far from the only one. Several elected officials—on all sides of India’s chaotic and fractured political spectrum—have hinted their support for liberalization of state or national cannabis laws. Even some members rabble-rousing in the houses of parliament find unity under the hot July sun, threaded together like the hemp in Satpathy’s kurta.

A few months after Satpathy’s ‘high fashion’ appearance, Dharamvir Gandhi—then a Lok Sabha MP from Punjab for the Aam Admi Party (AAP)—moved a private member’s bill seeking to legalize cultivation, production, possession, transport, trade, and recreational use of cannabis in India. Gandhi’s supporters included Romesh Bhattacharji, a former commissioner of the Central Bureau of Narcotics, and the late actor Vinod Khanna, who was a BJP MP. ‘Soft drugs are part of the cultural history of India and does [sic] not lead to an abusive lifestyle or rise in crime,’ Gandhi had said at the time. ‘It was only used as a measure of “mauj-masti” (relaxation and enjoyment) by the common people.’

Like Satpathy, Gandhi shared concerns that the current NDPS Act had only helped aid the mafia and cartels to proliferate more harmful drugs (like cocaine and heroin).

In July 2017, Maneka Gandhi (not related to Dharamvir), a BJP leader who at the time was the Minister of Women and Child Development of India, showed support for the legalization of medical marijuana to combat the abuse of harder drugs, and for the benefit of cancer patients. A year later, the Congress party leader and wildly successful author Shashi Tharoor co-wrote an essay supporting the legalization of marijuana. Tharoor began his piece with a disclaimer, just in case any support for weed hurt his personal political ambitions: ‘I have never tried a recreational drug in my life... I have never tasted bhang, even for Holi.’

‘And yet,’ adds Tharoor, ‘I am convinced that legally regulating the production, supply, and use of cannabis in India will reduce the potential harms of the drug’s use, put a dent in corruption and crime, and provide our country with an economic boost.’

In January 2022, Maharashtra MP Pratap Patil Chikhilar of the BJP—arguing against the sale of wine in supermarkets and walk-in stores—counterbalanced with his support of cannabis instead. ‘The government thinks it will get more revenue by selling wine at such outlets, then it should also give permission for the cultivation of ganja.’ Later that same year, BJP MLA Krishnamurti Bandhi in

Chhattisgarh went a step further to promote cannabis as a better alternative than alcohol in regards to public safety. ‘I had (been) told that somewhere alcohol is the reason for rape, murder and quarrel, but I asked (in the House): Tell me whether a person who consumes bhang has ever committed rape, murder and dacoity?’

Strong arguments, all.

Of course, one doesn’t need to be a wise vidyan to conclude that politicians are gonna politic, that almost any statement (pro and against) cannabis will likely be boosted with some ulterior motive. And in India, where the average citizen is bombarded daily with much nonsense, I’ve had to clothe myself in an extra-insulated layer of scepticism in regards to any aggressive stance made by our public servants.

And wherever the words of kurta-clad men may come short, allow the principles of science and economy to pave the rest of the way.
*****

Karan Madhok Ananda: An Exploration of Cannabis in India Aleph Book Company Hb. Pp. 416. Rs 999

Cannabis, or ganja, is practically as old as recorded Indian civilization, with references to the plant being found in some of India’s earliest written texts and myths. Native strains of the plant are as common as rice or millet in many Indian states, and can often be found growing wild in the countryside. In scriptures and in the opinion of enthusiasts, ganja is said to provide ananda (bliss) or vijaya (victory) over the cares and ills of the world. Cannabis is best known as a recreational drug but it has a myriad other uses as well. In this lively, well-researched, humorous, and occasionally trippy account of ganja, Karan Madhok looks at every aspect of the cannabis plant: botanical, spiritual, medical, and recreational. Madhok hits the road in search of cannabis strains around the country, including a visit to the Himalayan hamlet that is home to the world-renowned Malana Cream (which has inspired various counterculture movements); looks for the mythical Idukki Gold in Kerala; seeks the Sheelavathi variety in the Andhra/ Orissa region; portrays the travails of addicts, and details the shadowy world of gangsters and suppliers; hangs out with devotees who openly consume bhang and other derivatives of ganja; and visits hospitals and clinics which use the drug for a wide range of therapeutics. Besides the factual and eye-opening research into every aspect of the narcotic, the author contemplates the concepts of freedom, creativity, spirituality, and paranoia associated with the drug, and examines the upside and problems of decriminalizing ganja in India. Ananda, the first major study of cannabis in India, is entertaining, and enlightening—it is the perfect introduction to an integral aspect of the country that has often got a bad rap and is imperfectly understood.

Karan Madhok’s debut novel, A Beautiful Decay, was published in 2022. His creative work and journalism have appeared in Epiphany, Sycamore Review, Bombay Review, SLAM Magazine, Fifty-Two, The Caravan, Scroll, among others.

Karan is the editor and co-founder of the Indian arts and culture website The Chakkar. He is a graduate of the MFA programme from the American University in Washington D.C.