The Great Indian Hedge

Between 1803 and 1879, the British divided India by building a Customs line (hedge) that was 4000 kilometres long. In 1998, remnants of the forgotten hedge were discovered by Roy Moxham, a British writer, who went on to write a book about it.

The Great Indian Hedge
(photo: wikipedia)

The Great Indian Hedge was initially a set of Customs houses along a road. Then dead thorny material was added to the area in between - later this became a living hedge of thorny trees, bushes and shrubs that was difficult to penetrate.

It had toll gates in order to levy tax on salt and sugar that were transported from the western part of India to the east. During the years the system was in place, millions of people died in the east (Bengal) due to starvation, cholera and lack of salt though ample salt and food were available across the hedge in western India.

Even as people were dying during famines, the East India Company transported much needed salt and food on trains to shipyards in the south, to be exported to other parts of the British Empire.

In 1879, when maintaining the hedge became difficult, the British began controlling production of salt at the source and kept the tax going.

A prominent Congress leader, S.A.Swaminatha Iyer, raised the issue of high tax on salt in the first session of the Indian National Congress, held in Bombay in 1885. Subsequently many others took it up, culminating in Mahatma Gandhi's historic Dandi March in 1930.

However, the British defied massive protests and continued the tax. It was only abolished in 1947 by the Interim Indian Government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru.

A sea of men and women marches towards Dandi, 

peaceful in the face of police brutality.

For more details, see:

• Jeyamohan: உலகின் மிகப்பெரிய வேலி
• Wikipedia: Inland Customs Line
• The Great Indian Hedge - article
• The Great Hedge of India, book by Roy Moxham (also translated into Tamil, Marathi)
• The Hindu on the release of the Tamil translation of the book