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Journalism of Courage
Few politicians had time for Sasi Perumal when he was alive. His death, during a protest against a government-run liquor shop in Marthandam near Kanyakumari on July 31, turned the 60-year-old into an icon. Every major politician in Tamil Nadu, barring from the AIADMK, visited his family or attended his cremation. The DMK, Congress, CPI, CPM, Vaiko’s MDMK, Vijayakanth’s DMDK, PMK, VCK, all started demanding prohibition in the state. In his death, Perumal forged a near political consensus on the issue.
There is something intoxicating about total prohibition. Politicians promise it despite overwhelming evidence that it is difficult to enforce. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of poll-bound Bihar recently indicated to a gathering of women his preference for prohibition. In 2014, Kerala decided to phase out sale of liquor over 10 years. Gujarat has had prohibition since the 1960s. Tamil Nadu experimented with it until the early 1970s and, in 1983, took over the wholesale distribution of liquor. Tasmac, the state-owned retailer, is profitable, and some years ago, when the government was cash-strapped, it was advised to open its outlets at 7am. Andhra Pradesh banned alcohol in 1994, but revoked the ban in 1997, claiming it had failed.
Temperance had never been a part of Indic traditions or cultures. There were indigenous traditions of preparing liquor, and each region had its specialties. In the 18th century, the East India Company imposed excise duty on alcohol. Under Gandhi, the political demand for prohibition had an ethical dimension; it was perhaps also a strategy to deny the colonial government a source of revenue. Gandhian ethics, according to scholar K P Shankaran, mandated that anything that could have an intoxicating effect, and made a person self-centred and egoistic, needed to be shunned. The moral argument — that liquor addiction destroys the individual, family and society — has been a strong element of most anti-liquor struggles.
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The moral argument against alcohol consumption predates Gandhi. The radical philosopher and social reformer Sree Narayana Guru made temperance an essential part of his modernisation project. He termed alcohol as poison and forbade its production, sale and consumption. Guru, an advaidin, started with the Ezhava community he was born in. This was his first step towards radicalising a lower caste group, which was also involved in toddy tapping and trade, and transforming it into the vanguard of social enlightenment in Kerala. Ending a caste occupation was to target the caste-centric economy — and to pave the way for a modern caste-neutral economy. Guru, however, wasn’t entirely successful in his project.
In independent India, sarvodaya activists campaigned for prohibition. A mass campaign against liquor sale emerged in Uttarakhand, then part of UP, in the early 1960s. Vimla and Sunderlal Bahuguna got the government to cancel a contract to sell liquor in their village. By 1966, protests spread across the region. Hundreds of picketing women were jailed. In 1972, the government agreed to impose prohibition in the Uttarakhand region. Scholars have argued that the anti-liquor movement politically empowered the region’s women, leading to their participation in the Chipko movement and, then, the struggle for a separate Uttarakhand state.
Another notable mass movement against liquor was in Andhra Pradesh in the early 1990s. A spontaneous revolt by women started in a village in Nellore district, without a leader, but supported by a few Left organisations. However, as the movement spread, the main political parties, scared of losing the support of women, promised prohibition if elected to office. N T Rama Rao, then in the opposition, quickly endorsed the movement, and his massive victory in the subsequent Assembly election was said to be the result of huge backing by women. The 1994 Andhra Pradesh election was interpreted as an indication of women voters’ potential to swing outcomes. And prohibition, it was concluded, was an issue that women related to.
Two years later, Kerala Chief Minister A K Antony banned arrack in his state. His decision too was influenced by women voters, the many localised struggles in villages against arrack shops, and the sustained campaign of the Church against alcoholism. Last year, Kerala opted for a more nuanced prohibition policy, though it was driven by the internal dynamics of Congress politics than any widespread grassroots campaign. The policy was endorsed by the Muslim League and a strong section of the Christian clergy.
However, there is no conclusive evidence that prohibition is an election game-changer. If NTR won in 1994, Antony lost in 1996. Most anti-liquor struggles are social movements with a single, specific goal, and often, limited to a village, a cluster of villages, or a region. Political parties, wary of the wrath of protesting women, support these struggles and, in the process, neutralise the movement’s electoral impact.
Activists emphasise that while there is a women’s vote bloc, it is too diffused. In the case of a leader like Jayalalithaa, who makes it a point to thank women, and says they made her the leader that she is, how much of a rallying point prohibition could be remains to be seen. Nitish has nurtured a caste-neutral women constituency in Bihar by implementing a slew of programmes over the years. Whether it can survive the many narratives that grip voters’ imaginations in poll season is the big question.
amrith.lal@expressindia.com
