Amitav Ghosh is a popular English novelist from India. Born in Kolkata, a Ph.D. degree holder in Social Anthropology from Oxford University, he wrote several popular novels such as The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, and The Hungry Tide.
Now, you might be asking, what the hell a novelist has got to do with South Asian business? Well, Amitabh Ghosh’s latest novel ‘Sea of Poppies’ sheds light on an uncharted territory of Indian history. During the reign of East India Company, India had a flourishing opium trade and it was the major revenue earner for the country.
In the 18th century, to meet up the trade deficit with the Qing Dynasty of China, East India Company started to import opium. The company sold the opium to the smugglers in Kolkata. The smugglers then smuggled it into China. It was a flourishing business. Ghosh’s ‘Sea of Poppies’ deals with this historical subject. In an interview with the BBC, Mr. Ghosh talked about “Sea of Poppies.” Here is an excerpt of the interview:
Sea of Poppies is a historical novel. Is it the fact that the British were the world's biggest opium suppliers two centuries ago that led you into this story?
I should correct you. It was not two centuries ago. Under the British Raj, an enormous amount of opium was being exported out of India until the 1920s.
And no, the opium story was not really the trigger for the novel. What basically interested me when I started this book were the lives of the Indian indentured workers, especially those who left India from the Bihar region.
When asked about how did he get into researching and learning more about British opium trade, Mr. Ghosh replied that five years ago, he was looking into this subject. At that time, he had very little idea about opium. India had remained the largest opium exporter for centuries. Mr. Ghosh said that he had no idea that opium, as a business product, financed the British Raj in India. Twenty years ago, when the opium trade stopped, the British Raj left India.
When asked about his discoveries about opium trade, Mr. Ghosh said that Opium steadily accounted for 17-20% of the Indian revenues. Revenue not only came from opium production and export. Other businesses were also related to opium such as shipping and many other industries. It is really astonishing that such a single commodity generated so much money for India.
Today, India is not the major opium producer any more. Still, opium is widely produced in many parts of the world and accounts for a large part of many countries’ economy. It is tragedy that such an object which brings nothing but death and destruction is still around us.
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