MID-DAY: What were some of the highlights of your recently-concluded lecture series?
AMAR FAROOQUI: In an age when the trade in narcotics is internationally outlawed, and there are stringent provisions for enforcing the ban, it might seem strange that the British-Indian government promoted, and was directly involved in, the production and marketing of opium as an intoxicant for nearly 150 years. This is an aspect of colonialism that is usually ignored, and often in standard textbooks it is either completely missing or else there might be a couple of passing references to what was a pre-eminent concern of the colonial state from the 1750s onwards till almost the end of the 19th century. The first two sessions focussed on this history.

An empty bottle of aromatic chalk powder with opium manufactured by Burroughs Wellcome & Co, where the label reveals directions on how to administer a dose. Pic Courtesy/Science Museum Group; Wikimedia Commons

MD: Opium City (Three Essays Collective) remains one of the most insightful titles about our city’s long association with opium. What were some of the key factors that contributed towards this? 
AF: Opium was a major colonial commodity, exported from India to China. China was the main market for this commodity. Towards the end of the 19th Century, particularly during the 1880s, when the exports reached their peak, almost 1,00,000 chests of opium were exported from India to China and southeast Asia annually. For the purposes of the wholesale trade, the commodity was reckoned in chests. A chest of opium contained about 60 kilos of opium.