Excerpted with permission from the publisher In Those Days There Was No Coffee, A.R. Venkatachalapathy, published by Simon and Schuster India.
******* Triumph of Tobacco The Tamil Experience
Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries [tobacco] conquered the whole world, and enjoyed even greater popularity than tea or coffee, which was no mean achievement. —Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday L, ife University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992, p. 261.
The acculturation of tobacco into indigenous Tamil society forms an interesting parallel to the domestication of coffee. Though perhaps less polysemic than coffee, its story is nevertheless as fascinating. Probably because of its earlier advent into Tamil society, much before print took root, it has not registered the kind of rich documentation evidenced by the earlier chapter on coffee. Tobacco, along with pineapple, cashew nut, papaya, guava, chilli and potato, came with the Portuguese to India in the sixteenth century in what has been termed the Columbian Exchange. But tobacco has become so much a part of Indian society, that, following Ashis Nandy on cricket, one could almost say that tobacco was an Indian crop accidentally discovered by the Europeans! In this chapter, I attempt to show how tobacco, an entirely new crop, with no apparent nutritive value, came to Tamil Nadu and got entrenched in Tamil society.
Tobacco being what it is and what it became—a sign of good life, relaxation, cultural attainment, and so on—it is not surprising that, antiquaries take great delight in tracing its origins. Though some believe that it is indigenous to Asia, by now there is a consensus that tobacco is a ‘New World’ crop that came to be known to Europeans when they ‘discovered’ it for themselves. As Victor Kiernan observes, ‘The great carriers of new things round the coasts of Asia and Africa were the Portuguese.’
Tobacco is said to have been introduced to India during Akbar’s reign about the year 1605. Fernand Braudel too states that tobacco was cultivated in India and Sri Lanka by 1605–10. Citing Bernier, however, Ahsan Jan Qaisar asserts that ‘it is clear that tobacco reached Bijapur by the end of the sixteenth century’. By 1618, tobacco is said to have been cultivated on a large scale in the vicinity of Surat. It is said to have spread to Sambhal by mid-seventeenth century, by which time, it had spread to Bijapur and Golconda as well.
However, the spread of tobacco to southern India seems to have followed its own trajectory. The fortunes of tobacco and chilli were closely tied to the Portuguese coastal trade and their competition with the Dutch alliance and collaboration with the Nayaks of Madurai and the Maravars of Ramanathapuram. Villages under the control of the Portuguese were farmed out for cultivating tobacco and chilli over whose sale they had complete rights. Thus, by the end of the seventeenth century south Tamil Nadu had substantial land under tobacco.
Sinnappah Arasaratnam observes that, in the eighteenth century, there was an active tobacco trade between Jaffna and Malabar and that the tobacco grown in Jaffna was in great demand in Travancore and that its monarch acquired a monopoly over it, which was carried on his behalf by the merchants of Quilon.
By the first years of the nineteenth century, Francis Buchanan on ‘a journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore, Kanara and Malabar’, noticed the widespread cultivation of tobacco in the Carnatic, Malabar and the Coimbatore region. The author of Pugaiyilai Vidu Thooth,u which we shall consider in detail below, mentions Alagankulam, Parathaivayal, Kangeyam and Jaffna as important centres of tobacco cultivation. Dindigul tobacco was to become legendary and AnguVilas Pugai-ilai (produced in Dindigul), a major brand name (in the twentieth century).
Newcomers always do indeed face resistance from existing crops and consumption habits. But K.N. Chaudhuri observes that tobacco (and maize), unlike potato, was readily accepted and from this he surmises that it found ‘an immediate opening in the economic and social surface of existing farming practices’.10 Irfan Habib calls the rapid extension of the cultivation of tobacco ‘one of the most remarkable changes in the crop pattern that occurred within the course of the seventeenth century’. Contrary to received wisdom about peasant traditionalism, Habib sees in this a ‘remarkable readiness’ on the part of peasants to cultivate anything that could sell well.
The spread of tobacco cultivation also seems to have been linked with the commercialisation of agriculture under the British, with monetary dues being imposed on the peasants. By the first half of the nineteenth century, the British imposed —in the Madras Presidency—various systems of government monopoly in Kanara and Malabar, and in the city of Madras. In other districts, ‘revenue from tobacco was raised by means of land customs and in some important towns by means of town duties and the farming system.’12 Under the monopoly system, duty was levied on all tobacco imports and distribution was through licensed vendors. Inflation of prices was the inevitable result. Prices are estimated to have gone up by some 300 to 800 per cent. Not surprisingly, this led to smuggling and hoarding. Corruption was not far behind. One Kasi Chetty, cash-keeper of the collector, was said to have amassed 50,000 pagodas by under-weighing and under-rating. In the city of Madras, in 1791, there was a virtual stampede to get into the godown of the monopoly contractor for betel and tobacco, Sunku Chinna Krishnama Chetti, when he did not open the godown in time. The system, despite frequent tinkering to stem corruption, failed and was finally abolished in 1853. A detailed analysis of tobacco revenue would fall within the purview of administrative history or economic history.What interests the cultural historian is the fact that the imposition of government monopoly and widespread corruption points to the extensive consumption of tobacco in indigenous society.
A crucial aspect of tobacco cultivation in India was the fact that it had no export market. ‘[N]early the whole of tobacco produced in India is consumed in the country, the great bulk of it in the district in which it is grown.’ In fact, it was not quoted in the London market at all.‘The general complaint against Indian tobacco has been that they are either received mouldy and fit for nothing, or so high-dried and brittle to be fit only for snuff.’ There was also the question of taste. Europeans, with their own standards of taste found Indian tobacco to be ‘coarse, rank, ill- flavoured’ while Indians, especially the lower classes, took their tobacco ‘au naturel and stronger and ranker it is the better they like it’. Thus, the entire tobacco production ended up being consumed internally.
Though it has been suggested that tobacco has the ‘unique advantage’ of its great flexibility in adapting itself to the most varied climates and soils, the climate of Madras Presidency was considered especially well-suited for tobacco. Every variety of tobacco experimented by the Agricultural & Horticultural Society of Madras was said to have thriven to perfection: Havana, Virginia, Manila, Maryland.
II
We have only tantalisingly fragmentary evidence to gauge the initial response of Tamil people to tobacco. That it should have a derivative noun—pugai-ilai literally, ‘smoke leaf’—is some indication that it had penetrated the lower levels of society. Buchanan’s remarks indicate the broad contours of tobacco’s spread at the fag end of the eighteenth century:
In both the upper and lower Carnatics, taking snuff is much more common than in Bengal: indeed, I have never been in a country where the custom is more prevalent. Smoking, on the contrary is in great disrepute. The Hooka is totally unknown, except among Mussulmans. The lower classes smoke cheruts, or tobacco rolled up in a leaf; but a Brahman would lose caste by such a practice, and it is not considered as becoming, even among the richer part of the Su’dra tribe.
Buchanan’s observations attest to the differential response to tobacco. While the subaltern sections seemed to have freely indulged in consuming tobacco without much inhibition, the elite seem to have been more guarded. It is also clear that tobacco was consumed in various forms: smoking, chewing and as snuff. It would also be pertinent to note here that ‘cheroot’ comes from the Tamil word ‘suruttu’ (‘to roll’ in a leaf).
In the west coast, especially in Malabar, tobacco seems to have been considered a ‘necessity of life’. Given the fact that peasants tilled the fields ‘standing for hours, month after month in wet soil and exposed in consequence to fever and disease’, it was claimed that ‘tobacco was the sole effectual prevention’.20 Though this bears testimony to the stimulating nature of tobacco, which was supposedly indispensable ‘in a humid climate’, it stands in stark contrast to later (modern) criticism about tobacco, in late colonial times, especially with the rise of a middle class, which was couched in the language of medicine.
Apart from these stray and scattered bits of information from Buchanan and other colonial official records, we have little else to understand the Tamil tryst with tobacco. As ever, in true Tamil style, we have to turn to literary texts.
In the collections of occasional and impromptu verses, canonised in Tamil literature as Thanippadal Thirattuwe have a number of poems about tobacco. The problem with these delightful and irreverent verses, celebrated by connoisseurs, which provide a wealth of cultural details of the immediate pre-colonial and early colonial times, is that it is patently impossible to date any of them. However, all the Thanippadal Thiratt verses are unabashedly adulatory about tobacco. They can scarcely suppress their delight about the stimulating nature of tobacco. One verse sings of how Tirumal (Vishnu), Siva and Agni are enamoured of tobacco and comments in exasperation ‘who can sing the glory of tobacco’. When another poem attempts a double entendre/ bi-textual poem (irattura mozhidhal/silae)daoin tobacco and Lord Mukundan, it is hardly in doubt that the objective is to praise tobacco and not the lord. When yet another verse extols the glories of the snuff from Puthuppalaiyam, which the devas, siththars and the Hindu Trinity consume with passion, need one say anything about lesser mortals. Yet another poem asserts the tobacco’s virtues thus:
The virtue of a needle is not to lose its point. The virtue of saints is to restrain the semen. The virtue of courtesans is music.
The virtue of the scholar’s nose is to pinch snuff.24
But the height of celebration is the Pugaiyilai vidu Thithu. It was written by one Seeni Chakkarai Pulavar, the son of the court-poet of Ramanathapuram palace. U.V. Swaminatha Iyer, the editor of this minor classic, dates him to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The poem is written in the genre called Thoothuor the message-poem familiar as the archetypal Orientalist genre. In its classical form, the heroine, separated from her lover, sends a message of love. In later days, from being just a romantic poem, it came to be a convenient form to flatter patrons or to express religious devotion. The typical messengers, as defined, for instance, by the grammatical text Rathina Churukkamare the female-friend, parrot, peacock, koel, the breeze, and so on. (By the late nineteenth century, money, telegraph, footwear, donkey, raven, and so on were to be burdened with this task—that, however, is a different story.) Seeni Chakkarai Pulavar, in an innovative move, presses tobacco into service. Tobacco is given the task of taking the message of the pining ladylove to Lord Murugan of Palani. However, the message is only a pretext. For, of the 59 couplets (kann)i 53 are in praise of the tobacco, with a mere six forming the text of the message.
The first four kannsi are double entendres about tobacco and Thirumal. Tobacco is a selvappay irthe wealth-yielding crop, a commercial crop; it is strong in flavour, reaps wages for labourers and intoxicates its consumers. Next comes the double entendre with Siva, Brahma and, that other divine construct, the Tamil language.
Here, the poem imputes a divine origin myth to tobacco. Once upon a time, the Hindu Trinity quarrelled among themselves about who was supreme. Naturally, they went to the court of the devas. The devas said ‘Your quarrel can wait. Now we shall give one object each for safe custody’: (the poet is punning here;‘pathiram’ means both ‘a leaf ’ and ‘safe custody’) Vishnu was given the basil leaf; Siva was given vilvam, while Brahma was given, what else but, tobacco. Unfortunately for Siva, the Ganga washed away the vilvam while the milky ocean swallowed up Vishnu’s basil. When the devas asked for the objects given for safe custody, only Brahma could say ‘pathiram poga’, laiie, ‘my leaf is not lost’. Thus, it was claimed that tobacco came to be called ‘pugaiyilai’. Consequently, tobacco was christened Brahma Pathiramor Brahma’s leaf! (B.G.L. Swamy sees the fashioning of such legends as post facto legitimation by Brahmins after they became addicted to tobacco.)
Then the poem goes on ‘to sing the greater glories of tobacco’— ‘vantha pugaiyilaiyin mamahathuv’a nIgnatel restingly the epithet used to qualify tobacco is ‘vanth’a (‘that which came’) clearly conceding its foreign origin. A home where no tobacco is smoked is not a home worth the name. Even the learned and the mighty are in its clutches.What are betel leaves and areca nut without tobacco? Even ‘arrack’ is but only a younger brother to tobacco. It is also the ultimate aphrodisiac. In any case tobacco is the mohappayitr, ‘the crop of passion’. It is the Sanjeevi that can quench any thirst. It is so strong and pungent that even raw onions are no match. Who knows its qualities fully but the betel leaves. It gives profits to traders and pleasure to its consumers. It titillates, causes a nice itching sensation in the nostrils and gives a mild kick. Thus, after holding forth elaborately on the glories of tobacco, the poem ends with a brief message to be carried to Lord Murugan.
If these poems could be taken to be the elite response to tobacco, there is a range of popular literature on tobacco as well. Here are some riddles:
First it is green; but then it is not a parrot. Then it turns black; but it is not a crow. Sprouts every day; but it is no betel creeper. Hangs upside down; but it is not a bat.
What is it?
The answer is, of course, tobacco.
One is cultivated for 12 years Another is cultivated for 6 months Yet another is cultivated for 3 months
The last is sowed and reaped the same day
All of them need to be threshed on the same floor.
What are they?
Given the fact that tobacco chewing in Tamil Nadu went hand in hand with betel leaves and areca nut the answer is ‘areca nut, betel leaves, tobacco, lime’.
Moreover, tobacco is a part of many folk rituals. It is customary to distribute tobacco among those who attend funerals. Folk deities like Karruppasamy and Sudalaimadasamy are propitiated with arrack and cheroots. Pavadairayan is praised in one song for not getting stoned even after consuming ganja, tobacco and liquor.
But this celebration of tobacco was by no means unequivocal. It was marked by ambivalence. While Siddha medicine prescribed tobacco for swellings, toothache, itches and constipation, it also condemned tobacco for being an antidote to many medicinal drugs, for causing dryness of the mouth, for emaciating the body, for increased secretion of bile and for diluting the semen.
By the turn of the twentieth century, with the rise of a modern, English-educated middle class with hegemonic aspirations, tobacco came in for widespread condemnation. Sometimes, this condemnation was couched in the language of medicine and health. The consumption of tobacco, in its various avatars, was seen to harm the health of the nation’s subjects. Tobacco, though a recent player in the field, came to be subsumed in the category of intoxicants and stimulants (such as liquor and ganja), which had a longer genealogy. It is indeed striking to note how the various distinct artefacts are collapsed.
With the rise of the national movement, and its agenda of declaring the sphere of culture sovereign, not surprisingly, tobacco too was condemned. Despite the early colonial, indigenous elites’ attempt to naturalise tobacco to culture by the use of mythology and traditional literary genres, tobacco was associated with the West and its moral depravity. As one commentator wrote,
Tobacco has spread like wild fire in our Bharat nation from Kanyakumari to Himalayas. With what speed it has spread! Spreading like the wind, it has sucked dry the life, blood and vitality of Indians and has made them unmanly eunuchs. Oh... it has even spread to the countryside. Of the English learning students, 90 out of 100 have cigarettes and matches in their pockets. This is culture—the un-culture of today.
This impassioned passage expresses all the fears of the middle class. Tobacco not only weakened the health of the citizens but also the nation. It emasculated its citizens. Not even the countryside—a sovereign realm away from the clutches of western modernity—is free. It especially corrupts the English- educated youth.
Striking parallels can be drawn from the middle-class critique of coffee considered in detail in Chapter 1. But unlike coffee, tobacco could not occupy a liminal realm where ambiguity was possible. It offered little leeway to excuses for its consumption. Unlike coffee which was appropriated by the Tamil middle class and made into its cultural marker, tobacco could only be an unmitigated evil which could at best be tolerated.
But then there is always the gulf between elite avowals and popular practices. While the Mahatma went about condemning tobacco, enterprising traders marketed ‘Gandhi Cigarettes’!
**********
A.R. Venkatachalapathy, In Those Days There Was No Coffee, Yoda Press/ Simon and Schuster India, Revised and expanded edition, 2025. Pb. Pp. 278
Since it was first published in 2006, this beloved volume of essays by A. R. Venkatachalapathy on the cultural history of colonial Tamilnadu has been enjoyed equally by scholars looking for rigorous history-writing and lay informed readers in search of a classic good read. The new expanded edition hopes to do more of the same.
The author draws from sources as varied as poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, comments, advertisements, and notices to bring to life a rich and vibrant cultural history. As authoritative as they are captivating, the ten essays in the volume represent a valuable addition to the small corpus of history titles which also qualify as accomplished writing.
A.R. Venkatachalapath, historian and Tamil writer, is a Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He has taught at universities in Tirunelveli, Chennai, Singapore, and Chicago. A recipient of the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize, the Mahakavi Bharati Award, and the Ramnath Goenka Award he has also received the Vilakku Pudumaippithan Award and Iyal Virudhu, both for lifetime contribution to Tamil. In 2024, he won the Sahitya Akademi award for Tamil. Venkatachalapathy has written/edited over thirty books in Tamil. His publications in English include Swadeshi Steam: V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle Against the British Maritime Empire (winner of the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence (non-fiction, 2024); The Brief History of a Very Big Book: The Making of the Tamil Encyclopaedia; Tamil Characters: Personalities, Politics, Culture; Who Owns That Song?: The Battle for Subramania Bharati’s Copyright; and The Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamil Nadu.
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