There were times a rural labourer in India had to pay through his nose for salt and it cost him two months of his salary.

Any insignificant thing in Tamil is dismissed as “uppu peratha visayam” (not worth its salt).

But there were times a rural labourer in India had to pay through his nose for salt and it cost him two months of his salary. The wholesale price of salt increased to Rs. four a maund (a unit of weight). “All this occurred at a time famine and unemployment swept Bengal in 1770. When an agricultural labourer’s wage was, if he were employed, Re. one or Rs. two per month,” wrote Roy Moxham in his book, “The Great Hedge of India,” released in Tamil as ‘Uppu Veli’ by Ezhuththu on Sunday.

The translation is by writer Cyril Alex and the book reveals in shocking details the methods adopted by the British to monopolise salt manufacturing.

Mr. Moxham quotes Indian Civil Service Officer Sir John Strachey: “There grew up gradually a monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a parallel in any tolerably civilised society.”

The Malangis, coming from a family of traditional salt-makers for generations, suddenly found their business expropriated and were forced to work for pitiful wages.

To prevent smuggling of salt to Bengal, where salt tax was punitively high, “a custom line was established stretching across the whole of India, which in 1869 extended from the Indus to the Mahanadhi in Madras, a distance of 2,300 miles.” It was guarded by 12,000 men.

A.O. Hume, one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, and the Commissioner of Customs likened the hedge to the Great Wall of China.

It was by chance that Mr. Moxham discovered the existence of the hedge when he bought, “Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official” by Major General Sir W.H. Sleeman in a second-hand book shop in London. In one chapter, he found Sir John Strachey’s minute details of the hedge. Thus began his arduous journey to India.

The hedge probably took roots in the 1840s and remained till 1879. It was a combination of live or dry shrubs and was nearly an impassable barrier to smugglers.

As creating a dry hedge demanded phenomenal labour, it was decided to establish a live hedge, because once reared, it only needed ordinary care.

“Almost every description of indigenous thorny shrubs has been tried, wherever peculiar difficulties were experienced. Many tons of best seeds have been systematically and carefully collected. Sowings have been repeated not once, but dozen times on different systems,” Hume recorded.

The hedge was nowhere less than eight feet high and four to five feet thick. But in places it was twelve feet high and fourteen feet thick at the bottom. It fell into disrepair after salt tax was equalised in 1879.

There were times a rural labourer in India had to pay through his nose for salt and it cost him two months of his salary - Roy Moxham

A book that gives a graphic account of how British monopolised salt manufacturing is translated into Tamil