Date palm sugar: In search of a centuries-old local industry

Bangladesh currently has an annual demand of 18-20 lakh tonnes of sugar, the lion's portion of which is imported. The country, with its 15 sugar mills, can meet only 5% of its annual demand for sugar through domestic production. 

Wouldn't you be surprised to know that this part of the region, in the 19th and early 20th century, used to meet most of the local demand for sugar and even used to export to Europe?

And that sugar was mostly produced from wild date palms; unlike now, when sugarcane dominates the sugar industry in Bangladesh.

In an interesting turn of events, there has been a recent attempt to bring back the glory. Syed Naquib Mahmood, an engineer with a tremendous passion for plants, has been working on creating a pool of high-yield native varieties of date palm and tracked down two of the last 'karigars' who still have the know-how to produce sugar from date juice.

Photo: Noor-A-Alam

In the last six years, Naquib has found eight different high-yielding varieties of native date palm, made thousands of seedlings out of those trees, and systematically planted them.

"In my childhood, I used to see date trees in the Jashore area that produced up to 14 kg of juice in 24 hours. The earthen pots used in collecting juice could not be hung in those trees because the edge of large pots would break due to excessive weight. 

What they did instead was keep the pot on the ground and attach a thin jute rope with the juice collecting mechanism, to guide the flow of the juice into the pot," said Naquib, expressing his appreciation for the high-yield varieties of date trees.

Searching from Tentulia to Bhola, Naquib also found a variety that gives juice up to early Baishakh (starting from 14 April), amounting to six months. 

"I want to cross-pollinate these two varieties and create a new one. Can you imagine how amazing the result would be?" Naquib said with profound enthusiasm.

A sweet history

The history of the date sugar industry in Jashore – the most important of the sugar-producing districts in the then Bengal – is very old.  Jashore district at that time was constituted of Jhenidah, Magura and Narail sub-divisions, now separate districts.

According to a book titled 'The Date Sugar Industry in Bengal: An Investigation Into Its Chemistry and Agriculture' by Harold E Annett, published in London in 1913, a statistical table prepared in 1791 showed that 20,000 maunds of date sugar were produced in this area, about half of which was exported to Kolkata. 

At that time, however, there was considerable production of cane sugar as well.

Regular export of this sugar to Great Britain started in 1813 through the East India Company. The export gradually increased from 6,282 tons in 1816 to 13,453 tons in 1823. Production of date sugar further increased in Bengal from 1830 onwards. In 1881-82, total production of raw sugar in Jashore was reported to be 4,00,000 maunds. 

The industry was so lucrative that even Europeans established sugar mills here. This provided a significant impetus to the cultivation of the tree and also sugar production. According to the aforementioned book,  the expanded trade which the Europeans had created was appropriated by native merchants. 

This was probably one of the rare moments in the history of Bengal when the natives gained an upper hand over the colonists. Also, the demand for native refined sugar was greater than that for the sugar manufactured by European mills, and the Europeans consequently lost the trade. 

The industry, however, enjoyed little encouragement from the colonists. Until 1837, all sugars from India faced an additional duty, beyond the rate charged on West Indian sugars.

In 1837, the duties on sugar imported from the East and West Indies were equalised. Exports from Calcutta to Great Britain swelled from 13,403 tons in 1836-7 to 63,084 tons in 1840-41.

Almost all the palm sugar produced in Bengal was made from wild dates (Phoenix sylvestris). A small amount was produced from the fan palm (Borassus flabelliformis), and there was also a considerable production of cane sugar as well.

Date sugar was a favourite luxury of people, and it was preferred to cane sugar, due to the more expensive and precarious cultivation of sugarcane. Sugarcane takes 12-15 months to mature and then be harvested once. Although the date takes around six years to fruit for the first time, it lives for decades.

The industry thrived till about 1890 when it began to suffer from the lack of encouragement and  the competition of imported sugar. Yet, in 1900-01, there were 117 factories in the Jashore district with a turnover valued at Rs. 15,15,000.

In 1912, the then Jashore district alone had over five million sugar palm trees yielding sugar. 

"The British systematically discouraged date sugar and encouraged cane sugar, which needed thrashing of the plant. And for thrashing, the British had the high-tech device of that time - steam engines. It was in the British' interest to sell steam engines, so they forced farmers to cultivate sugarcane on an industrial scale, said Naquib Mahmood.

An attempt to revive the industry

As the industry declined, date trees faced utter neglect too. According to Naquib, some ceramic factories were established in the area that bought many date trees to cut and use as fuel. A lot of trees were lost in the process.

When Syed Naquib was looking for high-yield varieties of date trees, he was faced with a problem. The owners usually leased out their trees to the gachhis (tappers), so they didn't actually know which trees produced the most juice.

Photo: Noor-A-Alam

However, once that was sorted out, Naquib rented these trees, waited until the fruits ripened, and collected them for seeds. 

He made 8,000 seedlings out of those trees. 4,000 of them were systematically planted, and half of them have survived and have been growing up healthy.

"Once the seedlings were made, I asked for land from the government but didn't get any at first. However, I got permission to plant the seedlings on the roadsides, or inside some government compound," said Naquib. 

Later he got 30 decimal lands from a government department where he planted 16 saplings. This piece of land is serving as a date research garden for the project.

As the project is suffering from an absolute lack of funding, Naquib is having a hard time taking good care of the plants. The trees are now three years old. Naquib is expecting them to bear fruit in the sixth year. 

Fortunately, the project to make sugar from date juice won't have to wait that long. Naquib is planning to do it with juice sourced from other trees. "We need two more things to make sugar from date juice: milk, and pata shewla [a particular type of freshwater algae]," Naquib said.

"I have managed to find pata shewla after a long search. I will try to grow it in the canal flowing by the side of my date research garden," he added.

But who will make the sugar?

"I have found two karigars who have the know-how. I am planning to make sugar from date sugar next winter," Naquib said.