<p>The Portuguese brought tobacco to India. It emerged as a new cash crop in Bengal during the Nawabi rule. The growing cultivation of tobacco influenced the culture of psychoactive domains. It emerged as a popular psychoactive drug addiction along with hemp drugs and opium. In the aftermath of the Sepoy mutiny, the government encouraged tobacco cultivation for two reasons. Firstly, the government tried to restrict the use of hemp drugs and opium. Secondly, they wanted to encourage tobacco cultivation as a new source of imperial revenue. The mid-nineteenth century saw the commercialisation and popularisation of tobacco. From the 1850s onwards, several investors invested their capital in jute, indigo, tea plantations, and collieries in Bengal. The patterns of amusement changed after the development of the new cash economy, which brought a heavy inflow of cash. Cigarette, pipe, and cheroot smoking emerged as fashionable trends within this new cultural atmosphere and became popular among people irrespective of their class. This new trend encouraged the government to emphasise tobacco production. Tobacco cultivation multiplied in government efforts. The ongoing popularity of tobacco generated a new mode of entertainment as well as anxiety within the socio-cultural domain of Bengal. Several organisations were formed to curb the frequent use of tobacco among the common people. They propagated the ill effects of tobacco on the human body. During the Swadeshi movement, the nationalist demanded to boycott British-made tobacco products to cut down the imperial benefits and also developed desi cigars to quench their thirst for tobacco. This article, therefore, sought to depict the evolution of tobacco under British rule in Bengal and to trace its further consequences. Although the development of tobacco as a commercial cash crop in colonial Bengal forms the material and commercial basis of the project, the core argument of the article deals with the social history of tobacco per se, that is, how expansion in tobacco growing and trading transformed consumption patterns, provoked competing moral and medico-legal discourses, and became a cultural figure through which relations of class, gender, and colonial rule were articulated in Bengal in the years 1871–1908. The article also contends that tobacco held a singular informational status in colonial Bengal, serving as both a means of imperial fiscal extraction and a medium of cultural articulation between coloniser and colonised, and ultimately as a site of nationalist resistance in the context of political Swadeshi and Boycott pressures.</p>