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Young World
Barrier for salt
M. K. SADAGOPAN
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What happened to the tree-shrub barrier that the British used to implement the salt tax?
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In 1995, Roy Moxham chanced upon the memoirs of a British Raj official in which he found references to a "Customs Hedge" that ran 2,300 miles from Multan to Madras. The Raj used this tree-and-shrub barrier to implement that hated salt tax that affected every man, woman child in colonial India.
Intrigued and determined to find this hedge today, Moxham undertook years of travels in rural India, interspersed with months spent in the British Library and Royal Geological Survey in London. The resulting travelogue, fascinating in its own right, dramatises the role of salt in India's past.
Here is a fragment of history Moxham shines his flashlight on: In 1757, at the age of 32, Robert Clive defeated Nawab Mir Kasim at the battle of Plassey, a 100 miles north of Calcutta. As the winner's ransom, Clive collected 2,340,000 Rupees, rentals of 300,000 Rupees a year and an 880-square mile private estate from the Nawab. Five years later, the East India Company was collecting 5,00,000 rupees a year in silver from Mir Kasim. The East India Company extracted these monies directly or through their princely proxies, by taxing salt, a necessity of life. In 1788, the tax on salt was 3.25 Rupees a Maund (about 32 kgs). An average labourer's family would spend two months' salary in a year, for salt.
The salt tax and the hedge continued for nearly two centuries, barely abating even during plagues, floods and droughts. Mahatma Gandhi's Salt Satyagraha ignited the nation's struggle for freedom but even that did not get the tax cancelled. It began to taper off, and was abolished on February 29, 1947, just six months before independence. Clive became one of the wealthiest men in England, but that did not endear him to the British aristocracy whose approval he craved. He cut his throat and died in 1774, at the age of 49. His grave is obscure, unmarked.
The author's search for the hedge, now built over with roads and what not takes him to remote villages. Boarding and lodging with simple folk, he often sleeps on charpais under the skies. The writer's deference for the Indian people's resilience comes through. This is a scholarly, original work, masked in flippant humour.
The Great Hedge of India by Roy Moxham, Carroll & Graf Publishers, NY. First published in the UK by Constable & Robinson Ltd.,
List price, hard cover $22.
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