Opium and the British Indian Empire

In my lecture today, I will take a fresh look at the report of the Royal Commission on Opium of 1895. This document is one of the great Victorian inquiries devoted to the British Raj in India. The massive report, complete with annexures and specially prepared official papers, comprises an invaluable, if little used, source of data on the entire question of opium and the British Indian Empire. In it are displayed the cultural tensions and conflicts negotiated between British colonizers and Indian colonized subjects.

Opium, like colonialism, is a sensitive and charged issue. The question of mood-altering drugs-alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine, among others-is always fraught. Each society and culture is convinced that its own drugs of choice are normal and natural; and that those of other societies are depraved and unnatural. Generally each society and culture has drugs of choice that have been assimilated to its cultural practices. The pleasures of these familiar drugs are known; their dangers minimized by taboos and social rituals of consumption, and their damage contained and ignored. Similar adaptations in other cultures are invisible or, if seen, grotesque.

When first new drugs appear and spread in any society, there is a period of adaptation that can often be devastating. This was true of the Chinese who began smoking opium in pipes during the mid-1700. This habit had spread throughout the Qing Empire and to virtually all strata in society by the 1820's. In vain, the Qing Emperors forbade the consumption of opium and its sale.

Most Chinese opium came from India where poppy had long been cultivated and opium consumed. Indians usually ate opium by swallowing small pills or drank it in opium infused water. They had never adopted the practice of smoking it in pipes. British and Indian traders sold Indian opium to coastal Chinese traders. They, in turn smuggled this illegal but valuable product along the numerous rivers to inland markets. In 1839, when the Qing government seized stores of foreign opium, the British government sent ships and troops to attack Canton and other Chinese coastal cities in the First Opium War. Britain forcibly prevented the Qing authorities from effectively ending the smuggling of Indian opium and its illegal sale to consumers in China. The Qing authorities, however, refused to legalize the sale of opium. This policy, among other tensions, led to the Second Opium War of 1856-1860 in which an allied British and French force occupied Beijing and forced the Qing Emperor to legalize the import of opium.

Throughout the nineteenth century opium sent to China, and, on a far lesser scale to Southeast Asian consumers, was one of India's most valuable exports. In 1797, Lord Cornwallis, Governor General of the East India Company's dominion in India, set up an official state agency that licensed peasant cultivators to grow poppy. Within a fixed area in the eastern Gangetic plain, the opium agency offered advances and a set price to selected poppy growers. Only licensed cultivators could grow poppy; unlicensed cultivation was a criminal offense. At harvest time, the agency bought the dried opium juice from the licensed growers, and sent it to two government-run factories Here workers processed and shaped and wrapped the raw opium into I kilogram balls of uniform moisture content.

The export opium, packed in wooden chests, traveled downriver to regular auctions at Calcutta where merchants bought it to export to China and Southeast Asia. Once established, this Bengal system continued with very little change until the twentieth century.

By 1830 the East India Company had also devised a stable arrangement for western India. Under what was called the Malwa system, peasant cultivators in several dozen land-bound Indian princely states grew opium for export by sea to the Far Eastern market. This was a private system by which Indian traders advanced funds to peasant cultivators to grow poppy, based on market calculations. At harvest they bought up the raw opium, processed it and packed it in chests to be sent by a series of intermediaries for export from the port of Bombay. Before the opium shipments left the princely states, the traders paid a pass fee of several hundred rupees per chest to an agent of the British Indian government.

In tandem with these two systems aimed at exports, the Government imposed an excise system for domestic use of opium within British India. From retail sales of opium the regime drew considerable revenues, but not anything like the profits from Calcutta sales or Bombay pass fees. Uninterrupted profits from the combined Bengal and Malwa systems constituted a growing source of state revenue for the regime in Calcutta. Opium was also lucrative for those Indian and British merchants who bought, shipped and sold opium to the inhabitants of China and Southeast Asia.

At its peak in the mid 1880's, opium was one of the most valuable commodities moving in international trade. Each year, export opium leaving Calcutta and Bombay averaged over 90,000 chests containing more than 5,400 metric tons. This staggering amount would meet the annual needs of between 13 and 14 million opium consumers in China and Southeast Asia who smoked opium on a daily basis-and many more if less intense use were assumed. Each year, opium revenues poured 93.5 million rupees (9.4 million pounds sterling) into Government of India coffers-approximately 16% of total official revenues.

As Indian opium traffic soared, the volume of criticism directed at it grew-especially in Britain. Reformers, headed by evangelicals and Quakers, organized, petitioned and put Parliamentary resolutions aimed at stopping the trade. Throughout the nineteenth century evangelicals and Quakers were disturbed by the moral implications of Indian opium. They were unhappy about forcing the Qing Emperors to accept a product that they regarded as harmful to their people. They saw opium as an obstacle to the work of Christian missionaries in China. They were doubtful about the Government of India's role as official monopolist in the Bengal system and its heavy reliance upon opium revenues. They thought that Indian officials encouraged opium eating in India to increase excise revenues-a view fostered by British and American missionaries laboring to make converts there.

In 1874, a group of Quaker reformers in London formed the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, which proved to be an effective pressure group. Periodically the Society submitted memorials protesting the trade to Her Majesty's Government. Between 1875 and 1890 anti-opium Members of Parliament introduced five society-inspired resolutions calling for the abolition of the opium trade and its prohibition in India into the House of Commons. All were soundly defeated.

Slowly, however, the campaign of the Society started to take effect. Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Quakers and other dissenting churches enthusiastically adopted this cause. Parishes and convocations held meetings and submitted numerous mass petitions in support of the anti-opiumists.

Finally, in 1891 the Society won a momentous victory-an anti-opium measure actually won a majority in the House of Commons. The measure condemned the Indian government's reliance on revenues gained from selling opium to the Chinese as "morally indefensible".

The next year, in 1892, the Liberal party to which most of the reformers belonged came to power under Gladstone. Gladstone, faced with growing reform sentiment, turned to an expedient that had been discussed for some time--a great public inquiry into the question in the form of a Royal Commission. Informal discussions finally culminated in Parliamentary action.

The motion finally passed asked that Her Royal Majesty appoint a Commission to inquire into the following questions-all pointed toward the question of prohibition in India:

1. Whether poppy growing and sale of opium should be prohibited, except for medical purposes in British India and the Indian states?
   
2. Whether existing agreements with the Indian States could be changed?
   
3. What would be the cost to the finances of India of prohibition?
   
4. Whether any measure short of total prohibition would be possible?
   
5. What was the effect of opium use on "the moral and physical condition of the people"?
   
6. And, finally, what was the opinion of the people of India about possible prohibition and would they be willing to accept the costs involved?

The terms of reference did not mention China and the effects of opium smoking on the Chinese population. For the anti-opium reformers, the previous 1891 motion had already established that Parliament wished to see the Chinese opium trade end. The British had "fixed a terrible evil upon the Chinese people" by the pressures put upon that society to accept the import of Indian opium. This was to be an examination of India, not China. If India ended opium growing and its exports, Britain's conscience would be clear.

Acting on Gladstone's recommendations, Queen Victoria appointed seven British and two Indian members to what came to be called The Royal Commission on Opium. The Chairman, Baron Thomas Brassey, seen as neutral, had enjoyed an extended career as a Liberal Member of Parliament. Two members actively associated with the Government of India were firmly pro-opium: Arthur Fanshawe currently director-general of the Indian Post Office and Sir James B. Lyall had just retired to Britain in 1892 after a distinguished Indian career.

The two avowedly anti-opium British members included Henry Wilson and Arthur Pease --both active reformers from the North of England who were leaders in the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.

Uncommitted on the opium issue were Robert Mowbray, a conservative MP from Lancashire and a long-time Manchester physician, Sir William Roberts, one of the best-known clinicians and medical researchers in British medicine at the time.

The Queen appointed two distinguished Indians to the Commission. The Maharajah of Darbhanga, Lakshmishwar Singh, owned a vast landed estate in northern Bihar (Tirhut) in the eastern Gangetic valley (whose tenants did not produce opium). The Maharaja was a member of the Viceroy's advisory council and an early patron of the Indian National Congress. The second Indian member was Haridas Veharidas, chief minister of Junagarh, a small princely state located in coastal Gujarat. Junugarh was not an opium-producing state, but the Viceroy expected that he would speak for their interests.

Both the Government of India and the reformers seemed satisfied with the composition of the Commission. The Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade commented, " the Commission is as fair-minded and impartial a tribunal as we could have desired to hear our case."

The Secretary of State for India, the Permanent Under Secretary of State at the India Office in London, the Viceroy and his Council, and a group of active and retired high Indian officials coordinated the official response to what they perceived as a major threat to the financial and political security of India.

At the Commission's request the Government of India named its own officials to testify who had experience and expertise on the opium question. The Government also had little trouble in recruiting and encouraging private, unofficial witnesses to support its case. Opinion in the Indian-owned English language and Indian language press strongly opposed prohibition. The leaders of the fledgling Indian National Congress, while uneasy with the moral aspect of the opium trade, supported the Government's position.

Despite official anxiety, the Viceroy made it clear to his officials that they were not to unduly influence the witnesses identified and called. In a letter to Lyall Lansdowne wrote, "we must be careful to avoid anything which might bear the appearance of tutoring the witnesses, official, or unofficial."

Henry Wilson took the lead in identifying and bringing anti-opium witnesses before the Commission. Joseph G. Alexander, the full-time Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society, traveled with the Royal Commission throughout its Indian tour. Wilson and Alexander made effective use of the network of committed anti-opium missionaries working in India, and received assistance from members of Indian temperance societies.

The Commission followed a well-established procedure for publicly sitting and examining witnesses. At times, members subjected witnesses to vigorous questioning. Two shorthand writers recorded the questions put and the replies of each witness. Most witnesses were conversant in English, but a minority was not. These, with the help of interpreters, gave their evidence in whichever Indian language they were fluent.

This was a hard-working body. The Commission traveled to 15 cities in India to hold 70 days of public hearings and examined 723 witnesses. The final report totaled 2,500 closely printed pages in 7 volumes.

With only a few exceptions the Indian witnesses were elite members of Indian society drawn from higher status and wealthier groups and professions. British witnesses, official and non-official, had, by definition, similar status and power. In keeping with the biases of the era, the Indian Government assumed that the "responsible" members of society were those whose opinion mattered. Of the witnesses presented by the Society for the Suppression of the Opium trade, most were Christian missionaries and delegates from the Brahmo Samaj and other Indian temperance organizations.

The British and Indian public attentively followed the progress of the Commission. The London Times engaged a special correspondent who telegraphed a summary of evidence given by witnesses at each day's sittings for publication in London. Both the English language and Indian language papers of India reported regularly on the progress of the Commission and the nature of the evidence taken. As the hearings progressed, it became clear to most observers that pro-opium testimony was considerably stronger and more persuasive than that of the reformers.

At their final meeting in Bombay, the Commissioners hammered out their findings. To the questions posed in the 1893 Parliamentary resolution, they answered firmly and unambiguously. Prohibition of opium save for medical purposes was neither necessary nor wanted by the Indians themselves. Indian public opinion firmly rejected such a measure. The British government should not unjustly interfere with opium production or consumption in the Indian princely states. India could not afford to give up the opium revenues in the present state of its finances. Consumption of opium by the people of India did not cause "extensive moral or physical degradation" and disentangling medical from non-medical consumption was simply not practical. The Government of India was acting appropriately in trying to restrain opium consumption in India.

This was a complete victory for the Government of India. Henry Wilson refused to sign the report and submitted a dissenting memorandum. Arthur Pease, however, the other anti-opium member, did sign -- much to the consternation of his fellow anti-opiumists.

Predictably, opium opponents protested that the Royal Commission was biased. They charged that the report was a masterful piece of public relations, adroitly stage-managed by Gladstone's government and the Government of India. Later scholarship on the history of Indian opium has echoed those opinions. However, if we look carefully at the mass of evidence presented to the Commission its conclusions appear solid and its reasoning impeccable.

The main question that the Commission faced was that of prohibition. Should exports of opium from India be stopped completely so as to reduce Chinese consumption? To the Commission members, and to anyone who reads the evidence today, the Government of India had little difficulty demonstrating the many types of economic losses that would accompany the ending of opium exports. Moreover, the Commission pointed out that India's financial sacrifice would be futile. Rapidly expanding domestic poppy cultivation in China had begun to cut into the demand for Indian opium. If Indian opium shipments ended, opium production in China would simply increase to fill the gap. In fact, the Qing Emperor could stop Indian imports at any time if he chose to do so without fear of British reprisal-unlike the past. Her Majesty's Government had publicly stated in Parliament that Britain would not use force to compel the Chinese to accept Indian opium. These were hard arguments to refute.

Should production and use of opium in India be limited to medical purposes? British, American and Canadian missionaries from Protestant denominations living and working in India were the strongest advocates for complete prohibition to appear before the Commission. For decades, their outspoken dislike of opium and the policies of the Government of India had fueled anti-opium protests in Britain.

Typical were the views of Bishop Thoburn, who spoke for eighty missionaries sent to India from the United States by the Methodist Episcopal Church. He testified that opium was "a very great evil" and should be prohibited. He and his church were strongly against stimulants of all kinds. His missionaries did not permit Indian opium users to join their churches and if any members took up opium they came under discipline. The use of opium was "inconsistent with a correct Christian life" and led to vice and immorality. Consuming opium "takes the moral stamina right out of a man". At least half of all opium users took it in excess with ruinous effects on their health, their morals and their finances. The Bishop conceded that coolies and other laborers sometimes used opium to work harder and reduce hunger pangs, but argued that the drug also enabled them to destroy their health by overwork. He thought the medical uses of opium were exaggerated. Opium was not a "medical necessity" for rural people. The licensing system imposed by the Government of India by making opium available for public sale, invariably increased consumption.

Contrary to what many Indian witnesses themselves stated, Bishop Thoburn asserted that Indians disapproved of opium use. He thought that Indian opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of prohibition despite the financial burden that measure would cause.

However, Bishop Thoburn's evidence and that of other anti-opium witnesses faltered before the weight of pro-opium testimony in two key areas. First official witnesses had little trouble showing that the Government of India tightly regulated and discouraged domestic consumption of opium-despite its fiscal interest in higher sales of excise opium. Secondly, witness after witness testified that opium use in India was not harmful to either the individual or society-far less than that of alcohol. In the remainder of the lecture, I will address these two issues.

The long-term effect of British conquest and rule on the subcontinent had been to sharply curtail poppy cultivation and domestic opium consumption. Throughout the nineteenth century, since inception of the Bengal monopoly, the British rulers of India had grappled with the complex issues posed by their fiscal reliance on opium. They were forced to control domestic distribution and consumption to sustain their export monopoly. By trial and error the regime devised consistently applied principles, laws and regulations, and procedures capable of generating revenue and controlling the production, movement, and ultimate use of opium in India.

Since founding of the Bengal monopoly in 1797, the Government of India had developed what today would be called a drug policy. For opium, as for alcohol and cannabis, the Government of India avoided absolutist positions. It assumed that consumption of these substances would continue, that abstinence was a chimera and that the best the state could do was to restrain these habits. The system that emerged in each major region of the subcontinent was sensitive to varying local conditions, cultural preferences and economic circumstances.

For nearly two decades, since passage of the all-India Opium Act of 1878, the central Government of India had assumed full authority to regulate opium throughout British India. The 1878 statute made it illegal for anyone in British India to cultivate, manufacture, transport, sell or possess opium unless given explicit permission by the government. There were criminal penalties for violations. Police, revenue, opium and customs officials could forcibly enter, search, and seize contraband opium. They might detain and arrest anyone suspected of violating provisions of the act.

Under the terms of the 1878 Act, each province in British India had its own system of excise for regulation and sale of opium to domestic consumers. The broad features of these systems were similar: only a limited number of persons who had paid for and obtained special licenses from the provincial government could sell opium in retail shops. Under this farming or monopoly system, licensees either bid at auction or paid a set fee for their monopoly rights. In their retail shops, licensees sold either Bengal or Malwa opium in amounts regulated by the government.

The provincial governments also set generous limits for a single sale to an individual and for any person to have in his or her possession at any time. Possession of larger amounts was ground for arrest. Any person could purchase opium at licensed shops in any amount up to the official limit for possession. There were few shops selling opium with an average of one per 21,000 persons in British India.

The overall policy was one of "maximum revenue from minimum consumption". Throughout British India, government policy kept the retail price of opium higher than that of an unregulated market. By adjusting the quantities of opium released, the wholesale price, and the number and distribution of shops the government aimed at a delicate balance between supply and demand. If the price was too high, quantities available inadequate and the numbers of shops too few, invariably smuggling and illegal sales to meet pent-up demand would intensify and be nearly impossible to control. If the price were too low, supplies too ample and shops too frequent, there would be increased consumption of opium.

Opium smoking, although the practice of only a very few Indians, was an especially sensitive issue. Reacting to a barrage of criticism from opium reformers and Indian public opinion, the Secretary of State for India agreed to make opium smoking dens illegal throughout India. In September 1891 the Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, ordered that all provincial governments ban the consumption of opium upon the premises of licensed shops. This ban went into effect before the Royal Commission began its work.

Burma is the best example of the imperial Government's flexible handling of the opium issue. At the recent conquest of Upper Burma in 1885, the British kept in place a ban on opium and alcohol use by ethnic Burmans imposed by the deposed King Thebaw-a prohibition strongly supported by Buddhist religious sentiment. Under the Burmese kings, Chinese and other minority groups could obtain and use opium but not the majority community. Anti-opium sentiment found support among British officials who argued that opium smoking was extremely damaging to Burman society. They as well as British reformers asked that the ban on consumption be extended to Lower Burma where the conventional Indian excise system was in place. By 1893, the Viceroy had agreed to a sweeping new policy that banned the sale of opium to ethnic Burmans throughout Upper and Lower Burma, but permitted it for Chinese, Indian and other non-Burman groups. This new policy was to go into effect in 1894 just after the Commission was to conclude its work.

To summarize, the Indian government's opium policy was a workable compromise between its need to protect its production monopoly in Bengal, its desire to collect excise revenues, and its aim of lowering consumption. Smuggling and illegal sales took place. If anything, given the central role of opium in ordinary Indian life, it might be argued that by the 1890's the policy had tilted too far in the direction of restraint and increased costs to the consumer.
To support its general conclusion that opium was not harmful in the Indian context, the Commission relied heavily upon an analysis of the evidence developed in a separate memorandum by Sir William Roberts. His medical reputation for objectivity and accuracy won credibility for the final report and its conclusions. Roberts was especially attuned to the testimony given by the 166 British and Indian physicians who appeared before the Commission.

Roberts first addressed the non-medical use of opium, or the "opium habit" in India. Heaviest usage was in the northern and western regions of the subcontinent with much lower levels in the extreme south. By its nature, opium consumption in India was unobtrusive, since users simply swallowed small pills that did not change their demeanor or appearance-unlike alcohol. Although estimates varied widely, it was clear that a minority of Indians were regular consumers.

Using clinical data on several thousand patients compiled by witnesses who were physicians in India, Roberts concluded that, in India, opium consumption was a habit of men rather than women, and middle-aged and older persons rather than children or young adults. Once begun, opium was "usually a life-long habit" with a dose taken twice a day, in the morning and evening. Beginning users initially increased their dosage levels until they reached "the level of individual tolerance" and often kept the same dosage for life.

Indian and British physicians alike testified that moderate, habitual use of opium within the individual level of tolerance did not have harmful effects on either health or longevity. Unlike alcohol, opium "dose not appear responsible for any disease peculiar to itself". Roberts concluded, "The general health of opium-eaters, provided they keep within their tolerance appears to be just as good as that of other people." Users who habitually took large doses of opium suffered from constipation. Even the excessive user, barring other illnesses, could live out his natural life span. Fortunately, however such an "opium sot" was a "rare spectacle" in India.

Contradicting concerns that had been raised by anti-opium reformers, Roberts reported that medical officers in charge of lunatic asylums in India testified that there was no discernible association between taking opium and insanity. Opium use did not lead to suicide as reformers charged. Taking an overdose of opium might be an appealing method of self-destruction in India as elsewhere, but official statistics revealed that, in fact, there was no relationship between levels of opium use and the numbers of suicides.

Opium was an important self-administered household remedy in India. Indians reached for opium pills to treat diarrhea, dysentery, chills, malarial attacks, asthma, chronic coughs, and rheumatic pains. It was widely used to relieve " painful wasting diseases" of any kind." These uses are consistent with the well-known therapeutic qualities of opium.

To the opium reformers one of the most dismaying of Indian customs was that of routinely giving small dosages of opium daily to infants. Begun soon after birth, mothers continued to administer opium until ages two to three-at that point, the child completely stopped taking opium. Indian witnesses to the Commission testified that opium kept their children quiet and in good health. It helped their digestion, prevented diarrhea, fought off chills and fever and relieved teething pains. Accidental poisoning did occur, but rarely occurred and children usually recovered.

Some of the British medical witnesses expressed a generalized disapproval of the practice, but had difficulty listing any evils from it. In response Roberts offered a culturally neutral rebuttal:

Indian mothers and nurses, and the Native public generally, have an unquestioning faith in the wholesomeness of giving opium to children, and the accumulated experience of successive generations of parents, extending over hundreds of years, furnishes a body of presumptive evidence which is not to be lightly set aside on the ground of a priori considerations. It is difficult to believe that a practice so widely diffused through all grades of society, and carried on under the direct supervision of the vigilant maternal instinct, should have maintained itself so long in credit, if it were on the whole and to any appreciable extent injurious.

In Gujarat, Rajasthan and Central India, ceremonial use of opium was common. Rulers and hosts offered a solution of opium in water during formal court audiences and various kinds of private receptions. Offering opium water marked religious festivals, births and funerals and was used to signify the reconciliation of enemies. Under these circumstances nearly all present consumed the opium water even though they might not ordinarily take opium. Slowly, however this ceremonial use was dying out in part due to increasing consumption of alcohol and the rising price of opium.

Finally, Roberts turned to the question of opium smoking in India. Even for this socially disapproved habit, biographies and self-testimonial of opium smokers suggested that when done in moderation smoking was no more harmful than to health than taking pills or other modes of ingestion.

To the Commission members, Roberts' memorandum simply summarized what they had absorbed from the hearings. Opium was an important medical asset to Indians. Consumption for mood-altering purposes blended into self-medication for middle-aged and older Indians. For most, taking opium could be and was controlled at a maintenance dosage. Few were driven to excessive addiction. Moreover, there was testimony by many that opium served as a useful work drug to relieve boredom and monotony, to reduce muscle pains, and to lessen pangs of hunger while laboring.

Results from an unofficial inquiry agreed with the Roberts memorandum. In its November 25th, 1893 issue, The British Medical Journal summarized the views on opium it had solicited from one hundred British physicians-some in government service, some in private employment-practicing medicine in India.. The respondents agreed that opium use was widespread and generally moderate; that long-term users tended to find a tolerable dosage level and to maintain that without change; that moderate opium use rarely led to excessive consumption; and that its medical value to the population of India very great. In reply to a direct question nearly all respondents agreed that opium was less harmful than alcohol. They suggested that prohibiting opium's use would lead to a rise in alcohol consumption in India.

Medical opinion in Britain had little trouble accepting the testimony of British-Indian colleagues. It is true that by the early 1890's, medical use of opium was declining. The most advanced medical practitioners increasingly substituted quinine, chloral and bromides for opium in the treatment of fever and sleeplessness. Nevertheless, for most physicians in general practice opium based medications remained a standby. A considerable number of British physicians and their patients had opium, or increasingly, a morphine habit themselves. They knew that continued opium use did not preclude living a productive and healthy life. The conclusions drawn by the Royal Commission on Opium seemed perfectly reasonable.

To Victorian physicians familiar with the life-threatening behavior of the deeply addicted drinker, consumption of opium or morphine seemed benign. In fact, many physicians administered morphine on a maintenance basis as a strategy for ending alcoholism. They did not do this lightly, nor did they perceive opiate use to be innocuous, but reasoned that if a cure seemed impossible, the opiate habit was far preferable to alcoholism.

In summary, India was a colonized country, ruled by foreigners who since the mid-eighteenth century had forcibly imposed a foreign language, institutions and cultural practices upon her. The British opium reformers attacked an aspect of Indian culture and society that Indians themselves did not view as especially harmful. Opium use for both medicinal and mood-altering purposes was an accepted cultural practice throughout the subcontinent (save for Burma) with little or no disapproval attached to it. Unlike the recent debates about raising the minimum age for women to marry in India (the Age of Consent Bill), the most advanced Indian reformers were not deeply committed to the anti-opium cause. The appointment of a Royal Commission on Opium constituted a newly intensified cultural assault on this issue.

Clearly, the attack on Indian opium use was a form of cultural imperialism. The reformers unanimously regarded opium consumption (other than for the most direct medical purpose) as disgusting and degrading. This was a foreign judgment that had its roots in European or western culture and society. It was a judgment that, among many others, condemned the practices and customs of India and the Orient. It was also a judgment intimately tied to that version of Protestant Christianity practiced in the British Isles in the late nineteenth century and disseminated by missionaries in India. As their testimony to the Royal Commission on Opium revealed, British and American Protestant missionaries were the most fervent anti-opium witnesses.

The arguments of the opium reformers were, however, distinctly weakened by the pervasive use of alcohol in Britain and other western countries. Although most reformers were themselves abstainers and avid supporters of temperance, they came from a society that in Indian eyes was addicted to a drug far more dangerous and debilitating than opium. To most Indians alcohol was a western drug that the colonial relationship was forcing upon them. Observant Muslims and Hindus deplored the use of alcohol and avoided it on religious grounds.

Testifying at Calcutta, the witness T. N. Mukherji, a minor government official and one of the few Indians who had actually visited England, was astringent:

Cannot we induce the people of England to eat opium instead of annually spending more than two hundred crores of rupees [i.e. 200 million pounds] in the consumption of alcoholic liquors? Opium is amazingly cheap, duty included; it prolongs life after a certain age, and it can be asserted with all the force of truth and seriousness that its substitution in place of alcohol,… will bring back happiness to thousands of families in Great Britain and Ireland where there is no happiness now.

Mukherji opined that the opium reformers should direct their attention "to persuading the people of England to take to opium".

The Commissions final report ignored the opium-alcohol comparison. But in his appended statement to the final report Haridas Veharidas, one of the two Indian members of the Commission, denounced the British anti-opium movement as "unfair" in that it attacked opium "before any attempt is made to relieve India from the effects of alcohol." He predicted that if opium were restricted, this would lead to greater use of alcohol, "which is admitted by all parties to be much more injurious and mischievous than opium, not to speak of its objectionable character in a majority of cases from a religious point of view [i.e. from Muslim and Hindu teachings]". He called for more stringent controls on alcohol since any amount of European spirits could be imported and sold without a license in India. At present only Indian made country liquors were regulated.

The Royal Commission on Opium, reflecting the views of both the Government of India and most informed Indians, rejected the arguments of opium reformers. On this issue, at least, Lansdowne, Lyall, and other high officials were better attuned to Indian opinion than the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.

The Commission's hearings became an arena for a contest between the Government of India that sought to preserve the status quo and its anti-opium critics. The Government of India prevailed in 1895, not because of chicanery or force, but because its position was consistent with that of most of the people of India. The anti-opium reformers made culturally biased judgments and accusations that could not be supported. Ironically, the colonial government of India found itself resisting a virulent form of cultural imperialism from Britain.

The Indian Government won only a decade-long respite, however, before the anti-opium movement regained its momentum in Britain. Under the new Liberal Parliament of 1905, a motion before the House of Commons declared once again that the "Indo-Chinese opium trade is morally indefensible" and called for "bringing it to a speedy close". So overwhelming was its support that the motion passed without a vote. On January 1, 1908, the Qing Empire and the British Government signed an agreement to steadily reduce Indian opium exports to China until they ended completely after ten years. In turn the Qing Empire, and after its fall, the new Republican regime, undertook to end domestic poppy cultivation in China-a measure that would be verified by British inspectors.

Much of the impetus for ending the trade came from a new, militant form of Chinese nationalism. The self-strengthening movement viewed opium as both symbol and cause of Chinese weakness before the West. India continued to produce and export opium to Southeast Asia, but for shrinking markets in the period before World War II. However, Indian domestic use of opium under the excise system continued without further challenge until independence in 1947.