Opium Consumption and Experience in India offers a "cultural biography" of opium in the subcontinent. It spans the Raj and India after independence. The book examines the "social lives" of opium in India, beginning as a commodity in the sixteenth century to its social transformation and singularization in the eighteenth century, and its decline from the mid-nineteenth century to obsolescence in the twentieth century to new "paths and diversions" in our own times. The book attempts to illuminate how opium came to occupy a central place in the "cultures of consumption" and also in the socio-economic and political life of a people. How did opium become embedded in a social ethos where it not only served as a social lubricant but soon morphed into a narco-identity for the people of India. The identification of India as a land of "great opium eaters" spawned the propaganda of a "civilizing mission" that ushered in a new era of material exploitation and political domination. This had a significant impact on the development and regulation of opium and its use.

Book Information
ISBN 9781680536164
Author Kawal Deep Kour
Format Hardback
Page Count 200
Imprint Academica Press
Publisher Academica Press