The International Centre Goa organised a webinar; Kitaab: Books in Discussion with Mr. Thomas Manuel on his book Opium Inc. on 2 July 2021. The moderator and discussant was Dr. Pushkar, Director, ICG.
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In the nineteenth century, the British East India Company operated a triangle of trade that straddled the globe, running from India to China to Britain. From India to China, they took opium. From China to Britain, they took tea. From Britain to India, they brought empire. It was a machine that consumed cheap Indian land and labour and spat out money.
The British had two problems, though. They were importing enormous amounts of tea from China, but the Celestial Empire looked down on British goods and only wanted silver in return. Simultaneously, the expanding colony in India was proving far too expensive to maintain. The British solved both problems with opium, which became the source of income on which they built their empire.
For more than a century, the British knew that the drug was dangerous and continued to trade in it anyway. Its legacy in India, whether the poverty of Bihar or the wealth of Bombay, is still not acknowledged. Like many colonial institutions in India, the story of opium is one of immense pain for many and huge privileges for a few.
Thomas Manuel is a journalist and award-winning playwright. His words can be found in Lapham’s Quarterly, Nib, Wire, The Hindu, among other publications. In 2016, he won The Hindu Playwright Award for his play Hamlet and Angad. In 2020, he was selected for the inaugural Scholars-in-Residence award of The International Centre Goa (ICG). He currently works at India Ink, a public history project where he makes videos about how the past continues to affect us today. Website: thomasmanuel.com
