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A great Customs barrier

C. Gopinath

IT WOULD be a fair statement to say that, by now, almost everything about British colonial rule in India has been written about. Perhaps there is still room for looking at the same facts with a different bias -- benign colonialism versus ardent nationali sm -- but the facts are all out. Well, not quite. I recently read a book by Roy Moxham (The Great Hedge of India, 2001, published by Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc, New York, 234 pages) that describes the story behind a hedge that served as a customs lin e whose primary purpose was to enforce a tax on salt. And these are new facts, not widely present in the public domain. When Mr Moxham says ``There are no previous books about the hedge'' he is not being immodest; he is just saying it the way it is.

The book is described by the Web site as a combination of a travel and history book. But for me, it read more like a mystery. And that it certainly was. Mr Moxham first read about this hedge serving as a customs line more as a footnote in another book wr itten by an Indian civil servant. That is when the bug got implanted in him. He began seeking more information about it, but could find little there. He spends enormous time researching in England, seeks out maps, and makes three field visits to India an d even uses the global positioning satellite system. Does he find it? I urge you to read the book!

If Mr Moxham had asked me if he would find a 100-year old hedge in India, I would have tried hard to dissuade him from this foolhardy venture. India is the land of the creep. Events and human activities creep along, transforming everything in its wake. A building does not have to stand too long before somebody puts a lean-to and starts a factory alongside it so that you cannot recognise the building anymore! What to speak of a hedge. Goats would have eaten through it, farmers would have ploughed it unde r. And sure enough, as Mr Moxham begins his search, he finds that not only is the physical aspects of the hedge missing, but it also seems to have been deleted from the combined psyche of the people.

The hedge began to be established around 1823 as the border line of the Bengal Presidency. It was not required after 1879 when the government equalised the salt tax around the country thereby eliminating the need for a barrier within the country. In the half century or so of its existence, it was realigned many times. As the British annexed more territories through conquests and the infamous `Doctrine of Lapse', it kept getting pushed out. Ultimately, the customs line began in the foothills of the Himal ayas and snaked its way through 3,680 km of today's Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to reach the east coast. By 1870, 2,400 kms of this stretch was a hedge and at least 1,280 kms of it comprised of live thorny trees.

Initially, there were a series of customs posts, each one about 6.8 kms apart. Over time, a dry fence made of cut thorn/tree was put up to make the line easier to enforce, and so people and goods could only cross through the toll-gates. Gradually, some o f the dry sticks took roots and it dawned on the customs administration that this was a perfect barrier. At its best, the hedge was 3-4 metres thick and 2-3.5 metres high and almost impenetrable.

The purpose of the barrier was two-fold. On the one hand, it helped levy the tax on salt brought into the Bengal Presidency and thus generated revenue. However, maintaining the hedge almost consumed the revenues generated by it. Yet, it enabled the Benga l Presidency to maintain its monopoly on salt distribution and sale within its territory and that was extremely lucrative. Interestingly, none of the princely states in India nor even the other presidencies of Her Majesty in India thought of this onerous measure.

Quoting extensively from A. O. Hume, Commissioner for Inland Customs (yes, the same Hume who later helped found the Congress), Mr Moxham tells us that at its peak efficiency in 1869, maintaining and managing the customs line required a total workforce of 13,923 officers and men. The officers, or course, were British and the workmen local. This line was manned and patrolled on a seven-day/twenty-four-hour basis and required extensive maintenance. Hume was so carried away with maintaining the hedge that h e even proudly compared it to the Great Wall of China, `alike its greatest work and chiefest safeguard'! So what.

As you begin to read through Mr Moxham's efforts at finding the hedge, you may first wonder about the `so what' question. All this is interesting stuff but is it a significant piece of historical fact? To deal with that issue, Mr Moxham delves into the q uestion of how important salt is to the human body, and how the monopoly and customs tax on salt combined to make it an onerous burden on the common man. The salt tax was the perfect poll tax, since every one had to pay it rich or poor. But Mr Moxham poi nts out that the regressive nature of this tax (being a higher proportion of the wages of the poor) is more than we can even imagine. Salt is an essential ingredient in the human body. As salt levels drop, blood pressure falls and we feel faint. However, as salt levels fall, the body does not send out the message that the illness is due to a fall in the level of salt and therefore more of it needs to be consumed. Thus, many ailments are attributed to other causes while they may have started with a salt deficiency. The problem is particularly serious in the tropics where we can sweat away an ounce (out of a total of the six ounces the body contains) of salt a day.

Unable to afford the expensive salt, the poor must have cut down on its consumption and Mr Moxham can only speculate its deleterious effects on society's health and productivity in general. In times of famine, when foodgrain prices rose, the poor almost completely stopped purchasing salt. Thousands of people caught smuggling salt and unable to pay the fines spent time in prison. In 1836, a British Parliamentary Committee was told that salt cost the rural labourer about two months' wages! At the time Bri tain introduced the tax on salt in India, public opposition resulted in its repeal in England. We can only admire Mahatma Gandhi's brilliant intuition that made him focus on the salt tax for his Dandi march protest in 1930, for although by then its cost in relation to income levels was very small, the history of its regressive effect was alive in the hearts and minds of the people.

Perhaps the whole story of Mr Moxham's quest can also be seen as an example of how an idea when enveloped in a bureaucracy begins to feed itself. It took the colonial government a long time to convince the Bengal Presidency that the customs barrier in th e middle of its territory had perhaps outlived its purpose. As we look around in our own organisations, we see rules and practices for which the customs hedge can serve as an appropriate metaphor. Yet, it takes an iconoclast to get people to wake up, sme ll the coffee, and begin to change the rules.

Mr Moxham must be complimented on pursuing this obsession of finding the hedge and sharing his findings with us. Yes, he does find it, in Pali Ghar village, near Chakanagar, Etawah district, UP. At least a small part of it. Well, at least descendants of the original shrubs.

What makes the book a fascinating read is his ability to interweave history, travel, research efforts and personal observations on contemporary India. Written in a breezy style with short pithy sentences and no flowery prose, it holds your attention to t he end. By now, you must be curious, as I was, of what this damn hedge looked like! All you have to do is to click on his Web site (www.roymoxham.com) and see a picture of this innocuous looking shrub that has such a rich and ignominious heritage!