Intoxicated Governments

There have been quite a few jokes on social media about the re-opening of wine shops after lockdown and the thirsty rush to grab a bottle. There are also some funny but thought-provoking comments and videos showing how liquor is going to restart the economy.

I recall an incident of 1996-97,  a conversation with Chandrababu Naidu one year after he became chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. He had enacted a prohibition law as part of his election promise but after just one year, he was withdrawing it. He said that his own bureaucrats were putting pressure on him that ‘without revenue from liquor sales, we cannot run schools and hospitals’.

Quite a shocking statement, isn’t it - that health and education cannot be attained without people consuming alcohol? When I delved into history, I found, amazingly, an exactly similar situation in the 1930s, noticed by none other than Gandhiji. He was asking the British administration to stop liquor sales and they responded with: ‘do you know that your schools are funded by the revenue from liquor licences.’ Gandhiji was naturally appalled and replied that he would rather not have schools than to fund them through such means.

So I delved even farther to find out how it all started, this whole issue of the production and sale of alcoholic beverages, better known to us as madira.

At this point, we are not going into whether it is right or not to consume alcohol. That too is a question of much significance, and related to our own development. It is also important to address the larger issue of a directionless, stressful and entertainment seeking society, but let us face all that in the privacy of our minds.

What I would like to share with you here is: How did Indian society cope with the production and consumption of fermented beverage? We have had madira in our civilization for a millennia, and we are told in our puranic stories that both devas and asuras partook of it. The act and effect of intoxication has also been exploited as simile and metaphor by poets down the ages. 

At the ground level, it may interest readers to know, the production of fermented brew has taken place in most regions of the country, each according to its own ingredient and formula. It could be based on jau (barley), bajra (millet), rice, sugarcane, or a variety of local fruit like kaju, jamun, ber, (cashew, berries, plum) etc., or at places from tender palm (tadi). All this has happened without much ado, without large scale alcoholism or deaths through adulteration, even though the spiritual gurus always cautioned against falling prey to drink.

What is important to note is that this was a home production, by and for the home, and not aimed at sale. In many cases, several carefully selected herbs were also added to the brew, and in many homes, it was used only occasionally as medicine. The women made it and also controlled its usage. It was not a daily affair, but it was always a family affair. They did not give it more importance than it deserved. When a teaspoonful had to be given to children for their cold, they would run away to avoid it. And as they grew up, they had no fanciful notions about it, as some attractive forbidden thing. In some parts of the country, the procedure was different. The fermented brew was the job of a particular jati, and its supply was restricted and self-regulated by the village community. Of course, here and there, in sundry villages, there would be a family which gave its brew for sale against the wish of community. Usually, this happened in the outskirts of the village, and the residents looked at it with disapproval. Sometimes, the family selling it would be advised to stop the activity or to leave the area. A self-regulating moral code operated to maintain balance, but there was no one rule or law which can explain all this – Indian sub-culture, after all, flourished through non-centralized independent village republics, and there were a variety of rules according to context of time, place, person and relationship.

So why and from where did we get our present system of government driven liquor trade? It was the British government which first imposed Excise on alcohol in 1790-91, seeking revenue by expanding liquor production and consumption. Later, liquor licenses were marketed to open distilleries and liquor shops on the basis of auctions. As a result, a vast number of shops got permission to operate in villages – business speculators got into the game replacing home producers.

British liquor excise grew from 2 percent of gross government revenue in 1874 to 27 per cent by mid 1920s – more money at the time than the British made from the cruel opium trade which destroyed Chinese society. The chaotic result of all this is well documented. Liquor began to be given great importance, home production was banned and penalized, the licensed shops stared to market their brew recklessly, alcoholism soared. This is not just history but a story continuing to this day. Just replace the word British above with Indian government, that is all; our state governments still follow the same practice; they still auction liquor shops and they are still greedy for that revenue earned from sending their citizens to intoxication. Today, the earnings from liquor shop licenses and duty from liquor sales contributes 10 to 20 per cent of revenue in most Indian states (except Gujarat and recently Bihar).

All progressive social reformers of India, who campaigned against confinement of widows and against child marriage, were also strong campaigners against the British liquor policy. For a hundred years, alcohol prohibition and nationalism went together. Our leaders were against the trade in liquor, the marketing of it, the government’s encouragement of it, and its profiteering from it. Otherwise, they were quite confident that Indian villages were competent in self-regulating its small-scale home-made brew, balanced by its moral and spiritual codes. The old Goan culture, with its home-made feni and wines, is a possible example for study.

What was a non-centralised, non-profiteering, diverse and self-sufficient activity had been turned into a government-controlled, marketing-assisted, centralised production for profiteering. And that strategy of the coloniser is continuing even today in the name of modern economics.