Monopoly, Excise and the Salt Supply Conundrum in British India

Abstract

This paper relies on hitherto unexplored archival sources to understand the origin of differentiated systems for collecting salt revenue in different regions of colonial India. It finds that the government’s salt policies, both reactive and proactive, established its control over salt sources and supply, which resulted in higher revenue, replaced indigenous salt with British salt in Bengal and stifled the salt industry in many regions. In the process, salt, an everyday condiment, was transformed into a source of revenue, then into a commodity and, finally, into a political tool in the hands of the government and Indians.