Great Hedge of India

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The Great Hedge of India, or the Inland Customs Line was a nearly impenetrable barrier of trees, thorny bushes, hedges and guard-stations that was built by the nineteenth century British rulers of India across the length and breadth of India. The purpose of the Customs Line was to divide the salt-producing regions from the non-salt-producing regions, and thus to facilitate the collection of salt tax on any movement of salt across the barrier. At the peak of its existence, the Customs Line ran nearly 2000 miles long, and was manned by about 12,000 personnel actively patrolling and guarding the barrier. The Customs Line was constructed during the middle decades of nineteen century, and was in existence until the 1870s.

A retired British Indian civil servant wrote while reminiscing about his experiences in India:

To secure the levy of a duty on salt... there grew up gradually a monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a parallel in any tolerably civilised country. A Customs line was established which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869 extended from the Indus to the Mahanadi in Madras, a distance of 2,300 miles.^{[citation needed]}

The Great Hedge was forgotten in India as well as in Britain, until its past existence was unearthed through rigorous research and travel by Roy Moxham, a conservator at the University of London Library. Moxham first came across the Hedge in a passing mention in a footnote of an obscure book about India by chance. The Great Hedge does not even find a passing mention in history books.

Moxham traveled extensively in India to search for the remains of the hedge, talking to villagers in the hinterland. The culmination of this research was the discovery of a small raised embankment in Etawah district in Uttar Pradesh which is all that remains of the Great Hedge of India.

Moxham writes in his book that the customs line was an instrument of exploitation employed by the most powerful empire in the world to extort money out of its poorest subjects, by depriving them from the most basic food item. Moxham suggests that the Hedge may have caused mass salt starvation in Indian populace in its time.

Though the Hedge was abandoned later, the salt tax remained, and later precipitated the famous Salt March of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a significant moment in the history of Indian independence.