Beecham House and Bhang

NOTE: I tried not to include "spoilers" but you might want to watch the series before reading too much of this!

The Empress  (Tisca Chopra) and her hookah in Beecham House.

Beecham House, the current PBS Masterpiece* series from female director/producer and force of nature Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham, etc.) presents an Indian, and a female, point of view of the British occupation of India. The sets and costumes are spectacular, and the acting is top notch. And yes, there are drugs.

Set on the cusp of the 19th century in Delhi just before the British ruled in that region, we're first introduced to hookah smoking by Daniel Beecham, the bad brother of the British protagonist, who is enjoying himself in a brothel, exhaling smoke like a devil while ominous music plays at the end of Episode 1.

It was likely hemp in the hookah. The extensive Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, completed in 1894 by the British,was over 3,000 pages long, and detailed the many traditional religious practices of India regarding cannabis, concluding that the use of hemp was common among Indian people and that, at least in moderate doses, it had little or no detrimental physical or moral effects on them or their society.

Henrietta (Lesley Nicol) takes her opium tincture. 

The Beecham matriarch Henrietta is played by Lesley Nicol with all the directness she brought to the character of Mrs. Patmore, the cook in Downton Abbey. Now playing a noblewoman, she scolds her sons for their bad behavior at the Beecham dinner table much like she scolded the kitchen maids at Downton. Henrietta turns out to have an opium addiction, as did many British and American women at the time. As the druggie in the family, Daniel confronts his mother, correctly pointing out that the British were using opium to balance their trade deficits (mostly in China).

The Beecham brothers are rebels against their former employer the East India Tea Company that exploited India for its riches, and the story revolves around them, but has many strong female and Indian characters. When Daniel mistreats a servant woman in the household, he is told off by both the wronged woman and his mother in a way that powerfully presents a seldom-seen female point of view.

Miss Universe 2000 Lara Dutta exhales

The Empress (Tisca Chopra) is depicted sitting next to a hookah, and when she holds an audience, she is accompanied by a woman puffing on a it. It turns out that character, played by former Miss India and Miss Universe Lara Dutta, is based on the hookah-smoking military commander Begum Samru. Only four feet eight inches tall, Samru commanded 3000 troops, ruled over the kingdom of Sardhana for five decades, took many lovers, and smoked a hookah. A stupendous painting of her household done around 1830 shows her sitting in the center of scores of men with the hookah in the center and the mouthpiece in her hand.

*Masterpiece has been produced for PBS by WGBH/Boston since 1971. It is currently hosted by Laura Linney, who smoked pot on film in Tales of the City and You Can Count on Me (2000).