Picture Details
Harvesting sugar cane at Shahjahanpur
Partner:
British LibraryImage reference:
Photo 83Origin:
North, IndiaArtist / Date:
Unknown, c.1910Description:
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Photograph of the harvesting of sugar cane taken by an unknown photographer, probably in about 1910. Probably taken in Shahjahanpur, a city in central Uttar Pradesh, located in the Rohilkhand region of the middle Gangetic Plain, which is the heart of a sugar cane producing region. In 1910 the investigations on sugar cane in Northern India were mainly concentrated in the erstwhile United Provinces, where a considerable local industry was already in existence. Narrow-leaved, thin canes were planted under irrigation at the beginning of the hot season in March with the crop being crushed by bullock power during the cold weather and the juice converted into crude sugar in open pans. The development of this 'primitive' industry and the work, was placed in the hands of George Clarke, the Agricultural Chemist. A special sugar cane farm was thus established in near Shahjahanpur on the bank of the Kanout river in 1912. He was at Shahjahanpur every year from Christmas until March for the sugar cane harvest and the planting of the next year's crop. Clarke, who visited Shahjahanpur every year for the harvest and planting of next year's crop, had two Indian officers, S. C. Banerji (afterwards Rai Bahadur) and Sheikh Mahomed Naib Husain (afterwards Khan Bahadur). The supervisor on horseback is probably one of these officers.
