Salt,smuggling and citizenship: Redefining princely sovereignty through salt in Baroda,1870–1920

Abstract

The centrality of salt within the political and economic history of India is well established in recent scholarship. Its significance was particularly profound in the western region of Gujarat; long before the arrival of the British, the princely state of Baroda had a tradition of salt manufacturing. With both government-owned pans and widespread ‘home manufacturing’ operating within the state, salt was undeniably critical to the local economy. It also held a cultural significance. In the mid-1800s, with the introduction of the British salt monopoly, these industries were officially subsumed by the colonial state. However, in their efforts to enforce the monopoly and suppress ‘illicit’ production, the British continued to face considerable resistance from all levels of the Baroda administration into the twentieth century. This article examines the contestations that occurred between the colonial and princely authorities over the issue of salt, particularly on the frontiers where jurisdiction was uncertain. It asserts that, through these processes, salt came to represent a crucial battleground for debates concerning legal sovereignty, subjecthood and economic autonomy.

In 1879, a British senior salt inspector, G. B. Payne, dropped anchor off the Danti--–Umrath coast in the Bombay Presidency. It was just past noon; Payne and his subordinates were stopping for a brief rest as they travelled by boat down the coast. However, as they pulled in, Payne noticed three individuals run out of the coastal village of Danti toward the shore with nondescript packages and return, shortly thereafter, without them. On following the men back toward the village, Payne discovered the packages buried in the sand. Inside each was a large quantity of naturally derived ‘earth salt’. ¹

The salt inspector set about confiscating the bags, but before they could be carried back to the boat, one of the villagers returned. The man, spotting Payne, ran back to the village and returned, a few moments later, with an armed sepoy and two officials from the village: the Patel (village headman) and the faujdar (local magistrate). Much to Payne’s chagrin, he was quickly shepherded back to the village and the salt was left under the guard of two armed sepoys. By nightfall, the salt had been moved to the patel’s house.

The following day, it became clear that this was not an isolated incident. Rather, Payne’s men discovered large quantities of salt hidden around the village and determined that both the patel and the faujdar, as well as most of the other residents of Danti, were invested in the operation. When one of the colonial investigators discovered a large quantity of salt concealed underground outside Danti, ‘about 100 people came from the village and posted themselves about 200 yards from the salt’. As soon as an opportunity presented itself, ‘all these people made a rush upon the salt and carried it into the village’. Meanwhile, two further bundles of salt that had been recovered from hiding places around the village were similarly seized. ²

It was later concluded that salt was being farmed from surface deposits along the Danti–Umrath coast, before being smuggled across the nearby inland border into the Navsari district of the Baroda state. A representative of the British Salt Department was stationed at Danti to curtail the traffic, but to little effect; the patel and faujdar profited from the illegal harvest and sale of salt, and therefore had little motivation to stop the trade. ³ Without the cooperation of local officials to monitor and punish smugglers, there was nothing that could be done. Meanwhile, efforts to pursue the smugglers across the border into the princely state were met with hostility from local officials and resistance from the Baroda government. Little assistance was offered by the Baroda government to suppress this cross-border traffic.

This incident was hardly atypical. In Gujarat, salt was routinely carried across British–princely borders. Tariff boundaries, erected to protect the salt tax in British-controlled territories, were highly permeable; both home manufacturing of the kind illustrated here, and smuggling, were common. ⁴ As a consequence, the challenges faced by the British salt inspector were similarly commonplace; difficulties with negotiating various local and state power relations while attempting to enforce British trade restrictions were widespread.

These issues can be attributed in large part to the nature of the British salt interest in Gujarat, which differed from the system in the east and was considerably more tenuous. This was only exacerbated by distinctions in the broader system of colonial governance in the region, which necessitated alternative approaches to revenue extraction. As a consequence, British control of the salt trade in western India relied on a system of excise taxes, paired with constraints over manufacturing and sales. It never maintained a full monopoly over salt, as was found in Bengal. ⁵

British salt policy in the region was focused on two key objectives. First, they sought to control the volume of salt in the marketplace by restricting the number of commercial pans and controlling their output. ⁶ This served the purpose of regulating prices and ensuring that the market was not flooded with what they viewed as low-quality, cheaper products. The second objective was to protect British salt revenues by extracting returns where possible and suppressing potential threats. It is the second objective which forms the substance of this article, which examines the unique challenges posed to British interests in Gujarat by the landscape, traditional salt-farming practices, and most notably, the presence of princely states.

The salt produced for sale and profit in early nineteenth-century Bengal was a boiled variety known as panga. It was produced in salt pans by boiling brine for long periods of time at low temperatures to produce a fine, white salt product. ⁷ In Gujarat, however, salt was produced primarily in accordance with long-standing traditional practices, from naturally-occurring supplies of brine water along the coast and estuaries. Commercial pans across the region used solar-evaporation methods, which produced salt of a lower quality than the Bengal variety but also cost less. Most significant for this study, however, was the salt which was produced by means other than commercial pans. The ready availability of briny water meant that communities across the region chose to produce their own salt rather than rely on the purchase of higher-quality and therefore higher-cost varieties. Home-manufactured and earth salt were both in common usage in rural areas, as well as in villages along the coasts and rivers.

Fundamentally, therefore, salt production in Gujarat ought to be separated into two distinct—though sometimes overlapping—categories: in the first case, salt produced for profit and in the second, salt produced for consumption. It is in the areas where these two categories collided, and where British commercial interests came into conflict with the needs and traditional practices of local communities, that cross-border contestations arose.

The reliance of British salt revenues on excise led to a desire to monitor and control the supply of salt, in order to ensure that it was all being taxed appropriately. The manufacture, sale and consumption of unmonitored, untaxed salt was of primary concern. In their own territories, this was accomplished through the promulgation of a series of measures whereby salt could only be legally manufactured under license, and only be purchased by retailers at designated government-sanctioned auctions. ⁸ However, their authority to exert similar control inside the boundaries of neighbouring princely states was less certain. Challenges in enforcement—as evidenced in the Danti village case study—were in part the result of a long-standing disagreement as to the very legitimacy of the British salt monopoly in Gujarat.

In the state of Baroda, the right to manufacture salt had long been claimed by both the Baroda state and the colonial government. State-owned salt manufacturing in the region had largely been developed under the Marathas, and the ambiguity was rooted in the legislative origins of the claims asserted by the Marathas’ successors. In 1751, a partition treaty between the Gaekwar and Maratha Peshwa gave the Gaekwars full control of the Baroda territories north of the Tapti River. ⁹ The Gaekwars asserted that this agreement gave them full control over their share of Gujarat, which included the state’s salt economy. Moreover, it predated any later cessions made to the British. ¹⁰

The British, on the other hand, dated their own rights in Gujarat to their 1802 and 1817 treaties with the Peshwa. The British stance was that, under these later agreements, the Peshwa renounced all of the Maratha Empire’s territorial rights in Gujarat to the British. Baroda’s representatives took the position that the right to manufacture salt in Baroda had already been yielded to them in 1751, and therefore was not included in the rights handed over to the British in the nineteenth century. They claimed that the British inherited salt rights from the Peshwa only south of the Tapti River. As territorial rights north of the Tapti had already been given to the Gaekwars in 1751, they were no longer in the Peshwa’s possession to be given away in 1817. ¹¹ However, the British largely invalidated the 1751 agreement, as well as any long-standing habitual, unwritten, agreements between the Peshwa and the Gaekwars. In their view, the 1817 treaty included the Peshwa’s salt pans, as well as any and all rights to control the manufacture of salt in Gujarat—including within Baroda. ¹²

This fundamental disagreement led to the issue being raised again and again in correspondence between the colonial authorities and Baroda. In 1859, the Baroda Durbar protested the Government of India’s decision to close the state-controlled salt works in Baroda, and their claim to control the manufacture of salt in the state. The following year, the Deputy Commissioner of Customs complained that several salt works in the Baroda territories were still in operation and that a number of smaller, privately-run pans had actually been opened ‘with no orders having been issued from the Durbar prohibiting the manufacture of salt’. ¹³ In 1920, the Baroda Durbar petitioned the British for permission to transport salt from their Kathiawar territories to their Gujarat lands, arguing that ‘every State has a right to derive revenue from its own natural resources’. Baroda, they claimed, should therefore be free to ‘derive revenue from its own salt consumed by its own subjects’. ¹⁴ This petition was answered with a similar response to the 1859 request, that it was the exclusive right of the British to establish salt works and to manufacture salt throughout Gujarat. ¹⁵

As this article will demonstrate, these persistent and ongoing disagreements over the legitimacy of the monopoly weakened the enforcement apparatus of the British Salt Department in Gujarat. Moreover, such disputes provided avenues for resistance, particularly in contested spaces along the uncertain borders between Baroda and British India and in Okhamandal. Efforts to extend the salt monopoly into princely spaces were decried as extraterritorial, illegal, and in contravention of Baroda’s own legal sovereignty.

The research conducted on the salt trade, which forms the basis of this article, is situated within a growing body of work on the economies of the princely states, which have for a long time been excluded from most narratives of South Asia’s economic development. A majority of the scholarship on the colonial period has placed its emphasis on British India, overlooking the nearly 600 autonomous and semi-autonomous princely states that existed alongside the directly administered colonial provinces. ¹⁶ These states occupied a significant and important place within the political and economic landscape of South Asia. While the princely states have been included in holistic studies of the Indian economy, such as those produced by Amiya Bagchi and Tirthankar Roy, most economic surveys of India in the colonial period have traditionally relegated the princely states to subordinate entities unworthy of closer study. ¹⁷ In particular, studies of networks and mobility, such as Tanuja Kothiyal’s Nomadic Narratives, offer an important avenue for uncovering the connections between colonial and princely spaces, in particular those outside official, state-level, interactions. ¹⁸ Such scholarship sheds light on the significance of micro-networks and border communities in maintaining links and undermining barriers erected through state policy. As this article will demonstrate, while the British salt monopoly severely damaged state-sponsored commercial salt production and undermined a long-distance and large-scale trade in salt, it struggled to curtail home manufacturing and local village-to-village trade on the borders of princely and British India.

Frontiers are also starting to feature more significantly within studies of the Indian princely states. Eric Beverley, for instance, has written about contestations over jurisdiction between the state of Hyderabad and British India within borderland contact zones, highlighting the tensions that arose as a result of extrajudicial initiatives on the part of the colonial authorities, which met with resistance from the Hyderabad government. Beverley also points to the precarious position of individuals and communities who lived within these marginal spaces. ¹⁹ In the context of western India, this article will similarly illustrate how the imposition of economic policy in these frontier regions—especially that connected with salt—brought up equally fraught issues. The extraterritorial imposition of salt policy encountered similar state resistance as well as efforts to preserve legal sovereignty at all levels of the Baroda administration.

In its focus on border politics and networks, this article draws on the strong emergent field of connected empire studies. Scholars such as Clare Anderson, Alan Lester and Kerry Ward have all contributed to the development of networked histories of empires, identifying the complex interconnections between peoples and places. ²⁰ These works have highlighted the intersections between issues of political, social and economic importance in the construction of global imperial networks. This article seeks to apply these methodologies to a specific case study: that of the salt trade on the borders of British India and the princely state of Baroda. Through its analysis of the salt trade, this article seeks to microscopically highlight these cross-border networks and connections which, though localised, are no less significant. It examines how the ongoing, negotiated, processes of managing borders uncovered similarly complex rhetorics of citizenship and statehood.

In addition, a considerable emphasis is placed on understanding salt not only as an economic enterprise but also as an important discursive arena. In thinking about the language surrounding and employed in the salt trade and the contestations that arose around its practice in border regions, this article is inspired by the work of Douglas Haynes—which uncovers how Indian elites appropriated colonial discourses and drew on languages provided by the colonial authorities in order to pursue their own agendas within the discursive limits set by the colonial state—to suggest that salt represented a similarly significant discursive space for articulating the complexities of cross-border politics. ²¹ Further, drawing on Manu Bhagavan’s article on ‘mimicked modernity’, this article argues that the terminologies employed in this arena enabled Baroda’s representatives to engage directly with Western standards of statecraft, which they did with clear intentionality to achieve particular objectives. ²²

This article analyses the institutional and community responses within the princely state of Baroda to the British restructuring of the salt trade in western India. Responses included rises in the rates of smuggling activity, as well as ongoing home manufacturing, even as the state-sponsored salt pans were shut down and state salt revenue curtailed. These activities did not occur in isolation, but rather bled across British–princely borders. A close examination of the salt trade in this period highlights the porousness of these borders, as well as the long-term persistence of micro-economic networks in this region. Though colonial tariffs and railway networks undermined the major long-distance commercial arteries in western India, the salt trade illustrates that localised, village-to-village networks persisted. Moreover, as elucidated in the Danti example, these networks were supported by local power structures on both sides of the border.

Economic pressure, habitual behaviours and weaknesses within the colonial enforcement apparatus all contributed to the flourishing of localised cross-border salt trade in this period. However, these were not the only causes of resistance, which—especially at the upper levels of government—also emerged as a consequence of the questions the trade raised about princely autonomy. Ongoing disputes over the legitimacy of the salt monopoly, as well as increasingly intrusive approaches to controlling the salt trade, spurred resistance at all levels of the Baroda administration. Moreover, these princely–British engagements surrounding the salt trade transcended the subject of the trade itself, as salt came to represent a crucial battleground for debates concerning the rights of the Baroda state to economic, legislative and even judicial autonomy.

Smuggling, home manufacturing and micro trade networks

The magnitude of the task facing British officials in controlling all kinds of cross-border trade in Gujarat was staggering. ²³ Baroda alone maintained approximately 3,800 separate ‘boundaries’, measuring around 3,150 miles. Of these, 1,500 boundaries were between Baroda and other princely states, while the rest connected Baroda with British territories. As late as the early twentieth century, many of these borders were still disputed and unmapped. ²⁴ The lines between Baroda’s villages and those within colonial lands were nebulous and uncertain.

The careful management of these borders was central to the preservation of British Indian revenue. This was particularly true in western India, in the areas of Gujarat under the control of the Bombay Presidency where income from customs duties constituted more than 35 per cent of their total revenue. ²⁵ By the mid-1870s, all seven of the major commercial salt works in Baroda had been formally closed, leaving any ‘sanctioned’ salt consumption at the mercy of supplies from auctions in British India. ²⁶ It was, therefore, the smuggling of salt across these uncertain frontiers, as well as illicit manufacturing, which the Salt Department in western India viewed as the primary undermining factors of the colonial revenue. The continued arguments of the Baroda Durbar that the activity was in fact legal within their borders continued to pose an obstruction to British efforts to curtail the activity. The problem was further exacerbated by the fact that different treaty arrangements with different states meant that the policy was not only not aligned with a central Government of India mandate, but was in fact uneven across the Gujarat region. ²⁷

In addition, those ill-defined borders which were meant to distinguish colonial from princely lands were erected across existing trading networks, rendering well-established local routes illicit, as they involved the transport of newly restricted goods across territorial boundaries. Movement across these many borders was part of everyday life for many who lived near them; as they moved, they carried goods and supplies, whether for sale or personal use. Though the colonial authorities designated the carriage of salt and other controlled products across these borders as smuggling, lack of clarity on both policy and the borders themselves meant that many who engaged in the practice were not consciously undermining trading restrictions. ²⁸ By 1874, the Government of Bombay reported that the manufacture of salt in the Baroda territories—in contravention of British restrictions—caused annual losses of more than 18,000 rupees to their salt revenue. ²⁹

The suppression of smuggling, like other aspects of monopoly enforcement, required complex and ongoing processes of negotiation with princely governments. For British control, it was necessary that restrictions were enforced on both sides of the border; whether obtained through cooperation, coercion, or force, the aid of princely officials was imperative. As a consequence, it was due to a lack of princely cooperation that the British assigned blame for the persistence of smuggling in Gujarat. In the case of Baroda, the Durbar was accused of ‘systematic defiance’ characterised by ‘perfect indifference’ and a general lack of compliance with orders for assistance in the suppression of smuggling in the region. Local representatives of the Baroda Durbar, meanwhile, were allegedly actively obstructive to British customs officers in their attempts to identify and prevent salt smuggling. In fact, despite earlier written agreements confirming the Durbar’s agreement to shut down all salt manufacturing and salt smuggling in their territories, the Government of Bombay observed that between 1862 and 1874, not a single seizure of illicit salt was made by the Baroda government within its territories. ³⁰

Certainly, in part, the ineffectiveness of local officials in enforcing trade restrictions was the result of their being actively invested in those activities which they were meant to suppress. The Danti village incident quoted above is quite representative in this respect. In Danti, salt smuggling was a systematic operation, involving most of the villagers including the patel and faujdar. Those responsible for enforcing the anti-smuggling policy were simultaneously complicit in the harvesting of earth salt and its conveyance across the border into Baroda. Meanwhile, on the Baroda side of the border, earth salt was similarly cultivated from surface deposits along the Mahi River through operations that drew in the labour of the entire village. Kolis and fishermen would often harvest the salt, while the women would take the salt to market for sale. Meanwhile, traders would purchase the salt wholesale and carry it longer distances, for sale either in Baroda city or across the border in British India. The scale of the earth salt industry along the Mahi in Baroda was of such a magnitude as to elicit concern from the British; an 1880 survey of the activity identified ‘the local officials and village communities’ as the principal offenders. ³¹ The involvement of administrators and officials—the people whose job was to curtail the trade—was well-known and constantly bemoaned by the British customs authorities. Regarding the home manufacturing along the Mahi, the customs authorities appealed to the Baroda Durbar for help in mandating that village officials aid in controlling the traffic. However, in response, they received only silence. ³² This complicity and obstruction from within the Baroda administration was a constant source of aggravation to the British customs authorities in Gujarat.

This behaviour was used to justify increasingly heavy-handed enforcement measures along the borders. These included increased border patrols, searches of villages and their residents on both sides of the border, the stop and search of traders, and the seizure of salt suspected of being illicit. Attempts were also made to further extend the reach of the Salt Department by pursuing smuggling suspects across borders and demanding the extradition of suspects—both from British India and Baroda—across borders to face prosecution by a British magistrate. Such activities were perceived as a direct threat to the autonomous powers of the Baroda state. They spurred acts of resistance that extended beyond economic circumvention and raised questions about the nature of the British–princely relationship.

Extradition and state resistance

The issue of extradition for offences against the salt monopoly offered opportunities for multiple expressions of sovereignty within the uncertain borderland regions between British India and Baroda. Individuals and institutions at all levels of the administrative framework were able to articulate different kinds of state power within this complex legal terrain. As a convoluted subject already at the heart of arguments over economic autonomy in the region, salt represented an important rhetorical space within which these battles could be waged.

For instance, local officials often refused demands to aid British efforts to track smugglers across the border. One persistent complaint of British customs officials in Gujarat was that the Baroda Durbar directly interfered in its efforts to curtail smuggling by ‘refusing to give up and relieve a number of smugglers of salt who had been tracked…into Gaekwar territory’. This refusal was also, allegedly, ‘paired with the utmost malevolence of manner’. Customs officials also noted that local representatives regularly took ‘every opportunity of screening the smugglers and aiding them in escape’. ³³ They asserted that while there was doubt as to the existence of an organised system of salt smuggling in Gujarat, it was likewise clear that ‘in no instance have active measures been taken in connection with these complaints’. ³⁴

In one particularly contentious case in 1879, an officer of the British Salt Department pursued a group of suspected smugglers across the border and attempted to arrest them in the village of Khoraj, in the Kadi Division of Baroda. In his report, the officer alleged that the villagers interfered in the arrest, refusing to allow him to take away either the suspects or the seized salt. He complained that despite repeated petitions to the local police, no response was ever received and the prisoners were never turned over to the colonial authorities. ³⁵

Such events raised central questions of whether the British had the right to pursue criminals across princely borders, and whether the residents of princely states could be held responsible for offences committed in violation of colonial laws. As the Durbar argued at one point, ‘why should this community be subjected to any legal penalties at all when the revenue itself [for the salt trade] goes to another community?’ ³⁶ They, moreover, shed light on fundamental differences in how the Baroda and British authorities viewed their relationship, and the limits of British influence.

The position put forward by the Bombay Presidency authorities was that a violation of the restrictions governing the salt trade constituted a criminal act, and that offenders detected within Baroda’s limits were fugitives ‘endeavouring to make good their escape from punishment for infraction of a British law’. ³⁷ The offenders’ extradition was demanded under the standing arrangements governing the return of fugitives. Furthermore, as offenders against British law—the crime having been committed in British territory—it was the right of the Salt Department to pursue the criminals as far as was necessary.

This right claimed by the British customs authorities was vehemently opposed by the Baroda Durbar. In the 1879 Khoraj smuggling case, the Baroda dewan, Sir T. Madhavrao, refused to force the village representatives to turn over the fugitives and criticised the Salt Department officials for their actions, which he condemned as a violation of international law. He opposed their pursuit of the suspects across the border as a ‘needless and injurious interference with the recognised integrity of the Native States’ internal administration’. ³⁸ The Baroda position, importantly, categorised salt smuggling as an infraction against the British salt rules—rules which, they claimed, had only a territorial and not an extraterritorial force—and not a mutually recognised public offence. As a consequence, it was not covered by the agreements concerning extradition.

The Government of India responded to Madhavrao’s protest by observing that ‘international law…is not in any way applicable to the present question’. ³⁹ Significantly, while the Baroda Durbar asserted the state’s autonomy, demanded respect for its borders, and insisted that their right to self-governance be recognised under international law, the colonial authorities regarded the divisions between colonial and princely territories as far more porous. Their salt rights extended across British–princely borders, and it was their right to not only pursue criminals into the princely states but to deputise the legal powers of that state to aid in their capture and return. Yet the British never seem to have enforced this position; the Khoraj fugitives were never returned, and neither was the seized salt. Resistance to such legal incursions at all levels of the Baroda legal system—from local representatives all the way up to the dewan and the Gaekwar—made enforcement of the salt monopoly across princely borders exceedingly challenging.

To acquire the support of the Baroda government in the suppression of illicit salt manufacturing and trade within the state, the Government of India employed a series of coercive measures, including issuing direct threats to the continued independence of the state. In June 1881, in answer to such threats, the Baroda Durbar issued a series of ‘draft rules for the prevention of the illicit manufacture and collection of salt’ and for the prevention of contraband traffic of salt in the Baroda territories. These rules were designed to yield to some of the Government of India’s demands, while still reserving certain rights and privileges. Article X of the Draft Rules asserted that a British police or salt officer could pursue into the Baroda territories ‘any person importing salt which such officers have reason to believe has evaded the British Salt Duty’. Once apprehended, the suspect and any confiscated salt would be handed over to the Baroda authorities for investigation and, if necessary, trial and conviction. Thus, while yielding on the point of pursuit across borders, Madhavrao continued to refuse the British Salt Department’s claims to the right of extradition, and furthermore asserted that the Baroda Durbar retained the right to prosecute smugglers who had been caught within Baroda territories under Baroda law. ⁴⁰

For the Government of India, this remained insufficient. Their position demanded that the judicial structures of the state be wholly surrendered to the preservation of the monopoly. The British response to the Draft Rules was to demand that the Baroda Durbar replace Article X with Rules II, III, V and VI of the Rules of Procedure which had been established by the Government of India for the Kathiawar states. These rules were far more extensive, deftly reconfiguring state procedures around the demands of the British salt revenue. They suggested that not only would British officers be permitted to pursue suspects across princely borders, but that officers of the states would be required to ‘take part in the pursuit and seizure of smugglers, to prevent the storage of salt, and generally to assist the officers of the Salt Department’. Any suspects and seized salt would be handed over to the British officer for prosecution by the British Salt Department. Moreover, the rules proposed by the Government of India went so far as to enforce British salt restrictions across princely borders by stating that the storage of salt ‘in excess quantities’ within ten miles of the ‘preventative line’—even if it was just intended for local or personal consumption—was prohibited, and should be taken as ‘in itself evidence of an intent to smuggle’. ⁴¹

Madhavrao’s response to this demand was forceful. He stated that the central objective of the Baroda Durbar was to determine what measures the state could reasonably be expected to adopt in the interests of the British salt revenue and that these measures should be ‘consistent with the well-being of its subjects and the integrity of its internal administration’. ⁴² The distinctions drawn by Madhavrao in 1879 in the context of the Khoraj smuggling case—between British and Baroda jurisdictions and between a financial and criminal offence—were once again brought to bear in defence of state autonomy. He asserted a protective stance with respect to the residents of the Baroda territories, claiming them as citizens of Baroda and therefore subject only to Baroda’s—and not to British—laws. While agreeing to enact regulations to help protect the British salt revenue, he refused to allow this concession to imply any renunciation of autonomous rights. Madhavrao argued that the Baroda state

is under no obligation by any treaty or agreement to compel its subjects to consume no other salt than salt which has paid the British excise…that the Baroda subjects at present consume British-taxed salt is owing to the geographical situation of the Baroda territories, and to the measures adopted by the British Government in the adjoining districts to prevent other salt from entering those territories.

In addition, Madhavrao denied any British authority to expropriate the legal powers of the state or to enforce British laws within Baroda territories, claiming that the rules proposed ‘would be tantamount to the importation into the Baroda territories, of the whole of the British laws’. ⁴³

Salt and citizenship in Okhamandal

The negotiated dynamics of the salt trade along British–princely borders were pressed further over the subsequent decades. Salt and the salt trade remained significant as a rhetorical space for challenging the extension of colonial authority across borders well into the twentieth century. In particular, the uncertain jurisdictional position of the Okhamandal peninsula made it the setting of numerous debates that dovetailed issues of salt, economic autonomy and citizenship. It represented the kind of legal terrain described by Eric Beverley in relation to the Bombay–Hyderabad frontier: a space of legal pluralism and overlapping jurisdictions. ⁴⁴ This pluralism provided opportunities for both the state of Baroda and the British Indian authorities to articulate authority within this contested space, as both vied for control over the region’s people and resources. Just as the extradition of salt smugglers raised issues of jurisdiction and citizenship, so too did debates surrounding the application of the salt monopoly in Okhamandal raise questions regarding the natural rights of its residents. The peninsula’s plentiful natural salt deposits and long histories of home manufacturing, seaborne trade and piracy all similarly conspired to position Okhamandal at the centre of these debates.

In 1861, in response to unrest and piracy amongst the Wagher people of the Okhamandal peninsula, the Baroda government was forced to hand over ‘civil and criminal authority over the Waghers to a British officer subordinate to the Resident at Baroda’. ⁴⁵ In addition, the Baroda government was also required to allow the presence of a military regiment in Okhamandal, under the command of that British officer. The purpose of these measures was supposed to prevent a Wagher uprising and to control their illicit activities. However, in reality, these measures effectively placed Okhamandal under British jurisdiction, even as the territory and its residents remained officially part of the Baroda state. Therefore, in the 60 years before it was finally returned to Baroda in 1920, the Okhamandal peninsula became a kind of testing ground for the extension of colonial authority into the princely states and for princely resistance. The significance of salt to the local economy and culture of this small strip of land meant that the salt trade was often the subject of these debates.

In 1880, Madhavrao and the Baroda Durbar once again asserted the limitations of the British salt monopoly, this time in Okhamandal. Petitioning for the region to be exempted from the policy that all salt must be channelled through licensed dealers, he observed that ‘since time immemorial, the supply of salt for the consumption of the people’ had been free because of the abundance of naturally occurring earth salt. ⁴⁶ As a consequence, a small-scale local trade in the product had long flourished in the region, with salt frequently transported from the coast to inland places of consumption. Fighting to preserve these local networks, Madhavrao identified them not merely as long-standing connections, but rather as ‘natural routes’ protected by ‘ancient prescriptive rights’. ⁴⁷ These networks, he suggested, were a natural feature of the region and a natural right of its people, the preservation of which was owed to the people of Okhamandal: people who, despite living under the observation of a British agent, remained citizens of Baroda.

On this basis, Madhavrao argued that British stewardship of Okhamandal should not entail interference with local commercial salt networks. In this, he reached further than in the 1870s, pressing not only for a clear delineation of the territorial and jurisdictional boundaries between British and princely India. Rather, in Okhamandal’s precarious position—as being under both Baroda rule and British agency—he suggested that the ‘natural’ state of these networks and the subjecthood of the peninsula’s residents entitled them to the preservation of a traditional way of life that included trade in salt. He even went so far as to refer to the region’s history of instability and the volatility of the Wagher community, arguing that any attempt by the British to interfere in the local salt trade would only serve to exacerbate other, more significant security concerns. He noted that ‘[t]he Waghers…of Okhamandal have heretofore had salt nearly as free as air and would ill brook a monopoly with its attendant high prices, with its restraints, with its ordinances, and with its pains and penalties’. ⁴⁸

Madhavrao’s reference to the natural and ancient provenance of the Okhamandal salt trade supported a line of reasoning that salt in Okhamandal long predated the 1817 treaty, existing not as a facet of the Baroda economy but rather as a deeply-rooted, innate feature of the local geography and culture. The Durbar argued that not only was it not worth the colonial government’s time to enforce the salt monopoly in Okhamandal, but that doing so lay inherently beyond their jurisdiction because salt was not only an industry but also a way of life in this place. Notably, this claim was even extended to seaborne trade, as Madhavrao suggested that the carriage of salt by boat from the Okhamandal peninsula to the Amreli mahals down the coast was similarly part of this ancient way of doing things. In addition, he endeavoured to protect the overseas trade in salt between Okhamandal and the ports on the eastern coast of the African continent, such as Zanzibar. ⁴⁹ Ultimately, he proposed that the British monopoly only cover artificial salt, and not the naturally-occurring earth salt that was prevalent in Okhamandal. So long as neither the state nor its citizens were intentionally producing salt for sale, he argued, they were entitled to both consume and trade in that product. ⁵⁰

This protection of the Okhamandal salt trade was vehemently opposed by the British colonial authorities. With the region nominally under their jurisdiction, they were well-positioned to enforce regulations within a territory that was still technically a part of the Baroda state. While accommodations were made to ensure a peaceful relationship with the local Waghers, the Assistant to the Agent to the Governor General was directed to control exports of salt from the peninsula. Essentially, the colonial authorities in Okhamandal sought to sever the commercial links not only between the peninsula and its neighbouring British and princely territories but also between it and other areas of the Baroda state. Ostensibly to eliminate ‘smuggling’, they imported British Government salt into those neighbouring districts, charging the Baroda Durbar for the cost of both transportation and the salt itself. ⁵¹ In this region, as in the rest of Baroda, the actual enforcement of such policies required the accommodation of local leaders and communities. It is relevant to note that without the support of the Baroda Durbar, the British agent in Okhamandal remained largely ineffectual.

The challenge of curtailing the cross-border salt trade within Okhamandal contributed to an 1881 decision taken by the Government of India to maintain a ‘preventative line’ dividing the maritime, salt-producing regions of Kathiawar from inland, non-salt-producing territories. Effectively, this line aimed to more concretely dissolve those regional trading networks that carried earth salt for sale and consumption from Okhamandal into the Baroda district of Amreli, the other princely states of Kathiawar, and the British Indian territories. It thereby made any legitimate, internal trade between the districts of Baroda next to impossible, unless a customs duty was paid at the border. Moreover, the burden of administering the line was placed in the hands of the states along its borders. The Governor General stated that the Indian rulers whose territories were impacted by the line would ‘take all precautions against salt smuggling into British territory’. ⁵² The Government of India acknowledged the significant impact that the line would have on the states, both in terms of curtailing commercial activities and with regard to the financial and administrative burden of its maintenance. However, as was observed, ‘some interference of the kind is manifestly a condition inherent in any scheme for placing under our control, whether directly or indirectly, the protection and manufacture of salt in foreign territory’. ⁵³ In essence, the inconvenience and intrusion caused to the princely states in the region was deemed a necessary consequence of protecting the salt revenue.

As in the broader case of salt smuggling, once again the British were reliant upon the mechanisms of the princely states to curtail the salt trade and enforce their own restrictions and tariffs. When they struggled to obtain the compliance of local officials through regular means, coercive pressure was placed upon the state governments. In this case, those pressures entailed the erection of a costly preventative line which would serve to suppress local trade and place a punitive financial burden upon the states.

The 1881 preventive line served as a blueprint for the 1903 Viramgam customs cordon that severed the entirety of Kathiawar from the mainland. It was erected in response to refusals by Baroda—and other states with ports on the Kathiawar peninsula—to allow the British to exercise control over customs houses and staff in their ports. ⁵⁴ While Baroda was certainly not the only territory impacted by the Viramgam cordon, it had significant implications for the state and its people; namely, the line effectively divided Okhamandal from the inland districts. For Baroda—a state which by the early twentieth century was intensely focused on internal economic development and industrialisation—such a division was untenable. ⁵⁵ In effect, the line did as it intended, blocking the Baroda state’s access to the rich salt reserves and shipping ports along the Okhamandal coast, both of which it had intentions to develop.

Erected in the name of preserving the British salt revenue, the Viramgam cordon in reality served to undermine economic development within the state. Such a severe and intrusive measure was strongly opposed by the Baroda Durbar. In all the debates that followed in the subsequent decades—even as the cordon was removed in 1918, before being re-imposed in 1927—the same themes continue to be discussed. On the one hand, the British reasoned that intrusions into the administrative and economic autonomy of the princely states were acceptable in the service of protecting the salt revenue. On the other hand, Baroda claimed that such impositions were illegal and in violation of treaty arrangements between the colonial government and the state. ⁵⁶

Both arguments were presented in 1933, when the dewan of Baroda, Sir V. T. Krishnamachari, made a series of oral presentations in London on the subject of port and salt rights in Baroda. Spurred by the 1927 re-imposition of the Viramgam customs cordon, Krishnamachari argued that this cordon impeded the state’s legitimate right to transport salt and other goods between its own territories—even if that movement required transhipment through British-controlled lands. Fundamentally, Krishnamachari suggested, the cordon represented an illegal imposition of British customs duties across Baroda territory, in a manner which contravened their legitimate rights to internal economic development. Moreover, he was also repeating the old arguments that the salt monopoly—exercised by the British in Baroda since 1817—was, in fact, illegitimate. ⁵⁷

Interestingly, internal communications between the customs authorities in the Bombay Presidency and the Government of India reveal an acknowledgement of the validity of Baroda’s claims. They state that the ‘Government was wrong in claiming rights in Baroda territory north of the Tapti. The practical consequences are however not as alarming as might be thought’. ⁵⁸ The correspondence goes on to state that the ability of the Baroda state to actually exercise these rights had been curtailed by policies relating to customs collection. For example, Baroda would be unable to import salt into the southern Navsari district from the northern areas of the state free of duty, as customs collection in that region was controlled by the British. However, after more than a century of obstruction, it was determined that previous Government of India decisions were unlikely to stand up to legal investigation and that the best course of action would be to pursue a compromise with the Baroda state. ⁵⁹

Conclusion

In the twentieth century, the enactment of stringent measures relating not just to salt itself, but also to customs collection as well as port and transport rights, significantly impacted the Baroda state’s ability to leverage any salt revenue, even after 1933. The state-sponsored salt pans had almost all been closed, and the state’s ability to leverage revenue from salt within its borders was severely limited. Moreover, the movement of salt even within Baroda was tightly restricted. As noted, the transhipment of goods from one part of Baroda to another required the payment of British customs duties, as they required the crossing of colonial territory and British customs lines. The exchanges illustrated in this paper reveal the increasingly draconian enforcement measures put in place by the Salt Department in order to curtail manufacturing and trade that circumvent British taxes.

This was not peculiar to western India; similar measures were implemented by the colonial state in other parts of India in response to anxieties regarding smuggling and other threats to British revenues and, by extension, threats to colonial authority. In and around the Rajput states of the Thar desert region, the Western Rajputana States Residency was concerned by the porousness of their borders and the prospect that nomadic communities were participating in the transport of salt across princely borders. ⁶⁰ As Kothiyal has illuminated, mechanisms of control exercised by the colonial state to limit mobility and ‘settle’ the region were inexplicably tied up with efforts to regulate the traffic in salt. As in Gujarat, mobility—especially across the boundaries of British and princely territories—was seen as a direct threat to the British salt revenue. ⁶¹ Responses to British settlement policies from communities and governments in the Rajput states were also similarly complex. Likewise, anxieties regarding the movement of salt in southwestern India also shaped British border policies and spiked anxiety from princely governments. In fact, a policy with regard to the Viramgam customs cordon was determined partly in reference to similar circumstances in the southern coastal princely state of Travancore. ⁶² That is not to say that the particularities of these cases were not shaped by regional distinctions in the nature of the salt trade, geography and local politics; the physical and political geography of western India played an irrefutable role in exacerbating the tensions explored in this article. Nevertheless, the broader role of salt as not only an economic commodity but also as a key discursive space in negotiations along British–princely borders is undeniable.

Most particularly, the connections explored in this article reveal the complex processes of exchange necessary for the enforcement of the salt monopoly on colonial–princely borders. Despite the aforementioned measures being put in place, it is clear that home manufacturing and smuggling were relatively widespread in western India. The customs authorities struggled to enforce restrictions on such activities without the help of the princely authorities. In the case of Baroda, it is also evident that such help was not always forthcoming. Resistance to British control is found at all levels of the Baroda administration, with actions ranging from a lack of compliance to verbal protests and open defiance. Such activity was spurred not only by the lack of access to salt, or by the economic consequences of the salt monopoly—both of which were significant—but also by the implied violation of Baroda’s autonomous rights. As a result, opposition invoked the notion of subjecthood while also employing the language of international law to protect Baroda’s borders—and its residents—from colonial incursions in the name of salt.