Sadhus, Hippies and Old-Fashioned Junkies: Drug Culture in India
India has a drug history. In the Indus Valley Civilization people cultivated opium, and marijuana has been a solid fixture of holy life for several thousand years. Even today, attendants at sweet shops and restaurants across north India sell bhang lassis (pulverized marijuana yogurt shakes), and there is a government-run bhang shop in Varanasii. Huge crowds drink bhang and opium on the festivals of Holi and Shivratri before they take to the streets and chant praise for god.Several years ago while I was working on a guide book for Rajasthan I passed through a remote tribal village outside Jodhpur where an ancient woman tried to force feed me a small pellet of opium that she had mixed with water and strained through a coffee filter (see photos).
Yet beyond these culturally acceptable forms of drug use there is a darker realm of addiction and crime. Smuggling and heavy narcotics have a grip on the certain segments of society. Easy access to poppy fields across north India, Pakistan and Afghanistan means that opium and its derivatives are flood all urban markets. While members of various Indian crime organizations traffic huge loads into cities, along the tourist route, members of the Russian and Israeli mafia vie for control. A well-known route between Manali, Dharmsala and Goa moves several million dollars of narcotics in the backpacks of tourists and non-descript Indian drug mules.
Over the counter pharmaceuticals are also a problem. Since pharmacies don't usually ask for prescriptions, painkillers, sleeping pills, tranquilizers and barbiturates offer a way to get high without interacting with members of organized crime syndicates. Yesterday the police arrested a man in Chennai who was selling laced chocolates to college students and an article on the front page of The Hindu today shows a massive of several tons of marijuana and opium that had been trafficked to the city from Andhra Pradesh.
On a fundamental level, I am not opposed to a certain amount of deregulation and liberalization of drug laws and enforcement. There is no problem with people occasionally using a narcotic for, say, a festival or on special occasions. But when drug use becomes an addiction, a daily or weekly habit, then there is a problem.
One place where the juncture between recreational and persistent drug use is most apparent is in Dharmsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government in Exile. For the last several decades it has been a popular stop on the backpacker route, and hundreds of thousands of tourists have come there to partake in spiritual meditation and all night drug binges. But the travelers leave their problems behind them. Now the youth in Dharmsala have made binges on heroin, marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and opium part of their daily routine. Several Tibetan youths that I knew as aspiring monks and performing artists have spent years ferrying "brown sugar" in an underground network between Delhi and Dharmsala.
In this case at least, tolerance of drug use has let a whole generation of youth slip into a dark of addiction that I am not sure they will ever escape.
posted by Scott Carney @ 11:10 AM
13 comments
13 Comments:
In the US, I see it from a different point of view. The US government spends an extremely large amount of money on drug enforcement, including the locking up of people that often were only carrying a small amount of drugs for their own recreational use, and filling the jails with non-violent drug offenders.
Laws become more strict and give more powers to the police to jail people, to seize property outright, to wiretap and spy, and to use excessive force against people, sometimes purely innocent bystanders.
The artificially high prices for drugs created by the prohibition from the government helps to fuel the gang warfare in the inner-cities and drives people to destitution as they do anything to afford the high price of their fix.
Legalizing drugs, while opening the door to some people getting addicted would lessen these problems. People would not have to venture into the cities to get their drugs, but could go to the pharmacist or coffee shop to get it. The focus would shift from outright prohibition to treatment and help for those who were afflicted with addiction.
Gangs would have less economic incentive to shoot at each other, and the cartels in places like Colombia and Afghanistan, etc would have their initial economic support stripped out from underneath them, allowing people who would be more honest business men to rise up.
It should be noted that I feel the same way about prostitution. Removing the legal stigma would go miles towards helping the issue and cleaning it up in such a way that I think abuses of the prostitutes and the health issues would decline.
Prohibitions have almost never worked. Thinking back I cannot recall a time when a wide-ranging prohibition on a vice has ever worked.
"marijuana has been a solid fixture of holy life for several thousand years" - This is an unnecessary comment. Is there any proof to show that this happened?
"Caucasians, African Americans and Native Indians: Race Culture in the United States:
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America has a race history. In the 1700's pilgrims maimed Native Indians, spread small pox viruses to kill them wholesale, and brutalized the Native Indian women and children. Later, they considered slavery as a right and treated African Americans more heinously than animals. Even now, after years of abolition of slavery, African Americans and Native Indians are probably the most under-developed races in the country. It is common practice to suspect colored people for crimes. Huge crowds celebrate this racism by burning the cross and taking to the streets clad totally in white.
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Does this mean that all Americans are racist? No - there are a few who do this and it is not right to generalize. Similarly, there may be a few who mis-guidedly have marijuana, .... That doesn't become a holy way of life for the Sadhus all over the country.
k said: "Huge crowds celebrate this racism by burning the cross and taking to the streets clad totally in white."
K, I have to take issue with that. Huge crowds don't dance in street celebrating racism. Certainly there is racism in the US, as there is in many countries, but these idiots you see in pictures and on the news are a very small minority of the country, and these gatherings are usually no more than a couple hundred people, but often much less than that. Considering the US is a country of 280 million people, a couple of hundred is not a whole lot at all.
Most Americans these days are ashamed of our history of slavery and racism and would never wish to repeat it, but we have the freedom of speech which grants the very few who want it the right to speak openly. Freedom of speech means we get the bad with the good.
K,
I'm not sure what point you are making. What does drug use in India have to do with the KKK? Anyway, to your question of is there evidence of drug use going back thousands of years? Yes, there is. Opium is native to that region as are several types of cannibas. Some reports I have seen on the net (not 100% sure on the reliablity of sources) say that archaeogists have found burnt resin on digs. There is clear evidence of brewing alcohol in the Indus Valley Civilization (4000 years ago).
As for generalizations--I don't think I ever said that all Indians are drug addled. But rather segments of the society are trapped in really unfortunate situations because of drugs.
Maurice - I hear what you are saying in your first post and I generally agree. But the problem is different in India. The state prison system isn't quite as crazy about drug busts as the one in the United States.It is crazy in other ways though.
-s
Maurice "K, I have to take issue with that." You don't need to make it an issue because I was just mentioning how I can write up an opinion that sounds like all Americans are racist. I clearly claim in my previous comment that not all Americans are racist and it is just a minority. I am just trying to draw an analogy with Scott when he claims that marijuana is a holy way of life for the Indians. It may be a holy way of life for a "minority" but not for all Indians. In fact your comment reflects the point I was trying to make to Scott (Do not generalize).
Scott: This is a very poor way of giving proof. If you had solid proof, you got to cite them. You have seen some reports but then you are not even sure of their reliability. Then how can you claim that marijuana was cultivated from Indus Valley Civilization days. On the KKK, I was just drawing an analogy on how you can confuse the reader not knowledgeable about the realities. On a final note, I am a fan of your opinions - but such condescension towards the holy way of life in India is certainly not appreciated.
K, when did I say that all Indians were drug addled? When did I say that everyone does drugs? On certain festivals it is very common for people here to take bhang and smoke marijuana. Opium use is ancient here. It is referenced in all manner of sanskrit texts. I'm sorry that I don't have the time to do an extensive library search to qualify my point that drug use goes back several thousand years in South Asia. Given the pressures of modern life all I could muster was a minute on google.
Clearly not everyone in India uses drugs in their spiritual life, not even a majority. All I said in the original post was that "huge crows drink bhang and opium" and that there are government run bhang shops and that drugs are a fixture of holy life here. Not everyone's holy life-but drug use for spiritual reasons is by and large respected here (hence the government bhang shops).
I really think you should read my post over again because I think you may have missed my main points.
K: It cannot be avoided that marijuana has a more important aspect in religion in India, than say, Christian religions in the US or Europe, or in Islam. A great example is Holli, where people are more free to ingest illicit substances as part of the observance of the holiday. And Scott never said that all Indians, or any significant part of the culture were drug-addled, only that there is an undercurrent (as in the US) of people who use drugs to achieve some religious high in addition to the physical high.
Maurice:
It cannot be avoided that racism has a more important aspect in the way of life in U.S or Europe, than say, theway of life in India or in China. A great example is KKK celebration parties, where people are more free to burn crosses as part of the observance of the celebration. And K never said that all Americans, or any significant part of the citizens were racist, only that there is an undercurrent (as in India) of people who use racism to achieve some narrow objectives in addition to keeping the other races at bay.
I can write another analogy (considering the Mormons):
It cannot be avoided that polygamy has a more important aspect in Christianity or Islam, than say, in Hinduism or Buddhism. A great example is the state of Utah, where people are more free to have more than one partner in observence of polygamy. And K never said that all Christians, or any significant part of the religion were polygamous, only that there is an undercurrent (as in India) of people who use polygamy to achieve some religious high in addition to treating women like s***.
Is that what you are trying to say Maurice? If you agree to my analogies above, I don't mind agreeing to your comments on the relation between Marijuana and Indo-centric religions.
K,
I would say that your first paragraph was more or less correct. There is an undercurrent of racism in America. Please blog about it some time.
Your second comment about mormons, however, is not accurate. The church of later day saints has not officially recognized polygamous marriages for over 100 years. Also, depending on what buddhist group you are talking about, you are again inaccurate. There are some mormons who are polygamous, but it is far from normal, or even an undercurrent. They mostly just exist in the mind of the media who want to blow it out of proportion.
Tibetan buddhists practice
poylandrany (multiple-husbands)in certain areas of rural tibet. Also, hindus in some areas--himachel pradesh in particular--practice polygamy.
But now that you have told us your parables, what point were you trying to make?
Scott
Scott, I have a feeling that it is very difficult for Westerners (for ppl like you and Maurice) to understand the essence of Indo-centric religions, esp. Hinduism. Unlike the Bible or the Koran, there are no hard and fast rules. There is no single God and no single leader like the Pope (e.g., the Church hasn't recognized) or someone who can issue a fatwa. There is no single way of celebrating festivals. It is totally "diverse". Probably that is the reason, Hinduism is still alive and kicking, notwithstanding the invasions of the Mughals and Christian rulers. When someone claims that Marijuana is an important aspect of religion in India, that is utterly false. The religion per-se doesn't ask ppl to use Marijuana (just as the US govt doesn't ask ppl to practice racism or Christianity asking ppl to be polygamous).
The reason I started reading your blogs was your article on your hilarious experience with police when you lost your passport. But when you make generalizations and have a "holier than thou" attitude, you fall into the same trap that many other Western visitors earlier have fallen into -- your articles become stale.
Dear K,
I don't pretend to understand ever nuance of Hindu thought. Just give my experiences of living here. If you don't want to read what I write then I won't be offended. I do have a question for you K, have you ever spent time here in India? Somehow I feel that you never have. I have been coming here for eight years, I speak a local language and have married into an Indian family. I do not make the generalizations that you suggest that I do, you can read a post I wrote earlier on that matter.
As for censorship, I am now moderating comments, now because of people like you, but because a lot of bots are posting here trying to get me to link to spam-blogs. You can post whatever you want and I will approve it.
s
"have you ever spent time here in India? Somehow I feel that you never have." - why do you feel that?
Hi Scott,
I stumbled upon your post while doing what you may have done for ur post: googling on pot use in India. Must say, it was interesting to read ur thoughts and for me, i quite enjoy opinions (on our nation's aspects) from ppl outside India.
coming to the drug use etc. and to quote ur ending lines "tolerance of drug use has let a whole generation of youth slip into a dark of addiction that I am not sure they will ever escape."
I have recreationally used Marijuana and Hashish while in College...and I also got to meet some real gung-ho users of this..those who have been there (northern areas of India described in ur post) and done that...
After around 2 years of my own experience with pot, i can safely say that yes, pot may not be as mainstream a problem in India (compared to say poverty) but among today's urban youth, it is slowly rearing an ugly head...again within a VERRY small minority but nevertheless...it comes to a point where u see extremely talented people (some of them good friends) wasting their time in (literal) PURSUIT of their next high. these are not your gardent variety street-dwellers, but bright young minds...
yes indeed, social tolerance is creating a problem here...having said that, i do agree with an afore mentioned comment on this thread regarding punishments for non-violent drug offenders. clearly, treatment/counselling for addiction/usage is a better way to battle the problem than draconian laws
cheers!
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