What Is The Importance Of Tobacco Essay

Tobacco, as we use it, is a preparation of the nicotine-rich leaves of the tobacco plant, which are cured by a process of drying and fermentation and later used for smoking, chewing or as snuff. It is the primary ingredient in cigarettes, gutkha and bidis. The botanical name of the tobacco plant is nicotiana tobaccum.

Tobacco has a cultivation history of about 8000 years. It was first cultivated in the Americas, where it was used for religious purposes – tobacco was seen as a gift from the Creator and smoking it was seen as a way of carrying one's prayers to the Spirits. When Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492, in the interior part of Cuba, he found the natives burning the leaves of the tobacco plant and inhaling the smoke

They used the spice trade route and entered India through Goa. Tobacco was intially used only by the aristocrats, but its use eventually spread to the masses. It was primarily used to smoke, but gradually, it was assimilated into the social and cultural fabric of India. The Yogaratnakara, a renowned treatise of Indian medicine, written between 1625 AD and 1750 AD talks about the medicinal properties of the tobacco plant. It is believed to help clean one's bowels, reduce itchiness of the skin and cure scorpion bites. Till today, certain parts of rural India use tobacco for these purposes. Eventually, the adverse affects of tobacco become evident and Emperor Jehangir tried to curb its use. As recorded in his memoir Tuzuk-e-Jehangiri, in the 12th year of Jehangir's reign, he passed an order prohibiting the smoking of tobacco in his

The tobacco grown in India was exported to England and sold there for a profit, or was used to make cigarettes which were then brought back to India and sold, often to the elite. In terms of export quality, the tobacco from Bengal and Bombay were failures, but the tobacco from Gujarat and 'Coimbaur in Madaras' was of good quality. The tobacco of the Northern Circars, which was then converted to snuff in Masulipatnam, was prized in England.

The Indian tobacco industry continued to grow rapidly during the Indian Nationalist Movement. When Gandhi called for the Swadeshi Movement, he did so in order to instill patriotism and give native industries, especially cottage industries a boost. Hassan Imam, a freedom fighter was quoted saying “Foreign cigarettes are haraam, use bidis instead of cigarettes.” In order to express their solidarity with the Nationalist Movement, several members of the elite class boycotted foreign cigarettes and smoked native Indian