Great Hedge of India: The Search for the Living Barrier That Divided a People

First we had THE FANTASTIC ARC, a tale about the immense project to map the arc of the meridian in India. Now we learn that the British army and the government built a 1500 mile long FANTASTIC HEDGE OF INDIA as part of a customs wall to keep out smugglers of salt. As is to be expected with well loved history books on such arcane subjects eccentricity abounds. Also honestly typically of such tales the quest becomes a bit of an obsession for the author. Moxham tells us that at first his search was casual and on a whim. Eventually his desire to find some remnant of the fantastic hedge caused him to make repeated visits to India, learn Hindi, become a useful navigator using GPS tools and techniques, and spend years poring over maps and charts of colonial India. Was it worth it? Much of that depends on the reception of this book but Moxham has the satisfaction of finally finding a remnant of the hedge. We learn this near the end of the book and there’s a photograph of a rather nondescript clump of thorny bush that proves it.

Finding a bit of the hedge closes the chapter on one aspect of this book. This wraps up the book as a travelogue of Moxham’s personal treks through present day India and his imaginary journeys through the time and space of India under the Raj. On another level as a historical account the book is a bit thinner. The facts of the hedge are known. It seperated northern India into two nearly equal parts and was designed to prevent salt from being smuggled in from Gujarat and Maharashtra states in the west and sugar from leaving the north. Eventually as part of a custom line it would run from Rawalpindi in the north-west (in present day Pakistan) to Orissa state on the east coast. Because of the various climatic zones it traversed the hedge was made up of different plants. Prickly pear, thorn brush, and bamboo were used. It was over 8 feet high and 5 feet wide with occassional openings marked by a large tamarind tree under which sat a customs shed. It was an impenetrable barrier except for the spots where smugglers had set fire to a few clumps or rats had gnawed away some roots. Moxham tells us that both army and cats were deployed with the hedge eventually being manned by some 14,000 soldiers. We never learn how many cats were required.

Moxham’s coverage of history includes discussion of the East India Company and its maintenance of the Salt-Tax which consumed up to a fifth of a peasants annual income. The hedge and customs wall gave way in 1879 but the salt-tax remained (albeit at a much reduced rate) right up to the time of Ghandi who in fact used it as a symbol of what he was protesting against. Nobody still defends the Raj but Moxham nevertheless feels compelled to flagellate his country over its past. He says “British individuals, and most of all the East India Company itself, took vast sums out of India and spent it in Britain. India, which when the British arrived had been relatively well-off, became much poorer.” This is no doubt right but balance is required and Moxham is not quite so strong in making the point that it was a Scotsman named Alan Octavian Hume who repayed India handsomely. Hume was the principal organizer of the Indian National Union in 1885 which became the Congress party, which later under Ghandi led India to independence. The truth is the Raj and it’s deeds are history and guilt today over the past not only achieves nothing, it takes away from the enjoyment of the book. A point that supports this comes from a review of this book I read in one of India’s daily newspapers. Of interest to the writer wasn’t the stale facts of the Raj’s misdeeds, but that it was an Englishman who had uncovered the fascinating tale of the fantastic hedge of India.
Rating: 4 / 5

I borrowed this book from the library because, like most people, including the author, I found it hard to believe that something as prominent as hedge stretching across India could disappear so completely from historical record. This book was all the more enticing since British imperial history is a field of intense interest to me. So it was with much curiosity that I picked up this book and started to read about the history of this hedge, essentially a customs barrier used to regulate the trade and tax on salt. But as it turned out, I’m glad I didn’t spend the money to buy this book because there is very small to be gained by reading it more than once.

My first impression is of a disjointed tale in which the author hops back and forth between travelogue writing, a criticism of British politics, and a detailed description of his library research. Yet no chapter of this book (with one exception of which I will comment later) was strong enough to stand on its own. The travel narratives were often depressing, leading me to question why the author was so enamored with India if he despised so many aspects of his travels there. The criticisms of British policy, while characteristic of the guilt and self-loathing that I have seen manifest in many Britons when discussing their former empire, would perhaps have been better suited to a political science text. As far as the research is concerned, my eyes glaze over when doing my own, let alone when reading about someone else’s methodical work. Finally, when the author describes in meticulous detail his use of a GPS to determine the coordinates for this hedge, in this particular instance the 78E meridian through Agra, he proceeds to mix up longitude with latitude. This is probably just an editing error but the lack of attention to detail does not bode well.

But, on the plus side, I will defend the author against the criticism of not using enough maps. As he clearly points out in the book, there simply aren’t detailed maps of India available to one who is not in the Indian government. In India it is illegal to possess maps of the scale that would have offered the necessary detail to the reader. On more than one occasion the author notes his reluctance to even use his GPS because of the paranoia of the Indian officials nearby. Satellite images might have been bought but at an unreasonable cost and the maps found at the India Office or the British Museum were probably of too large a scale to successfully reduce to an octavo bound book.

I also want to say that one section of this book (to which I alluded earlier) did fascinate me: That of the physiology of salt and the human diet. I had only a rudimentary understanding of why salt is needed, how much is needed, where it is found (or rather, not found) in food, and the consequences of its absence. For that one chapter I thought I was reading an Asimov book for the author was so thorough in discussing this topic and the text flowed so effortlessly. One could clearly see why the customs hedge would have such a profound affect on the lives of 19th century Indians.

But the same can not said of this book overall. When the reader finally does get to the part where the hedge is found (four pages from the end of the book) it is anticlimactic and one is left wondering why the author spent so much time writing a book and not…writing an article for National Geographic.
Rating: 2 / 5