Salt (51 page)

On the east coast is a salt-producing area known as Orissa, with a perfect natural sea salt zone along a tract that is 320 miles long and ten to sixty miles deep. The salt beds, called
khalaris
, are flooded in two spring tides, which saturate the soil with salt as the water evaporates. Salt made from natural solar evaporation was called
kartach.
A second salt,
panga
, was produced by mixing salty soil in seawater and boiling it. The salt was a permanently renewed resource, which rendered this stretch of land not only ideal for salt making but useless for anything else. In Orissa, the poorest of peasants could make salt on the khalari to use or to sell.

The salt makers would clear the field, the khalari, of all vegetation, grass, and roots to a depth of a few inches and then pile the waste in dikes around the edges.

They built sluices to let in saltwater during high tide. Salt was absorbed into the earth and then more saltwater taken in with the spring tides. The additional seawater combined with the salty soil to produce concentrated brine, which they put in oblong pots, about 200 of which were cemented together by mud in a domeshaped kiln. The salt makers placed vents at the north and south ends of each kiln so that fire would be fanned by prevailing breezes. As the brine in the pots evaporated, workers called
malangis
added more brine, one ladle at a time, until each pot was about three-quarters full of salt crystals. The salt, which dried in piles in the open air and which the malangis then covered with reeds, was noted for its whiteness and was considered by many to be the best salt in India, yet it was also inexpensive.

This panga salt had an eager market in the neighboring provinces to the west, shipped on the River Mahanadi and its tributaries. Merchants came to Orissa to buy salt or barter with products such as cotton, opium, marijuana, and grains, carried by oxcart from central India.

Even the British in Bengal traded in Orissa salt. They needed large quantities of salt for the manufacture of munitions for their eighteenth-century wars with the French, and a significant part of the salt for their gunpowder came from Orissa.

Most of India, since ancient times, had a history of modest salt taxes. In Orissa, the Maratha, the ruling caste of much of pre-British India, levied a small tax on salt transported commercially in the province. The trade was so extensive that they could earn a substantial profit on this moderate tax and avoid a higher one that would damage the competitive price of Orissa salt. In return for this source of revenue, they looked after the promotion and prosperity of the salt trade. The Maratha rulers’ attitude toward Orissa was reminiscent of a Chinese proverb: “Governing a state is like cooking small fish. It has to be done with a very light touch.”

The British practiced this light touch neither in governance nor in cooking. In the late eighteenth century, Cheshire was increasing its salt production and aggressively hunting overseas markets. The empire was expected to provide these markets. Yet Liverpool salt could not compete with the price and quality of Orissa salt. In 1790, when the British requested permission to buy all the salt made in Orissa, Raghuji Bhonsla, the Maratha governor of Orissa, turned down the offer, realizing that the British were trying to eliminate Orissa salt in order to maintain British salt at an artificially high price. But when the British had their offer rejected, they simply banned Orissa salt in Bengal.

Since the border that Orissa shared with Bengal was a thick jungle, difficult to patrol, the first effect of the new ban was to create well-organized bands of salt smugglers. Inexpensive contraband salt from Orissa so flooded Bengal that the British salt still could not compete there. In 1803, in the name of fighting contraband, the British army occupied Orissa and annexed it to Bengal.

On November 1, 1804, by proclamation, Orissa salt became a British monopoly. The private sale of salt was completely prohibited. Those who had salt in their possession had to sell it to the government immediately at a fixed price. The transport of salt was forbidden. Even provisioning a ship with enough salt for the crew during a voyage had to be done under strict British supervision. Within ten years, it became illegal for salt to be manufactured by anyone other than the British government. A system of well-paid informants was established to prevent clandestine salt trading.

The earliest resistance in Orissa came from coastal chieftains, Zemindars, whose privilege and authority were undermined by the destruction of the salt industry. Before the British, the malangis in northern Orissa had been under control of the Zemindars, who had earned a good profit selling the salt made by malangis for meager wages. Workers had paid a high rent to the Zemindars for the use of coastal salt flats and manufactured salt on their own. Part of that rent had been providing for all of the salt needs of the Zemindars’ households free of charge.

Still, salt workers had lived considerably better than after the British monopoly in 1804. The British advanced money to malangis against future salt production, and the malangis got deeper and deeper in debt and eventually were forced to work for the British producing salt to pay off their debt—virtual slaves to the British salt department. Thousands died every year from epidemics, especially cholera.

From the beginning, the Zemindars had obstructed British salt policy and urged the malangis, whom they controlled, to be uncooperative. The malangis began making their own salt illegally, and hundreds were arrested. In 1817, there was a rebellion in which malangis attacked saltworks and salt offices and chased away agents.

After this uprising failed, the locals gave up on open resistance but engaged in underground salt manufacture and trade. Some families supported themselves on illegal salt making.

B
ACK IN ENGLAND,
it was well known that the Indians were angry with British salt policy. It was even mentioned in a cookbook:

One of the greatest grievances of which the poor man can complain is the want of salt. Many of the insurrections and commotions among the Hindoos, have been occasioned by the cruel and unjust monopolies of certain unworthy servants of the East India Company, who to aggrandize their own fortunes have often times bought up, on speculation, all the salt in the different ports and markets.—
Mary Eaton,
The Cook and Housekeepers Complete and Universal Dictionary,
1822

In the early nineteenth century, to make the salt tax profitable and stop the smuggling, the East India Company established customs checkpoints throughout Bengal. In 1834, a zealous commissioner of customs, G. H. Smith, was appointed, and in his twenty years in office he expanded the system into a “Customs Line” around Bengal. Salt had to pay a duty to cross this line. He was able to get taxes dropped on a series of lesser items, including tobacco, so that customs officers could concentrate on salt smuggling. Customs officers were given that always disastrous combination of broad powers and low pay. They received bounties for confiscated salt and had unchecked authority to search, seize, and arrest. Not surprisingly, bribery and other forms of corruption were widespread. In the 1840s, in its enthusiasm for enforcing this line, the East India Company constructed a fourteen-foot-high, twelve-foot-thick thorn hedge on the western side of Bengal to prevent the entry of contraband salt. After the British government took over following the 1857 “mutiny,” as the uprising was labeled, the Customs Line grew until it snaked arbitrarily 2,500 miles across India from the Himalayas to Orissa. The hedge was expanded into a spiky gnarl of prickly pear, acacia, and more benign plants such as bamboo. It was impenetrable except for periodic gateways guarded by customs agents. By 1870, the Customs Line, largely dedicated to the enforcement of the salt tax, employed 12,000 people.

A
T FIRST, HAVING
complete control, the British wanted to produce Orissa salt and sell it in Bengal at their prices. They cleared jungle land in the coastal region to extend the salt-producing area. But British salt merchants became concerned about competition for sales in the Bengal market and lobbied Parliament to repress salt production in Orissa. In 1836, duties on domestic production were made equivalent to duties on imported salt, and from then on the government did not care if salt was local or imported because it earned the same revenue on both.

The local salt, fighting its way through a cumbersome and complicated bureaucracy, could not compete. It did not sell as fast and had to be stocked in warehouses near Calcutta and therefore risked being embezzled. The British colonial administration responded by limiting Orissa production, even closing some centers, saying that Orissa salt was of inferior quality and had a higher cost of production. In 1845, the colonial government ordered the annual production of salt to be reduced by an amount equal to half the previous year’s total production.

The commissioner of Orissa, A. J. M. Mills, wrote to the colonial administration warning that reducing salt production would turn the peasants of Orissa against the British, for in the salt areas the people knew of no other economic activity.

E
VEN IN THE
best of times, the malangis lived hard lives in villages adjacent to salt fields. Men, women, and children—families worked the salt fields together. Some men traveled from distant villages, leaving their families behind, and lived five months of the year in temporary huts near the saltworks.

The British charged malangis for any salt lost during transportation or from inadequate storage, even though transport and storage had nothing to do with salt workers. Salt agents tried to impress on the government the need to raise payments to salt makers, but instead the government, wishing to discourage production, periodically lowered the rate.

The British policy was to preserve the jungles near the salt lands as sources of fuel wood. Since these forests had been reduced to clear land for salt production, they had an unusual concentration of tigers, bears, and leopards, and eventually the malangis were so terrified of the jungle that many refused to enter to cut fuel. In the 1846 season alone, twenty-two malangis were killed by tigers. The salt and the revenue departments both offered rewards for the heads of wild animals. Though the reward was considered substantial, it did not produce enough kills to significantly reduce the wildlife.

In 1863, the British government announced its intention to stop local salt production and instructed salt agents to end salt manufacture as soon as possible. The abandonment of salt manufacture led to a famine in Orissa in 1866. The greatest loss of life in the famine was among the malangis, because they had no crops of their own to fall back on for food. Government policy also caused a salt shortage in Bengal.