A WORLD WITHOUT DRINK: TEMPERANCE IN MODERN INDIA, 1880-1940
by
Robert Eric Colvard
An Abstract
Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in History in
the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 2013
Thesis Supervisors: Professor Paul Greenough
Professor Jeffrey Cox
1
ABSTRACT
The histories of nationalism and temperance in India were closely intertwined
from their very inceptions. While the former is the topic of frequent study, the latter has
rarely been examined—in fact, Indian temperance is often taken as an axiom. My
dissertation argues that the Indian temperance movement, like the nation, was a timely
innovation. It explains the specific history of why and how temperance activism came to
be an important facet of the struggle for Indian independence. It will also show how this
close relationship played out globally, when Indians exported nationalist sentiments
abroad and when the cause of Indian self-rule became an unavoidable question in
temperance journals and at temperance meetings in Britain and the United States.
Both scholarly and popular works of history assume that alcoholic beverages
were introduced into India by the British. I demonstrate that some Indians consumed
alcoholic beverages on a large scale well before high colonialism, but that British rulers
made drinking an issue for the first time when, in the 19th century, they introduced a new
tax policy favoring the use of European-style liquors over those that had traditionally
been produced in India. This resulted in a large protest movement in which thousands of
drinking Indians refused to purchase Indian-made alcoholic beverages until the taxes on
them were reduced.
Early nationalists acknowledged that many Indians were drinkers and blamed
their turn from milder to stronger forms of liquor on colonial administrators who
determined alcohol policy. Yet within 50 years, assumptions had changed radically.
Where Indian nationalists and temperance activists, often the very same people, had once
championed access to less-costly alcohol for the drinking classes, they now argued that
2
Indians had always been an abstemious “race” and fought for the total prohibition of all
alcohol sales, making temperance compulsory for all Indians.
This dissertation will provide a new and important frame for analysis of the
Indian nationalist movement. By focusing on a single, yet important, strand within the
larger nationalist movement, this dissertation reveals conflicts among nationalists and
among those associated with the colonial state.
Finally, this dissertation moves temperance from a mere footnote to its proper
place as one of the key mass movements of the period, a discourse that influenced both
Indian nationalism and the rhetorical content of global temperance activism. My work is
predicated on the assumption that ideas and movements move across cultural and national
boundaries. Thus while India remains the focus, this dissertation demonstrates that
domestic political issues occur in, and are significantly influenced by, a global context.
Abstract Approved: _________________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
_________________________________________________
Title and Department
_________________________________________________
Date
_________________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
_________________________________________________
Title and Department
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Date
A WORLD WITHOUT DRINK: TEMPERANCE IN MODERN INDIA, 1880-1940
by
Robert Eric Colvard
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in History in
the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 2013
Thesis Supervisors: Professor Paul Greenough
Professor Jeffrey Cox
Copyright by
ROBERT ERIC COLVARD
2013
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
______________________
PH.D. THESIS
__________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Robert Eric Colvard
has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor
of Philosophy degree in History at the May 2013 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ____________________________________________________
Paul Greenough, Thesis Supervisor
_____________________________________________________
Jeffrey Cox, Thesis Supervisor
_____________________________________________________
Meena Khandelwal
_____________________________________________________
James Giblin
_____________________________________________________
Jennifer Sessions
To Kelli, Kaitlyn and Connor
ii
ACKNOWLEGMENTS
During my time at the University of Iowa I have benefited from the guidance and
support of many. I would like to thank Paul Greenough and Philip Lutgendorf for
nurturing my interest in India and helping to open doors that made this dissertation
possible. Jeffrey Cox and Paul Greenough helped me navigate this project from its
inception and their guidance has been indispensable.
I want to thank James Giblin, whose encouragement counsel and support
regarding the course project that would, in time, evolve to form this dissertation. Thanks
to Stephen Vlastos, Meena Khandelwal and Jennifer Sessions for sharing their insights
and pointing me in the direction of sources. I also want to thank my Fulbright advisor in
Delhi, Tanika Sarkar for her guidance during the research phase of my project. Thanks to
the archivists at the National Archives and Nehru Library in Delhi, the Delhi branch of
the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Maharashtra State Archives in Bombay,
the British Library, and the staff at the University of Lancaster’s library for their help.
I have benefited from the friendship and guidance of my colleagues in the
department of history. Thank you Brian Donovan, Renee Goethe, Matt Reardon, and
others for the conversations and debates that informed this work.
Last but not least, I want to thank my family. My partner, Kelli Colvard,
encouraged me through the writing process and was an invaluable sounding-board and
editor. I wrote this dissertation with the sounds of my children, Kaitlyn and Connor,
playing in the background. It is hard to imagine this dissertation, or me, for that matter,
without them. Thanks to my mother, Jerilyn Colvard, father, Robert W. Colvard, and
sister, Kelly Colvard-Walter for their unwavering support.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………….…….…….vi
LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………..…………………...vii
CHAPTER I
TEMPERANCE AND INDIAN NATIONALISM.…………..1
Introduction……......…………………………………………..1
Theorizing Indian Temperance…………..……………………7
Temperance and Gender………..……………………………22
Chapter Overview……...…………………………………….27
CHAPTER II
FERMENTATION AND FERMENT: THE 1878 ABKARI
ACT IN BOMBAY PRESIDENCY………………….……...31
Introduction…………………………………………………..31
Sources and Methodology……………………………………36
Drinking in Western India…………………………………....41
The 1878 Abkari Act…………………………………………50
Responses to the Act…………………………………………52
The Bhandari strike of Western India, 1885-1886…………...61
Abkari Police…………………………………………………69
The Drink Strike……………………………………………...78
CHAPTER III
STRANGE BREW: ALLIES AND ADVERSARIES
IN INDIAN TEMPERANCE, 1890-1919…………….…...…90
Introduction…………………………………………………...90
Early Stirrings of Indian Temperance………………………...93
AITA Activism in Britain…………………………………….94
Other British Temperance Organizations in India……………98
Colonial Government Response to Temperance
Activism in Britain…………………………………………..102
Activism in India by the AITA and Others………………….110
Temperance Halls and the WCTU…………………………..124
International Temperance……………………………………133
The INC and the Politics of Purity in Poona………………...134
iv
CHAPTER IV
EMPIRE OF DRINK: THE NATIONALIZATION
OF TEMPERANCE IN THE 1920’S…………………….154
Introduction……………………………………………….154
Chapter Overview………………………………………...155
Changing of the Guard in Indian Temperance……………156
The AITA Wager on Dyarchy………………….…...…….165
Non-Cooperation and the Khilifat Movement……………169
Non-Cooperation and Anti-Liquor Violence……………..172
“English-Minded” and “Vernacular-Minded
Temperance……………………………………………….183
Battle for “Pussyfoot”…………………………………….188
W.E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson in India………………………198
Indian Nationalism on the Global Temperance Stage……212
Conclusion………………………………………………..217
CHAPTER V
“DRUNKARDS BEWARE!”: TEMPERANCE
AND NATIONALIST POLITICS IN THE 1930’s….…..219
Introduction…………………………………………........219
Chapter Overview……………………………………..…220
The Drinking Classes………………………….…………221
Civil Disobedience and Drink………………….………...223
Drinkers’ Agency…………………………………….…..228
Liquor Men………………………………………….....…230
Controlling Picketers………………………………….….235
Other Methods: Pickets, Plays, and Pressure Tactics…....236
Bureaucratization of Nationalist Volunteerism………..…247
Nationalism, Temperance, and the PLI…………….….…251
Temperance Alliances Old and New……………….….…254
The Gandhi-Irwin Pact………………………………...…261
Congress-Led Prohibition, 1938-1939…………….……..264
Conclusion………………………………………….….....279
CHAPTER VI
DRINK IN INDIA THEN AND NOW……………….….281
BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….…….287
v
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.
Sifts in Coalitions Concerned with the Drink Trade 16
vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1
Mowhra Still
46
Figure 2
The Bioscope in Temperance Work, Amritsar
117
Figure 3
Yashwant Javagi Debir
121
Figure 4
Feeding the poor in the Compound
of Teynampet Temperance Hall, Madras,
24th January 1903
126
Figure 5
Untitled Lantern Slide
158
Figure 6
Untitled Lantern Slide
159
Figure 7
Untitled Lantern Slide
159
Figure 8
Untitled Lantern Slide
160
Figure 9
Untitled Lantern Slide
160
Figure 10
Untitled Lantern Slide
161
Figure 11
Untitled Lantern Slide
161
Figure 12
India Beware
193
Figure 13
Arrival at Bankipore
207
Figure 14
Toddy Palms
271
vii
1
CHAPTER I:
TEMPERANCE AND INDIAN NATIONALISM
Introduction
The place of alcohol and drinkers in Indian society is a highly contentious issue.
In July of 2012 an article appeared in the widely read Hindu newspaper discussing the
sudden enforcement of long-ignored alcohol laws, vestiges of prohibition laws enacted in
the days of a newly-minted Independent India. Spurred by the resolute Commissioner of
Police, khaki-clad police worked to change Bombay from a bastion of relative social
permissiveness to one where the “traditional values” of India were upheld. Mumbaikar
tipplers, long accustomed to drinking in air-conditioned bars, found themselves under
arrest for lacking a drinker’s permit, a requirement unenforced since prohibition ended in
1973. If Bombay’s bars were suddenly a risky endeavor, its police ensured that drinkers
could not find sanctuary in their own homes. Citizens holding parties with liquor in their
homes “are shocked that the State’s remit runs to entering people’s homes and private
spaces and booking them for offences.”1
According to the editorialist, many in Bombay had expressed outrage at this
newfound zeal for the enforcement of long-forgotten law, but were met with considerable
resistance. Most of the online responses posted to the editorial argued against the
author’s claim that the alcohol crackdown represented the effort to “impose a moral
code” on Indian citizens.2 One interlocutor responded,
1
Sidharth Bhatia, "Maximum City's Morality Play," The Hindu, 7th July 2012, 276.
2
Ibid.
2
One needs to understand that we live in a conservative society and culture and so are the
laws and law enforcement of the country reflects the majority of society. One needs to
respect the culture of people and their moral standards if one wants to live with them.
Everyone is free to exercise their freedom of enjoyment (under law) but not on the
expense of others misery. Don't agree? You are free to move to another country.3
At the core of this contemporary debate is an assumption of the irreconcilability
of drinking and Indian nationality. The editor insisted that young Indians are angry with
what they see as the imposition of “conservative” values while his respondent makes
some bold assertions about the abstemious nature of Indian national character. For the
latter, India is fundamentally a “conservative society” with laws reflective of that national
character. Drinkers should thus “respect the culture of people and their moral standards.”
Implicit in this statement is the assumption that Indian culture and moral standards of
Indians do not favor alcohol use.
Bombay’s young tipplers are not alone in challenging the national “traditions”
regarding alcohol use. Whether endorsed or proscribed, the use of alcohol is an
important marker of caste identity. Members of high-status castes faced social sanction
for drinking alcohol, a behavior associated with lower castes.4 Kerala’s low-caste
theyyam dancers challenge Brahmanical conceptions of alcohol through their
performances. In the performance, the dancer is possessed with the spirit of Shiva
teaches an imperious Brahman a lesson about the dignity of all people. “Lord Shiva
made himself smell of meat and drink, and swayed around” as though drunk with “a great
pitcher of toddy under his arm and in his right…a half coconut shell which he used to
3
4
Anonymous to Maximum City's Morality Play, 15th July, 2012, Response to editorial.
Although it is generally the case that upper castes frown on the use of alcohol by their fellows, there are
numerous exceptions. For instance, Kshatriyas in military service were expected to drink despite their high
status due to the association between alcohol and martial prowess. Bhandaris, on the other hand, were a
low-status caste associated with the production of liquor were actually prohibited to drink the liquor they
produced. See chapter two.
3
drink the spirit.”5 The performance deploys the image of the drunken divinity to make a
claim for the humanity of drinking populations. These contemporary debates about the
place of alcohol in Indian society reveal the continued resistance of drinking Indians to
the narrative of abstention from alcohol as a fundamental national trait.
The prominence of the “liquor question” in Indian public discourse has a long
been closely related to the nationalist movement. Even before the advent of the
nationalist movement, British and American temperance organizations sponsored
temperance lecturers, tasked with the mission to introduce the Western conception of
temperance to the subcontinent and to found new temperance organizations with Indian
leadership and membership.6 Yet, ideas regarding temperance did not cease to evolve in
India. Indian temperance workers translated Western conceptions of temperance for the
Indian context, one of resistance to imperial rule. Protesting liquor sales was a
particularly effective critique of colonial rule because it was culturally-translatable,
fitting within British understandings of justifiable resistance as “rightful dissent” and
with the Indian idiom of “Dharmic protest.”7 The moral rectitude of the campaign
against alcohol resonated with many Britons and Indians within both Western and Indian
zeitgeists.
This dissertation argues that the temperance movement in India helped create and
sustain the rhetorical space within which Indian nationalism grew and flourished. Indian
temperance was a colonial product, one developed through the efforts of Western
5
William Dalrymple, Nine lives : in search of the sacred in modern India, 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf). 39.
6
7
See chapter two.
Ranajit Guha, "Colonialism in South Asia," in Dominance without Hegemony: history and power in
Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 55.
4
missionaries, Indian nationalists, and temperance activists. It reveals the emergence of
the “abstemious Indian” as an invented tradition constitutive of Indian national identity.
It demonstrates how the bodies of Indian drinkers, not just women, became symbols of
the Indian nation. Finally, it shows how elites used coercion to enforce this invented
tradition among Indian drinkers.
Nationalist leaders hailed the work of volunteers picketing liquor shops across
India as an expression of unity and Indian-ness. However, the targets of these pickets
were not British administrators but other Indians, liquor traders whose livelihood
depended on drinkers. Far from being an example of unity and homogeneity, the antiliquor campaign actually reveals the highly-contested nature Indian identity and its
relationship to drinking. Because of this, it is unsurprising that nationalists themselves
downplayed this suppression of a national “fragment.”8 Although temperance was a
powerful rhetorical tool for nationalists, it required nationalists to invent an abstemious
past to ensure a sober and independent future. Drinking Indians had to be shown the
error of their ways.
This suppression began well before independence. In 1939, Indian National
Congress-led provincial governments of India began pilot programs enacting the
prohibition of alcohol. C. Rajagopalachari, or “Rajaji,” a key nationalist leader and
advocate of prohibition, boasted of his cause that “all shades of public opinion in India
(except those actually interested in drink) are agreed to the desirability of Prohibition at
8
Partha Chatterjee, The nation and its fragments : colonial and postcolonial histories, Princeton studies in
culture/power/history (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
5
the earliest possible date.”9 Rajaji’s assessment of the near unanimity of opinion in favor
of prohibition echoed the sentiments of Christian temperance advocates in the 1880’s
who saw Indians as “natural abstainers” due to their “caste, customs, and religious
precepts.”10
This assumption of unified opinion on the subject of alcohol, despite the
undeniable evidence to the contrary, has persisted. Looking back on the 1920’s and
1930’s, one Congress official on the Prohibition Committee Board recalled that “the mass
movement of nonviolent non-cooperation, spearheaded by the picketing of liquor shops,
was eminently successful and had a spontaneous response from the entire country.”11
But this assessment begs the question: If “the entire country” viewed the
picketing positively, then why would it be needed at all? Looking back on the precolonial period from 1955, the Government of India’s Prohibition Enquiry Committee
still asserted that “the masses [had] generally remained free from the evil of drink and
drugs;”12 It was the British who had supposedly introduced alcohol to an historically
9
C. Rajagopalachari, "Dr. Ambedkar and Drink Evil," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931).
10
J. Gelson Rev. Gregson, "Drinking Habits among the Natives of India," in British and Colonial
Temperance Congress, ed. Frederick Temple (London: National Temperance Publication Depot, 1886).
11
12
Tek Chand, The Liquor Menace in India (New Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1972). 15.
Government of India, Report of the Prohibition Enquiry Committee 1954-55 (Delhi: Government of
India Press, 1955). 4.
6
abstemious population.13 Yet the use of numerous types of indigenous alcohol of varying
strengths in the pre-colonial period is well-documented.14
The curious implication that an anti-liquor campaign was both needed and all but
universally supported persists today. Bipan Chandra notes that the success of the antiliquor campaign “was obviously connected with the popular tradition of regarding
abstinence as a virtue and as a symbol of respectability.”15 The esteem placed on
abstinence was a recent tradition, but not one shared evenly across the population. If
some groups moved away from alcohol in the phenomenon Srinivas described as
“Sanskritization,” other groups proved more resistant. As I will demonstrate below,
many Indians did not conform to this hegemonic notion of abstention from alcohol and
continued drinking despite significant pressure to stop.
This dissertation argues that the notion of alcohol use as fundamentally anathema
to Indian national identity has a specific historical provenance that, far from a timeless
truth, emerged only in the early 20th century as an “invented tradition.”16 Abstinence
from alcohol as a supposedly universal value for Indians was born in the crucible of
Indian nationalism and of worldwide activism on the part of progressives who
campaigned globally against the drink “menace.”
13
Abstention from “sensuality,” whether in the form of sex or in drinking alcohol imparts strength and
discipline to the individual. This power, associated with Shakti, is then employed in the service of the
nation. See Joseph Alter, “"Somatic nationalism: Indian wrestling and militant Hinduism." Modern Asian
Studies 28, no. 3 (1994): 557-88.
14
Prasun Chatterjee, "The Lives of Alcohol in Pre-colonial India," The Medieval Journal 8, no. 1 (2005).
15
Bipan Chandra, India's struggle for independence, 1857-1947 ([New Delhi, India]: Viking, 1988). 276.
16
Eric Hobsbawm, "Introduction: Inventing Tradition," in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawn
& Terrence Ranger (London: Cambridge, 1983).
7
Theorizing Indian Temperance
Historians are champions of the particular and are understandably hesitant to the
make generalizations of groups. But any history extending past the biographical depends
on these very generalizations for analysis. Colonialism, and other forms of exploitation
do not introduce dominance and subordination within and among groups as much as they
radically reconfigure it. As Ranajit Guha wrote in Colonialism in South Asia, domination
and subordination are constant social phenomena but the manifestation of this structural
relationship varies dramatically.17 To begin mapping out patterns of domination and
subordination, some level of essentialization of the groups involved in these patters
becomes necessary.
Categories of people—colonizer and colonized, men and women, Indians and
Britons—are useful analytical devices but their use threatens objective fact with
teleological necessities; colonial institutions and Indian nationalism must be unmasked
while the resistance of subject populations must be found and celebrated. In colonial
history, the use of identity categories is inescapable but it comes at a high cost.
The first histories of colonial India written during British rule tended to place all
peoples into a single continuum of progress with one end marked by stagnation and
decline in and the other marked by the epitome of liberal civil society, Great Britain.
This view of India’s history, championed by such luminaries as James Mill justified
colonial rule, even if criticizing its precise form, as a means to reverse the “decline” of
17
Guha, "Colonialism in South Asia," 20-21.
8
India. 18 The dichotomous category of colonizer and colonized was fundamental to this
line of analysis.
Nationalist scholars of the mid-20th century largely adopted this dichotomy of
colonizer and the colonized from their predecessors.19 These nationalists told the history
of modern India through the lens of Marxism; India could move towards the “universal”
ideal only after shedding the yoke of colonialism and, ironically, emulating the West.
Despite its oversimplification of categories, Nationalist histories were an important
corrective to the previous historiographical errors. Gone was the narrative of Britons on
a civilizing mission to improve the world.20 This was replaced by one in which elite
nationalists threw off the shackles of colonial oppression through all but universal
collective action on the part of Indians, led by elites.21 The handful of Indians that did
not fit well within that narrative—princely states, or drink-sellers, for instance—were
written off as reactionary elements and tools of British oppression.22 However,
explanations for other deviations from the narrative were far more difficult to explain—
18
James Mill, The history of British India, 3 vols. (London,: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1817).
19
Although nationalist historians complicated the picture of colonialism, the political exigencies of
nationalism had their influence. As Gyan Prakash writes, nationalist historians like H. C. Raychaudhuri, K.
P. Jayaswal, Beni Prasad, R. C. Majumdar, and R. K. Mookerjee traced the origin of the nation-state to
ancient India and that “everything good in India…had completely indigenous origins.” See Gyan Prakash,
"Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography
" Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 2 (1990): 388-89.
20
Although the civilizing mission was largely discredited, Marxist historians of the 1960’s measured the
results of colonialism against the ideal of Western political economy. This resulted in the balance-sheet
histories of the Cambridge school. See Howard Spodek, "Pluralist Politics in British India: The Cambridge
Cluster of Historians of Modern India," American Historical Review 84, no. 3 (1979).
21
See Rajeev Bhargava, "History, Nation and Community: Reflections on Nationalist Historiography of
India and Pakistan," Economic and Political Weekly 35, no. 4 (2000).
22
David Hardiman demonstrated the deficiencies of this approach. See David Hardiman, "Baroda: The
Structure of a 'Progressive' State," in People, Princes, and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the
Indian Princely States, ed. Robin Jeffrey (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978).
9
ongoing communal violence, violence against women, and the excesses of modern
nation-state helmed by luminaries of the nationalist movement and their heirs.23
Marxist historians began telling India’s history through the lens of class, leading
to a much more nuanced view of Indian society before and after independence. Colonial
networks of complicity and resistance cut across the simple category of the colonized but
the category of colonizer remained under-differentiated.24 Indian historians of the
1960’s made pointed criticisms of colonial rule but these criticisms were couched in
Eurocentric theoretical frameworks, like Marxism itself. Finding the universalizing
claims of Marxism irreconcilable with its European provenance, the subaltern school of
the late 1970’s emerged among leftist historians like Sumit Sarkar and Ranajit Guha.
The subaltern school moved away from Marxist preoccupation with capital, or
colonialism, its “highest stage,” in competition with the working classes.
This move
represented a reconfiguration of both the type, and scale of work that historians could
perform. Looking at different patterns of dominance and subordination often resulted in
looking at smaller patterns of dominance and subordination. Class-based, Eurocentric
divisions were inadequate to explain colonial history. Gender, caste, religion, and social
status had to be seen as equally important categories of analysis, giving birth to subaltern
studies.
Since the late 1970’s, but more prominently in the late 1980’s, subaltern studies
emerged to question the assumptions of nationalist and Marxist histories. The
subalternists correctly noted that dichotomous categories of colonizer and colonized did
23
See Ashis Nandy, "Culture, State and the Rediscovery of Indian Politics," Economic and Polical Weekly
19, no. 49 (1984).
24
R. Palme Dutt, India to-day (London,: V. Gollancz, ltd., 1940).
10
not adequately reflect the much more complicated historical past, and that other
categories such as class, gender, and caste did not lose their salience during, or after,
British rule. Colonialism, for all its countless ill effects, did not introduce domination
and subordination to the subcontinent; it did, however, dramatically reconfigure social
conflict among Indians. Nationalists, thus, did not represent a complete break with
colonial domination. Ironically, their very success in winning independence was based
on a mimetic response to empire, resulting in a violent, modern Indian state doomed to
repeat its sins as a “derivative” of colonialism.25
Subaltern studies has also moved towards a more philosophical than sourcedriven approach to colonialism.26 Late subaltern studies has been largely preoccupied
with unmasking the Indian state and much of Indian political thought to reveal their
provenance in the “West.” Partha Chatterjee, for instance, notes that nationalism was
“entirely a product of the political history of Europe;” yet what could be more derivative
of nationalism than assigning nationality to an idea?27 Chatterjee goes on to state that
although the “East” has “succumbed” to the economics and state-supremacy of the
“West,” the internal, spiritual life of “the East” continues to bear the “essential marks of
cultural identity.”28 With “The East” as a bastion of “internal life” and spirituality,
25
Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (Tokyo: United
Nations University, 1986). See also Nandy, "Culture, State and the Rediscovery of Indian Politics."
26
Sumit Sarkar distinguishes between early and late subaltern studies. “The early essays of Ranajit Guha
in Subaltern Studies” endeavored to “’rectify the elite bias,’ often accompanied by economistic
assumptions common to…conventional-Marxist readings of modern Indian history.” He contrasts this with
late subaltern studies, marked by, “the counterposing of reified notions of ‘community’ or ‘fragment,’
alternatively or sometimes in unison, against [the] generalized category of ‘modern’ nation-state as the
embodiment of Western cultural domination.” See Sumit Sarkar, Writing social history (Delhi ; New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 85, 93.
27
Chatterjee, The nation and its fragments : colonial and postcolonial histories: 4.
28
Ibid., 6.
11
Chatterjee’s line of analysis essentializing the West and East shares much with the
orientalist scholarship the Edward Said so famously critiqued.29
This dissertation is inspired by the work of subaltern studies, particularly in the
oeuvre of the 1980’s, when the subaltern school set about deconstructing the
hagiographical excesses of nationalist historians. The meanings associated with the use
of alcohol in the nationalist period, particularly by low-status Indians, cannot be
explained through Western frameworks alone. These meanings should not be reduced to
the logic of economics nor to presentist notions that drunkenness itself is undesirable.
That is to say, this dissertation takes drinking, or abstaining, as fact and avoids making
implied judgments that echo the value that elite Europeans and Indians place on sobriety.
Early subalternists of the 1980’s noted that patterns of domination and
subordination had long been aspects of the nationalist movement. Ironically, it was in
this observation that the subalternists echoed a key element of the Cambridge school’s
take on Indian historiography, that nationalist leaders were, themselves, elites whose selfinterest contributed to the form and rhetorical content of nationalist resistance to colonial
rule.30 The strength of the early subaltern school was its recognition that the category of
“the colonized” elides equally important relations of domination and subordination based
on gender, caste-affiliation, class, and religion within that category.
29
For Said, a key aspect of orientalism, the construction of the East in the Western mind, was the notion
that the East was its “primitivity” and “spirituality.” Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage
Books, 1979). 150.
30
Both the Subaltern and Cambridge schools critique the motives of nationalists, but the latter’s Marxist
framework still looks to Eurocentric models to evaluate aspects of colonialism as good or bad. It was
precisely so that Indian history could be judged within Indian frames that the Subaltern School was formed.
12
One objection to positioning my dissertation as belonging within the subaltern
school is that the latter is anti-national in methodology; for many subalternists, good
history is typified by an attempt to lift the veil of nation obscuring the truth of the local.31
That is to say, just examining the category of nation leads to the omission of
microhistories of countless “fragments” that more accurately represent the historical past.
This dissertation is a history of the nation, but one that recognizes its unevenness and the
forms of coercion fundamental to its construction. The nation itself may be an
abstraction, but one that has a significant impact on culture and meaning.
Microhistories ease the epistemological anxieties of researchers through sleight of
hand. Indeed, they avoid the pitfall of generalizing events in a given locality to a larger
region. Yet the only way microhistories hold relevance in academia is due to their
applicability—stated or implied—to larger, more diverse populations. That is to say, the
authors of microhistories leave it to the individual reader to generalize their conclusions.
Indeed, the only way microhistories can hold more than antiquarian interest is if their
conclusions are more widely applicable. In this sense, leaving it to the reader to
generalize findings does more to hide epistemological problems than it does to solve
them. This dissertation examines the broad theme of alcohol in during the very period
when the Indian nation was defined. As such, it intentionally moves away from the
specific to the general, echoing the very historical process it seeks to examine.
31
See Chatterjee, The nation and its fragments : colonial and postcolonial histories.
13
A second problem with the more recent work of the subaltern school lies in its
quest to locate examples of resistance among subordinated groups.32 Ranajit Guha’s
“Chandra’s Death” is among the most blatant of these examples in which the main
subject of the piece, a low-caste woman, is given the choice to either abort her child or
kill herself. Chandra chooses the second of the two options provided by the cruel, highcaste biological father of the child. Guha describes Chandra’s suicide as an “act of
resistance against patriarchal authority.”33 Yet how can Chandra’s suicide be considered
resistance if it was one of the two options given by her oppressor? Lionizing resistance
among subordinated groups in some ways represents another form of epistemological
violence. It implies that resistance is heroic and obedience mundane. Yet obedience to
oppressors can be heroic in its own right. The hard-scrabble struggle to survive and, in
many cases, maintain families, while operating within grossly unjust economic and social
systems is no small achievement. This dissertation endeavors to neither lionize resistance
nor praise passivity but to explain how the act of drinking alcohol fit within larger
dynamics of dominance and subordination.
This dissertation stakes out a middle ground between large-scale analyses of the
Cambridge School and the micro-histories of the Subaltern School. Both approaches are
theoretically robust and academically useful; however, any attempt to delineate a
movement as complex and heterogenous as Temperance must necessarily draw on both
approaches (and many others) to have any chance of success. It is crucial to let the
32
For examples of this, see Ashis Nandy, The romance of the state and the fate of dissent in the tropics
(New Delhi ; Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). See also Chatterjee, The nation and its
fragments : colonial and postcolonial histories.
33
Ranajit Guha, "Chandra's Death," in Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, ed.
Ranajit Guha (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 162.
14
conflicts we study determine the scope of our analytic categories. Since the conflict
regarding alcohol existed on a national scale, an examination of temperance in India must
approximate that scale
The chapters that follow include several examples of resistance by the drinking
classes to temperance and nationalist workers. However, I want to avoid the implied
assumption that resistance is any more important to understanding the past than is
compliance. To argue otherwise is to negate the efforts of low-status peoples who
engaged in the struggle to survive amid grinding poverty and social injustice. Although
people of all classes drank alcohol, it was the poor who were singled out for intervention,
first through moral suasion and later through direct coercion. Drinkers occasionally
engaged in open resistance against those seeking to alter their drinking habits, most
notably in response to the 1878 Abkari Act.34 Doubtless, there were myriad acts of
resistance against temperance reformers and nationalists that are not recorded in the
archive since the safest way to continue drinking was surreptitiously. Nevertheless, I
take it as a given that both resistance and acquiescence are fundamental to the subaltern
experience and that the former is not necessarily more noble than the latter.
I also want to avoid the pitfalls of the Cambridge school, the most important of
which is the implication that Indian nationalism was defined by elites with motives little
better than those of the colonizers themselves. This conclusion, one shared by both the
Cambridge school and the Subaltern school, goes some way to explaining the vitriol of
the latter’s attack on the former. Yet it also does a disservice to nationalists themselves,
34
See chapter two.
15
who managed the impressive feat of wresting the “jewel of the crown” from Britain. The
Indian nationalist movement should not and cannot be reduced to a legacy of failure with
regard to the elimination of internal social hierarchies. That is to say, independence did
not mean social revolution—it rarely does.
Although this dissertation depends on rough categorization for analysis, it also
recognizes that the constituency of categories of people and the meanings ascribed to
them is in constant flux. Social conflict leads to numerous cleavages within a given
population which themselves are hierarchal and change over time.35 The nation is an
imagined community, “constructed around…emotionally charged norms and
values…that serve as boundary markers [for] the collectivity.”36 Issues related to
morality tend to be particularly polarizing.37 Controversy regarding alcohol was both a
moral and political problem, creating cross-cutting allegiances that changed significantly
over the 60 year period this dissertation examines. The chart below reveals some of these
changes:
35
Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments,"
in Oxford readings in politics and government, ed. Peter Mair (Oxford England ; New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 92-93.
36
Jose & Matthias vom Hau Itzigsohn, "Unfinished Imagined Communities: States, Social Movements,
and Nationalism in Latin America," Theory and Society 35, no. 2 (2006): 196. See also Benedict
Anderson, Imagined communities : reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London: Verso,
1983).
37
Rokkan, "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments."
16
Table 1: Sifts in Coalitions Concerned with the Drink Trade
1890’S
1930’S
Groups and Organizations in Favor of
increased access to alcohol:
Groups and Organizations in Favor of
Increased Access to Alcohol:
Elite Indian Nationalists, e.g. D.E. Waccha
Low-caste drinkers
Drink sellers, toddy-tree owners, drinkers,
Parsis
Drink-sellers
British Government of India38
Some castes, e.g. Bhandaris, Kolis, Kunbis,
Kayasthas
The Anglo-Indian Temperance Association
Groups and Organizations in Favor of reduced
access to alcohol:
Groups and Organizations in Favor of
Decreased Access to Alcohol:
British Government of India39
Indian-controlled elements of the
Government of India
British Parliament
Some missionaries
British and American temperance workers
abroad and living in India
High-caste Hindu organizations such as the
Indian National Social Conference
Indian Nationalists of all stripes
Indian women
Indian Temperance Organizations
International Temperance
Organizations
Some missionaries
Caste organizations
Hindu/Muslim Social Orgs
Indian National Congress
Social Service Organizations
38
In 1937, the Indian National Congress decided to contest local and provincial elections, resulting in an
influx of nationalist Indians to government posts. However, most key elements of government remained
under the control of British administrators and their allies. See chapter four for more information.
39
As I explain in chapter two, the Government of India expressed its desire to raise the maximum revenue
possible from drink sales while minimizing illicit alcohol production. In the 1890’s, even those
administrators who favored temperance more broadly accepted the inevitability of alcohol use in India and
thus endorsed access to alcohol.
17
As the table above shows, a broad coalition of Indians and Britons in the late 19th century
believed that increased access to alcohol, particularly for the poor, was ideal. Some early
nationalists even criticized the Government of India for curtailing access to drink for the
poor.40 But by the 1930’s the only people who publically favored the sale of alcohol
were drinkers, drink-sellers, and the British Government of India. Indian nationalism
created a cleavage in opinion regarding drink, one that forced a bipolarity on the
question, echoing that of independence itself.
Conflict largely determines the relevance of identity markers for the individual
and the group. This dynamism results in slippery terminology. Many non-Indian
temperance activists working in India could be justifiably placed in the simple category
of “colonizer.” Many of them benefited in some way from colonial rule, even as the
vocally criticized it. Yet this criticism placed them in close alliance with Indian
nationalists. In this case, the conflict between temperance workers and colonial
administrators renders the dichotomy of colonizer/colonized inadequate.41 Similarly,
there were numerous Indians working for the colonial state who expressed anxiety about
moves towards independence and anti-alcohol agitation in general. In these cases, neither
the category of colonizer nor colonized seems to fit neatly.
This dissertation assumes the existence of categories such as those above but
insists on their fluidity and heterogeneity. For instance, the social meaning category of
“drink sellers” in the 1890’s (chapter two) bears little resemblance to that same category
40
41
See chapter two.
Historians examining the work of missionaries in India have done much to show the inadequacy of
simple, dichotomous categories. See Brian Stanley, The Bible and the flag : Protestant missions and
British imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Leicester, England: Apollos, 1990)., A. N.
Porter, Religion versus empire? : British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700-1914
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). and Jeffrey Cox, Imperial fault lines : Christianity and
colonial power in India, 1818-1940 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002).
18
in the 1920’s and 1930’s by which time nationalism had inscribed a very different
meaning on the occupation. These changes in the meaning and constituencies of
categories are fundamental to analysis of drink in the period between 1880 and 1940.
That sixty years began with an India that many could scarcely imagine under its own flag
and ended with a sophisticated and massively supported nationalist movement on the
cusp of independence; it is unsurprising that analytical categories used in history changed
during that time.
Conflict itself is what gives both internal identity markers and external analytical
categorization its relevance. As a result, a term like “colonial administrators” should not
necessarily be presumed to exclude Indians. Some Indian colonial administrators, like
Manekshah Taleyarkhan, very much supported liquor sales while some British colonial
administrators seemed to favor policies endorsed by temperance activists.42 Similarly,
although low-status caste-groups were more likely to drink, many of them also formed
temperance and abstention societies of their own. There is always an exception to the
rule, but analysis requires some degree of categorization, and categorization itself
sacrifices some measure of truth on the altar of understanding.
Another issue, closely related to that of categorization, relates to the choice of
alcohol, the discourse surrounding it as an historical subject. In other words, why study
alcohol but not other intoxicating drugs? The use of drugs like charas (cannabis) and
afeem (opium) was widespread, legal, and taxed by the colonial government. Indeed,
most of the temperance organizations operating in India crusaded against the use of these
and other substances, including ether. But unlike other intoxicating substances, alcohol
remained the top priority of temperance activists. The official journals and magazines of
42
See chapter five.
19
temperance organizations may have mentioned other intoxicating substances but they
were suffused with articles arguing for the prevention of alcohol use.
Alcohol had other properties making it unique among the intoxicating substances
in use in India that drew the attention of temperance reformers and nationalists. The
scale of alcohol production was unmatched by that of other intoxicating substances.
Also, as I will demonstrate in chapter two, alcohol itself became all but synonymous with
British national character in colonial India. As one Indian critic noted, “water is about
the last thing the average Britisher thinks of for a beverage. Ale and beer and stout are
the A B C of his alphabet of bibacity.”43 Gandhi agreed, stating that “European nations
have a weakness for intoxicating drinks” but among them the British had a particularly
“tremendous” problem.44
Secondly, as I will argue in chapter two, British administrators dramatically
reconfigured the drink-scape of India, increasing the potency of liquor in India and
contributing to growing association between alcohol use and British rule. Although
alcohol use had long been used by numerous communities in the Early Modern India, the
drinking habits of Indians changed under British rule. British policies favored some
types of alcohol over others and some “types” of drinkers over others. Tax policy
favored the consumption of foreign liquor and Indian-made foreign liquor over more
traditional Indian alcoholic beverages like toddy, mowhra, and arrack or “country
43
B.M. Malabari, "On British Drinking Customs," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 26 (1896).
44
Frederick Grubb, "M.K. Gandhi on Indian Temperance," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the AngloIndian Temperance Association I, no. 108 (1917).
20
liquor.”45 As a result, poor populations habituated to the use of alcohol were encouraged
by tax policy to drink foreign liquors containing much higher alcohol concentration than
traditional Indian drinks. Liquor became stronger by volume and sellers adopted the
aesthetic look of European liquor for their bottles and labels. Just as Indian nationalism
began to emerge, drinking became increasingly associated with British rule and British
culture. The form of alcohol had changed in a way that mirrored European styles and the
taxes placed upon its use and sale provided large revenues to the colonial state. Colonial
rule dramatically changed India’s drink-scape, leading to a growing association between
alcohol use and British rule.
The profligate drinking habits of Europeans cemented this association between
alcohol and foreign-ness. Although low-status populations drank publically, high-status
Indians drank liquor in private. British colonial officials were another matter altogether.
While Britons in India shied away from other intoxicating substances, the public
consumption of alcohol remained fundamental to Anglo-Indian life. The drinking
proclivities of high-status British officials shocked their Indian subordinates. Low status
Europeans did little to improve the reputation of whites with regard to drinking. FischerTine has shown that arrests for European drunkards were far out of proportion to their
share of the population and that “many Indians were disgusted by the sight of drunken
and riotous Europeans.”46
45
Foreign liquor referred to types of alcohol with European provenance like brandy and whiskey. “Indian
made foreign liquor” referred to any European style alcohol made in India. See chapter two for a more
detailed discussion of alcohol varieties.
46
Harald Fischer-Tine, Low and Licentious Europeans: Race, Class and 'White Subalternity' in Colonial
India, ed. Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Peter Cain, Mark Harrison and Michael Worboys, New Perspectives in
South Asian History (New Delhi: Black Swan, 2010). 154.
21
British people of all stripes living in India were closely associated with the use of
alcohol in a variety of social settings, many of which did not have clear correlations with
Indian drinking customs. Moreover, Indian drinking habits did appear to be moving
closer to the style of Europeans, drinking the same kinds of beverages. In Europe and the
United States temperance organizations fought against many types of intoxicating
substances but alcohol received the most attention. When those organizations branched
out to India, the prominence given alcohol in their crusade remained unchanged. Indian
temperance organizations affiliated with their European and American counterparts
inherited this preoccupation with alcohol over other addictive substances. Moreover, the
close association between the British, their rule, and the use of alcohol in India made it
particularly germane to the nationalist movement.
Anti-alcohol agitation was a key aspect of each of the three great social
movements of India’s freedom struggle—the Swadeshi movement, Non-cooperation, and
Civil Disobedience. Yet despite the extremely close relationship between Indian
nationalism and anti-alcohol agitation, they were not entirely congruent. That is to say,
temperance agitation and nationalism were not the same movement even if they shared
large numbers of volunteers, methods for agitation, and complaints against the colonial
state.
Maintaining a distinction between the two movements was as important for some
activists as blurring the lines between the two was for others. During the Indian freedom
struggle, anti-alcohol activism was a liminal rhetorical space, allowing for the expression
of Western moral progressivism in the idiom of Indian anti-colonial politics and vice
versa. For some operating within this space, the distinction did not exist, for others, that
22
distinction meant everything. Furthermore, temperance reform provided a small degree
of security for increasingly radical nationalists who found allies among the European and
American moralists who might otherwise have had much less in common with Indian
nationalists.
Temperance and Gender
My original conception of this project included a significant focus on the
involvement of Indian women with regard to the liquor question. I suspected that I might
find a great deal of precedent for Larsson’s treatment of the contemporary women-led
movement against alcohol in Andhra Pradesh.47 Low caste women led this successful
movement beginning in 1992, culminating with the total prohibition of potable alcohol in
the state. I expected to find more data regarding the participation of Indian women in
temperance struggles but found little. The surviving documentation of temperance
organizations and the nationalist organizations share in common the suppression of
women’s voices. Expanding my source base to discover more detail regarding the nature
of participation in temperance activities of the early 20th century by Indian women,
particularly non-elites, is a key goal I hope to accomplish when I am able to return to
India.
It is clear from archival evidence that women participated in nationalist politics,
particularly liquor picketing from the 1920’s through 1930’s with uneven and intermittent
approval from male nationalist leaders. The chapters below will demonstrate that the
temperance movement of the 1920’s and 1930’s was a fundamentally nationalist
47
Marie-Louise Larsson, 'When Women Unite!': The Making of the Anti-Liquor Movement in Andhra
Pradesh, India (Stockholm: Stockholm Universitet, 2006).
23
endeavor. As Larsson writes, the nationalist context of the Indian temperance movement
diverted criticism, “from the Hindu male to the Western colonizer, providing a space for
women in the nationalist struggle.”48 This new public platform for female activism came
at a cost.
The gravitas of Indian nationalism in the early 20th century meant that temperance
rhetoric was preoccupied with the question of Indian independence. Nationalism
informed the rhetoric and cross-cutting allegiances of the temperance movement. Indian
women, as “representatives of the domestic sphere” could fight colonialism publically on
its behalf, but this endorsement resulted in the subsumption of temperance within
nationalism.49 This is very different from contemporary Indian temperance activism
which grew out of a cooperative effort between educated feminists and peasant women.50
One result of this association between temperance and nationalism is that highly
gendered motivations for female temperance activism in the early 20th century are
obscured by overarching questions of national sovereignty.
Although evidence regarding the participation of low-status women in
contemporary temperance movements is well-documented, little evidence survives
documenting their activities during nationalist period. A handful of works exist on elite
female nationalists, often the close relations of nationalist leaders. The problem,
however, is that the biographies of elite women shed little light on how large masses of
women of intermediate and lower social status related to nationalism and how that
48
Ibid., 37.
49
Ibid., 39.
50
Ibid.
24
relationship was mediated by patriarchy and resistance.51 Large numbers of women from
the peasantry and the working class, including prostitutes…took part in the various
[nationalist] struggles directly.”52 Male nationalists, however, did not envision an
independent India that revolutionized extant gender dynamics. That is to say, the
independent India they fought for was one that would be administered by men for the
good of Indian women. As a result, records kept by nationalists of their efforts during the
freedom movement elide gendered differences precisely because Indian males placed
themselves as representatives for Indian women. The goals of female Indian temperance
activists in the nationalist period were not the same as those of male Indian temperance
activists, but the nature of these differences is difficult to discern due to the patriarchal
bias of the archives themselves.
This dissertation recognizes “the subjectivity of women and their ability to create
alternative spaces and modes of expressions that have been ignored or misrepresented.53
Indian women participated in anti-alcohol agitation associated with the nationalist
movement both as symbols and as actors. Protesting alcohol fit well with the national
ideal for women as defenders of the home, untainted by the “profane activities of the
material world.”54 Alcohol, by the 1910’s was increasingly linked with British rule.55
51
Radha Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and
Feminism in India, 1800-1990 (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993). 1.
52
Leela Kasturi and Vina Mazumdar, Women and Indian nationalism (Vikas Publishing House, 1994). 2.
53
Barbara Ramusack, "From Symbol to Diversity: The Historical Literature on Women in India," South
Asia Research 10, no. 2 (1990): 151-52.
54
Partha Chatterjee, "Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The Contest in India,"
American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 624.
55
See chapter three.
25
Unlike other “profane activities” associated with the bazaar, alcohol could enter the
home. It represented malevolent force from outside the home or, bahir, that Indian
women wished to remove from the homes like the “dirt” of outside contaminants.56
Yet the patriarchal bias of the archives yields little evidence for how, precisely,
women precipitated and participated in the struggle against alcohol. Archival evidence
refracts history itself, bending narratives of the past to conform to normative patterns of
domination and subordination typifying its original context. Archives reflect the “needs
and desires of its creators.”57 Colonial administrators, elite Indian nationalists, and
conservative social reform organizations were not known for their progressive ideas
regarding the role women in the public sphere. As a result, archival evidence from the
colonial government, nationalist groups, and temperance organizations provides few hints
regarding the precise role that Indian women played in the temperance movement.
In contrast, British and American women involved with the Indian temperance
movement are very well-documented. Western women found in colonial India a place
where they could participate in this competition, acting in ways that might have been
“above their sex” in their home countries.58 British and American activists “spoke for”
56
For Chakrabarty, the bazaar is a metaphor for the outside, or bahir more generally. Alcohol applies here
as a product of the bazaar as much as the “feces” and “prostitution” that Chakrabarty associates with it.
See Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Of Garbage, Modernity and the Citizen's Gaze," Economic and Political Weekly
27, no. 10/11 (1992): 543.
57
Joan M. and Terry Cook Schwartz, "Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,"
Archival Science 2(2002): 2.
58
Aelfrida Tillyard, Agnes E. Slack: Two Hundred Thousand Miles Travel for Temperance in Four
Continents (Cambridge, England: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1926), Biography. 95.
26
Indian women, viewing this role as a “logical ‘white woman’s burden.’”59 Middle class
American and British women found in “concern for the colonized” a natural expansion of
social reform movements already in place at home, of which, temperance was among the
most popular.60
By virtue of India’s colonial context British and American female temperance
activists could, and did, act as vocal leaders. Anxious approval on the part of Indian
nationalists and colonial administrators of western women working for the moral uplift of
Indians created a public space for white women in India that did not exist on the same
scale for Indian women. A fundamental aspect of colonialism in India was the
competition between Indian men and British men to justify their power—or aspirations
toward it—on the basis of their ability to “protect” Indian women.61 White women could
participate in that competition while Indian women, as subjects in need of “protection,”
could not.
59
Antoinette M. Burton, Burdens of history : British feminists, Indian women, and imperial culture, 18651915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1994). 211.
60
Kumari Jayawardena, The white woman's other burden : Western women and South Asia during British
colonial rule (New York: Routledge, 1995). 66.
61
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial masculinity : the 'manly Englishman' and the 'effeminate Bengali' in the late
nineteenth century (Manchester: Manchester University Press; Distributed exclusively in the USA and
Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1995). 159, 43.
27
Chapter Overview
The second chapter corrects the notion that Indians have always abstained from
the use of alcoholic beverages. I focus on public responses to the Bombay Presidency’s
controversial 1878 Abkari Act, which dramatically reconfigured extant laws regulating
the production and sale of alcohol. So contentious was this act that it provoked two
large-scale movements. The first of these was a labor strike in which an entire caste that
was organized around the production of toddy, an alcoholic beverage produced from
palm juice, refused to carry on its hereditary trade unless taxes were reduced to restore
their occupation to profitability. The second was a large scale drink strike from 18861890 in which entire villages and castes long associated with the use of alcohol
collectively refused to purchase drink until such time that it was made more affordable
and accessible. This period, which corresponds to the earliest stages of politically
organized nationalism, is marked by the relative silence of Indian nationalists on the
subject of alcohol. This chapter ultimately suggests that the Indian nation, one
constituted of both elites and the subaltern drinking populations, had not yet come into
being. Sources for this chapter include vernacular newspapers, private government
correspondence, petitions, and government reports collected from the Maharashtra State
Archive, the British Library’s Oriental Office, and India’s National Archives.
The third chapter examines the personal relationships between British temperance
activists and early Nationalists from the 1890’s through 1920, a period that saw the
formation of hundreds of temperance organizations across India. Temperance
organizations founded by crusaders such as W.S. Caine and Thomas Evans of the AngloIndian Temperance Association (AITA) would, by the 1920’s, become hotbeds of
28
nationalist agitation. The moral imperative espoused by these groups to halt drinking in
India became indistinguishable from the political imperative to separate India from
Britain. This chapter argues that the diffuse network of AITA-affiliated temperance
organizations provided widespread and fairly comprehensive institutional support for the
burgeoning nationalist movement, arguably more so than did the nascent Indian National
Congress. Primary sources for this chapter are drawn from correspondence among
British and Indian temperance activists along with government reports and sources
published by both Indian and British temperance organizations found at the British
Library, Delhi’s National Archives, the Maharashtra State Archives in Mumbai and the
Livesay Collection at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN), Preston, UK.
Chapter four addresses a shift in the leadership of Indian temperance activism
from British reformers to Indian nationalists. The Indian public’s association of British
rule and drunkenness was so marked by the 1920’s that British temperance activists, no
matter how well-intended, could no longer take the lead in criticizing Government of
India alcohol policies. British, and increasingly American, temperance activists found
their own movement dwarfed within the larger nationalist movement being led by
Indians. From the 1920’s temperance activism was predicated on the assumption that the
colonial Government of India would not, or possibly could not, fight drunkenness. With
the advent of the non-cooperation movement, nationalists focused on winning the support
of Indians of all classes rather than relying constitutional reform by recalcitrant colonial
administrators. Britain, they reasoned, was itself too poisoned with drink to practice
moral governance in India. Sources for this chapter are drawn from government
29
correspondence, the records and publications of temperance organizations, press reports
and private papers found at collections in New Delhi, London, and at UCLAN.
Chapter five addresses two key historical moments in the history of Indian
temperance agitation—the Civil Disobedience movement of 1930-1931 and the brief
period of responsible Congress Governments of 1938-39. The INC developed a
comprehensive plan to drive drinking Indians (primarily the poor) into the fold of the
broader nationalist movement. To that end, moral suasion, surveillance, and
(unofficially) outright harassment of drinkers and drink sellers were key aspects of Civil
Disobedience. Congress leaders increasingly viewed drinkers as standing outside the
nationalist movement. The only way to unite the Indian nation in the fight for freedom
was to eliminate the pollution of drink from the body politic. The 1930’s witnessed a
shift in tactics from one of suasion to one of fighting criminality, with some unfortunate
consequences for drinkers. Sources for this section are drawn from Delhi’s National
Archives, a private temperance archive held by the Delhi branch of the Women’s
Christian Temperance Union, London’s Wellcome Library and private papers held by the
Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh State Archive in
Lucknow.
In the concluding chapter I will explore the implications of the above chapters,
suggesting that the putative immorality of the colonial state was the central issue
throughout the nationalist movement; having cast colonial rule as a source of moral
pollution, Indian nationalists positioned independence as a point of departure rather than
an end itself. The end of the freedom movement was to ensure the moral purity of a
“race,” now typified by its temperance. Nationalists were obliged to a higher moral
30
authority, one that necessarily discounted the right of individuals (particularly the poor)
to make their own choices. The only task remaining for nationalists on the cusp of
freedom was to make real the largely invented Abstemious Indian.
31
CHAPTER II:
FERMENTATION AND FERMENT: THE 1878 ABKARI ACT IN BOMBAY
PRESIDENCY
Introduction
Temperance movements across the globe have waned from the early 19th century
from the United States to Japan. In some countries like the United States and Norway,
the anti-alcohol agitation that successfully witnessed the prohibition of alcohol (albeit for
a short time) has seen temperance rhetoric all but vanish from the public consciousness.
Yet in India this is not the case. Access to alcohol has remained controversial. Each
gender, class, and locality is a site of an active, turbulent discussion of who, if anyone,
should be allowed to drink and under what conditions.
When the subject of alcohol is taken up in national histories of India, there is a
tendency to acknowledge its centrality in the context of the freedom struggle. Among
these, India’s Struggle for Independence, 1857-1947, is among the most popular in
India.62 With over a million copies sold since its initial publication in 1999, the authors
suggest a natural confluence of ideology and political activism in the case of nationalism
and temperance agitation. Bipan Chandra and his co-authors merely continue a trend in
the historiography of colonial India that assumes Indian nationalism was the natural
ideological home for temperance agitation. The historical peculiarities leading to this
wedding of the nationalist and temperance movements go largely unexamined.
This dissertation argues that identifying the target audience for late 19th century
anti-alcohol agitation is a necessary precondition for understanding the intentions and
62
Chandra, India's struggle for independence, 1857-1947.
32
ramifications of the temperance movement. That is to say, who was drinking in India
from the late 19th century through independence and why was it important? These
questions are more difficult to answer than one might suspect. The assumption posited
by activists, that Indians historically eschewed drink, depended as much on defining
Indians as much as it did on defining alcohol habits.
Indian, European and American temperance activists all agreed that the
subcontinent had a historically abstemious population. They correctly noted that the use
of alcohol by Brahmins was frowned upon in the Sastras63 and even more strictly
forbidden in the Quran.64 As will become abundantly clear in subsequent chapters,
temperance advocates as diverse as American evangelical missionaries and Arya
Samajists found in these religious proscriptions a powerful rhetorical tool that established
prohibition as a return to an imagined period of temperance and moral rectitude rather
than a radical departure.
While these religious appeals by heartfelt temperance advocates contain an
element of scriptural truth, they are far from a comprehensive estimation of alcohol use in
India more generally. However noble their efforts may have been, temperance advocates
were far from accurate in their assumption that the habits of a given community are
63
The Rg Veda (Rg VII 86.6) distinguishes the use of alcohol from that of soma, an intoxicant that may
have been hallucinogenic. Although Brahmans could use soma, alcohol was forbidden. These
proscriptions applied only to Brahmans. There was some debate with regard to whether these proscriptions
applied to Brahman women in the Vedic Era (Manu XI 95). One exception to preoccupation with Brahman
drinking habits alone is a mention of Kingly alcohol use (Manu VII 47-52). See Kane, P.V., History of the
Dharmasasthra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law). Government Oriental Series. 1974,
Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 792-799.
64
The Quran’s proscriptions against alcohol use are more universal. Alcohol is referred to as an
abomination and the work of Satan (2:219, 5:90). Alcohol is placed in the same category as the use of
idols. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a minority of Muslims, particularly millworkers and other
laborers, drank despite this universal proscription. But since this proscription was universal, alcohol use by
Muslims was less common than for non-Brahman Hindus.
33
determined by the proscriptions of religious texts. Although some important Hindu texts
forbid alcohol use, their meaning for the faithful varied according to social status, gender,
and region.65 Hinduism, like all religions, is a living tradition that evolves in dialogue
with its historical context. Orthodoxy continually negotiates with the forces of change
which can just as easily be conservative in nature as they are radical. All this is to say
that the emphasis often placed upon the Vedas as the authoritative text in terms of its
injunctions against alcohol use must be kept in perspective.
Most avowed temperance and prohibition activists were either members of, or
significantly influenced by the work of Christian missionaries and the indigenous
reformist responses to them. Similarly, orientalist researchers like Max Mueller and
others found in India analogues to the Christian Bible- the Vedas and the Quran. The
work of these orientalists led to western conceptions of Indian religions overdetermined
by religious texts. The great significance assigned to Indian religious scriptures
reverberated in Western temperance activism, a discourse firmly embedded in the
feminist progressivism of the 19th century.66 But the living traditions of the vast majority
of India’s population cannot be derived exclusively from a reading of key religious texts,
regardless of their scriptural importance. Until the late 19th century, temperance or
abstention from alcohol was never a primary concern, even for the vast majority of
65
O'Hanlon, R., Caste, conflict, and ideology : Mahatma Jotirao Phule and low caste protest in nineteenthcentury western India. 1985, Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York: Cambridge University Press. xiii,
326 p.
66
Three great causes of feminists from the early 19th century to the mid-20th century were the abolition of
slavery, suffrage and temperance. Christine Stansell, The feminist promise : 1792 to the present, 1st ed.
(New York: Modern Library). Ian R. Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union in international perspective, 1800-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Caronina
Press, 1991). And Mariana Valverde, ""Racial Poison": Drink, Male Vice, and Degeneration in First Wave
Feminism," in Women's Suffrage in the British Empire, ed. Ian Christopher Fletcher, Laura E. Nym
Mayhall & Philippa Levine (New York: Routledge, 2000).
34
Indians practicing that “old time religion.”67 Furthermore, Brahmins long viewed
injunctions in the Vedas against the use of alcohol as applying solely to their caste and
not others. The other varnas were not held to the same standard of ‘purity’ that the
Brahmans (publicly) imposed upon themselves. Abstention from alcohol for Brahmins
was more preserve than proscription--evidence of purity and high social status.
The fact that abstention from alcohol was a defining characteristic of the twiceborn castes made communal drink habits important social markers. The noted
anthropologist, Srinivas, observed abstention from alcohol as one of the key shifts among
non-Brahmin castes, identifying their move towards the standards of purity associated
with higher social groups as sanskritization.68 Interestingly, upward communal mobility
associated with sanskritization does not feature prominently in late 19th century Western
India.69 As I will show below, those communities that proscribed drink were far more
67
Lutgendorf describes the practice of Hinduism from the late 19th century as “old time religion.” He
writes,, “It was a necessarily vague label, as it had to be applied to vast numbers of people whose beliefs
and practices displayed great variation; what was important about it was that it excluded others.” See
Lutgendorf, Philip. The Life of a Text: Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991, 363.
68
Srinivas argued that castes of the sudra varna and tribal groups preceded claims to higher positions in
caste hierarchy by changes in social behavior. These changes most typically included an emulation of
some public behavior of the local dominant caste—often Brahmans but not always so. The most visible of
these changes included moves towards vegetarianism and abstention from alcohol. Although Srinivas cited
examples of sankritization dating back to the 12th century, his work focused on contemporary groups in the
1950’s and 1960’s. He suggests that sanskritization was not new but that it had accelerated since the
colonial era. See: Srinivas, Mysore Narasimhachar. Caste in Modern India, and Other Essays. Bombay,
New York,: Asia Pub. House, 1962; Srinivas, M. N. The Oxford India Srinivas. New Delhi ; New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009.M. N. Srinivas, The Oxford India Srinivas (New Delhi ; New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009).
69
This had changed so much that by 1931 C. Rajagopalachria would write that, “In India the vegetarian and
the man who does not drink intoxicating liquor are automatically high caste.” While this sentiment was
rather hyperbolic (even today, caste is a key status marker), it demonstrates that abstinence had a social
currency associated with high status. See Rajagopalachari, C. "Those Pictures." In C. Rajagopalachari, 3.
Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931.
35
interested in preserving their historical access to alcohol than in attempts to improve the
social status of their jati.70
Hinduism in its modern form dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. In
response to vociferous criticism from evangelical missionaries, Hindu reformist
organizations like Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj began to spring up. While there were
differences among them, the tendency of these organizations was to include people under
the umbrella of “Hinduism” who might not have been considered as such before the 19th
century. Reformers also attempted to change Hinduism as they expanded its purview.
These reforms included the expansion of education and, most importantly for our
purposes, the elevation of abstention from alcohol as a cardinal virtue.
Similarly, the divergences between the practice of “every day” or lived Islam and
the more scriptural tenets of religious authorities remain as pervasive today as they were
in the 19th century.71 Some Muslims drink, and alcohol use, in particular, varies greatly
among populations within the Muslim world. Despite rather strong textual injunctions
against drink, it is medieval Muslim chemists who are credited with developing
70
The Kayastha temperance movement, dating from 1888 across Western India and an exception to this
trend, will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. Although the Kayasthas made a caste-wide attempt to
proscribe alcohol with great success, the rationale for their movement was “singularly barren of ‘sanskritic’
elements or emphasis.” See Carroll, Lucy. "Origins of the Kayastha Temperance Movement." Indian
Economic and Social History Review 11, no. 4 (1974): 15 447.
71
Alam, Anwar. "'Scholarly Islam' and 'Everyday Islam': Reflections on the Debate over Integration of the
Muslim Minority in India and Western Europe." Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 27, no. 2 (2007): 19.
36
distillation practices that would later be imported into from Islamic Spain.72 Indeed, the
very word, alcohol originates from the Arabic term, al-khul.73
Sources and Methodology
It is the fundamental position of this chapter and of the larger dissertation that
totalizing, Said-inspired distinctions between colonizer and colonized, though of great
analytical value in many cases, are not equally suitable towards all situations, even within
the colonial context.74 Subaltern scholars have long observed that a single category for
all colonized people belies a level of simplicity, obscuring a host of complicated, unequal
power relationships among colonized peoples.75 It can be similarly misleading to place
all white British subjects living in India into the broad category of colonizer.76
72
Michalic, Laurence. "Alcohol and Islam: An Overview." Contemporary Drug Problems 33, no. 4
(2006): 40.
73
Chatterjee, Prasun. "The Lives of Alcohol in Pre-Colonial India." The Medieval Journal 8, no. 1 (2005):
36.
74
One example of the perils of bipolar analysis can be seen in the works of Bernard Cohn and Christopher
Bayly, both of whom examine the creating of imperial knowledge. Cohn assumes a neat division of
actors—colonizers and the colonized. This distinction works reasonably well for analytical purposes but
does not fit neatly with the underlying complexity of the interpersonal relationships between Indians and
British administrators that Bayly describes. See Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its forms of knowledge :
the British in India, Princeton studies in culture/power/history (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1996). And C. A. Bayly, Empire and information : intelligence gathering and social communication in
India, 1780-1870, Cambridge studies in Indian history and society ; (Cambridge, [England] ; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
75
Guha, Ranajit. "On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India." In Subaltern Studies I, edited
by Ranajit Guha, 1-8. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982.
76
Jeffrey Cox has demonstrated that the divergent interests of British missionaries often placed them at
loggerheads with colonial authorities. See Cox, Jeffrey. Imperial Fault Lines : Christianity and Colonial
Power in India, 1818-1940. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002. Harald Fischer-Tine has
looked closely at the white population of colonial India, finding that approximately half of them at any
given time were decidedly lower-class or, “low and licentious.” This population represented yet another
“other” with which Government struggled to contain and control. See Fischer-Tine, Harald. Low and
Licentious Europeans: Race, Class and 'White Subalternity' in Colonial India. Edited by Sanjoy
Bhattacharya, Peter Cain, Mark Harrison and Michael Worboys, New Perspectives in South Asian History.
New Delhi: Black Swan, 2010.
37
Similarly, with regard to alcohol policy in the Bombay Presidency in the late 19th
century, the opinions and motives of British and Indian bureaucrats defy neat
categorization. This is particularly problematic with regard to one of the sources
frequently used in this chapter. Administrators began Native Newspaper Reports (NNR)
in 1863 to increase awareness of the Indian public mood. NNR editors scanned
newspapers in English and in Indian languages, reporting (and translating, when
necessary) “native” criticism of government. Many of the original newspapers on which
NNR reported have vanished, leaving NNR as the sole, remaining evidence they were
ever published. More frequently than not, those who edited NNR were Indians with the
requisite language skills to find sentiments in Indian languages critical of government
policies and translate them into English. Unfortunately, little more is known regarding
the institutional machine responsible for the production of NNR.77
Even less has been written regarding the individual Indian editors of NNR who
are virtually invisible in NNR texts at the superficial level. Here lies the most
problematic aspect of the NNRs. The personal motivations of NNR editors are all but
impossible to ascertain in light of the very little information known about them. Given
this lack of information it is, perhaps, more feasible to discuss what the NNR is not.
Firstly, it cannot by described in the dichotomous sense as a solely imperial document.
They were, after all, mostly constructed by Indians—Indians with some level of
investment in extant colonial power-structures, to be sure, but whose position as Indian
77
Despite the centrality of NNR as a source for the history of Colonial India, historians have been slow to
investigate how they were compiled and how they should be interpreted. Sanjay Joshi presented a paper at
the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in 2002 entitled, “Making of Native
Newspaper Reports in Colonial India.” Dr. Joshi has requested that I do not quote or cite the paper as he
plans to publish an article on the matter.
38
colonial bureaucrats obscures their perspectives. Indeed at the most basic level, NNR is
a colonial document, fundamentally predicated on the need to defend and extend uneven
power structures.
On the other hand, the motives and intent of Indians within the colonial
bureaucracy, the editors of NNRs, were not necessarily congruent with the aims of the
administrators ordering their production. Still, NNR were, at bottom, a technology of
control, and as such they relied upon the types of specific information that were not
particularly susceptible to distortion. British administrators relied on NNR for
information regarding public opinion. Especially in the case of abkari policy, the devil is
in the details.78 Complaints against abkari policy as present in NNRs and surviving
petitions are uniquely specific. The location of a liquor shop, hours of operation and
state-regulated prices for alcohol leave little room for interpretation.
The frequent iteration of public complaints against abkari policy lends credibility
to NNRs of the 1880’s and 1890’s used in this chapter. Abkari policy was so
controversial that it provoked a long string of responses from numerous Bombay
Presidency newspapers. Criticism was sufficiently common that certain themes emerge
from many sources. NNRs refract the objective reality of Indian public opinion through
the lens of the handful of Indian bureaucrats responsible for editing them. Although the
individual perspectives of editors (only three in number over the course of 20 years)
undoubtedly influenced NNR’s, their biases were fairly static. That is to say, the effect of
the lens is predictable. The tone of the translations, for instance, tends to cast as
unreasonable criticism of government. It is reasonable then to argue that the tone of the
78
Abkari refers to excise taxes applicable to the production and sale of alcohol.
39
translations appearing in NNR are more likely a reflection of the editor/translator’s biases
than of the original (often no longer extant) texts.
Another factor bolstering the credibility of NNR as used here stems from a
congruence between NNR content and that of unmediated texts written by critics of
government. These include Indian critics such as P.B. Dantra, D.E. Wacha, G.A.
Dorabji, P.M. Mehta, and M.J. Taleyarkhan.79 As will become clear below, there is a
great deal of similarity in the substance of complaints, including the verbiage used to
express them, between Indian critics of abkari policy and the text of NNR. Complaints
about specific abkari policies appear to have been sufficiently widespread in Western
India that little misinterpretation, accidental or intentional, was probable.
Internal Government documents were informed by prejudices of their colonial
context, but they were also informed by facts on the ground. That is to say, colonial
forms of knowledge had to correspond to varying degrees of objective reality to have any
utility.80 This is particularly applicable in the case of observations on drinking practices.
Without an across the board income tax, excise generally and abkari in particular
constituted a large percentage of the total revenue of the Presidencies. For example, of
the 7,56,994 rupees in total revenue in 1882 for the islands of Bombay and Kolaba,
79
80
These men will be introduced in greater detail as the texts they created are cited below.
Political scientist James Scott notes that the ability of a bureaucracy to finely tune administration is
predicated upon what he calls “legibility.” This legibility functions like an abridged map, representing, not
reality, but only those activities that, “interested the observer.” As taxation “interested” colonial
administrators quite a bit, a higher degree of veracity than that more commonly associated with the colonial
archive can reasonably be assumed. See Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State : How Certain Schemes to
Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, The Yale Isps Series. New Haven [Conn.] ; London: Yale
University Press, 1998.
40
5,33,931 rupees were from abkari alone.81 Constituting such a large majority of total
revenue, abkari was a matter of grave importance for administrators.82
Finally, I mention here the problems inherent with using archival materials to
piece together the opinions of subaltern populations—in this case, drinkers and smallscale liquor producers. Perhaps even more so than on most topics, discourse on alcohol
is suffused with paternalism. Virtually all parties for whom a written record exists
explicitly claimed to speak on behalf of the poor. British administrators cited their desire
to decrease intemperance among the poor as a key rationale for their policies. Parsis and
“well-to-do” Bhandaris petitioned government with carefully-constructed memorials with
the avowed goal of mitigating the suffering of small-scale producers caused by the 1878
Abkari Act.
Just as government had its interests that shaped their understanding of abkari
policy, so too did the elite Indians protesting government policy. Several Indian critics of
the policy had a significant financial stake in alcohol production. Wealthy Parsis, the
community from which most of the written criticism emerged, were often involved in the
alcohol trade, whether that be in actually producing alcohol or in renting out toddy palms
to Bhandaris for tapping. With such a vested interest, why then assign credibility to their
writings on the matter? The clearest case for doing so lies in the two strikes described in
this chapter, the Bhandari Strike and the Liquor Strike. In both cases, internal
81
Douglas, James. Bombay and Western India: A Series of Stray Papers. Vol. I. London: Sampson, Low,
Marston & Co., 1893, 97. Kolaba is an island in the city of Bombay.
82
Receipts from abkari revenue only increased until the introduction of prohibition under the Congress
provincial governments formed in 1938. For example, in 1932, abkari receipts accounted for 23.5% of
British India’s revenue. See C. Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru
Memorial Library, 1932 C. nd).
41
government correspondence, NNR, elite Indian critics, and later temperance activists
consistently referred to the strikes as spontaneous, emerging among the poor themselves.
In a context where social control over poor Indians was hotly contested, all concerned
parties bemusedly lamented their lack of control over the collective action of the drinking
classes. Similarly, all interested parties seemed to agree on the motivations behind the
strikes, even when at odds with their own, lending more credence to the goals as
described in petitions, public criticism, and government documents.
Drinking in Western India, 1790-1879
Determining precisely which classes, castes, genders, and confessional groups
engaged in drinking before the temperance movement arrived in India in the late 1880’s
is a challenge due to the kind of information preserved in state archives. Government
records for these purposes are necessarily patchy in that the administrators who collected
them were more concerned with revenue extraction rather than the sociology of drinkers.
Yet revenue extraction required some knowledge of the sociology of drinking in Western
India. The earliest records to this effect are from British excise administrators who were
motivated to keenly observe local drinking practices in order to maximize tax revenue on
fermentable vegetable products, on distillation units, and on distilled or brewed spirits.
From 1790, British administrators in Bombay began assessing a special excise tax on
distilled country spirit along with similar taxes on opium, and ganja.83 The overarching
goal of efficient (from the perspective of the Government) revenue extraction mitigates,
83
India, Government of. Report of the Prohibition Enquiry Committee 1954-55. Delhi: Government of
India Press, 1955.
42
to some extent, the inherent problems of colonial records—bias and misrepresentation,
both intentional and not.
Tax farming was the preferred method for generating excise revenue. Under this
system, country liquor and toddy production were highly decentralized. The Raj sold
licenses on receipt of a fee, to manufacture and sell liquor. It was in the interest of the
tax farmer to sell as much liquor as possible since the excise tax was assessed
independently of the volume of liquor sold.84 No quantitative measure of alcohol
consumption was possible under such a system.
Before the implementation of the 1878 Abkari Act the manner for collecting tax
on alcohol varied greatly in the Bombay Presidency.85 In Thana, British administrators
continued the practices established before the district came under their rule. Alcohol
itself was untaxed but palm trees used for brewing toddy were levied and collected under
land revenue.86 More commonly, administrators collected the bulk of abkari revenue
from auctioning licenses to tax farmers for the right to manufacture and sell alcohol,
which they could do without further interference from the Government. These auctions
allowed the Government to take all its profits in a lump sum annually. From an
enforcement perspective, this system required nothing more than ensuring that sellers had
purchased the requisite licenses to ply their trade. Licensed vendors held monopolies
84
India, Report of the Prohibition Enquiry Committee 1954-55.
85
It should be added here that alcohol policy continued to vary greatly by locality even after the 1878
Abkari Act. Despite the relatively large variation persisting after implementation, the act was an attempt to
standardize, to the degree possible, alcohol policy. This goal was frustrated by the myriad circumstances
leading to British dominion or ‘stewardship’ of a given locality.
86
Saldanha, Indra Munshi. "On Drinking and 'Drunkenness': History of Liquor in Colonial India."
Economic and Polical Weekly 30, no. 37 (1995): 9, 2323.
43
over several villages. Policing was a simple matter since vendors, with an incentive to
ensure that their competitors also held licenses, could be counted on to detect illicit
distillation and vending.
There were numerous administrative and political problems with this system.
Sellers had an incentive to sell more alcohol because, after the license fee was recouped,
the remaining sales over a given year brought in much greater profit.87 Farmers had free
reign to sell adulterated or weakened spirits for whatever price the market would bear;
under the monopoly system, the market could bear quite a bit. A single license-holding
tax farmer could operate as many distilleries as he wished, contributing to a dramatic
increase in the number of stills. Government found its take at auctions damaged by
combinations of bidders, determined to keep down the price of the licenses.88 It also
impaired the state’s ability to surveil drinking habits. Since no figures were kept
regarding the volume of sales, administrators lacked the requisite information for setting
auction prices to maximize revenue. Administrators were faced with, from their
perspective, an inefficient excise system an increase in the volume of liquor produced,
and an increase in “drunkenness” that alarmed even the ordinarily staid collectors
professed alarm.89
While official records are somewhat sketchy, some additional evidence
suggesting the extent of alcohol use in the Bombay area presents itself in the form of a
87
Hunter, William Wilson. Bombay 1885 to 1890: A Study on Indian Administration. Bombay: B.M.
Malabari, Indian Spectator Office, 1900.
88
Saldanha, Indra Munshi. "On Drinking and 'Drunkenness': History of Liquor in Colonial India."
Economic and Polical Weekly 30, no. 37 (1995): 9.
89
"Report of the Excise Committee Appointed by the Government of Bombay 1922-23." edited by
Revenue. Bombay: Government Central Press, 1924.
44
widespread abstention movement. The 1878 Abkari Act proved to be extremely
controversial, particularly among the lower classes of society. Alcohol seems to have
been sufficiently embedded among some groups that they responded to the 1878 Act by
swearing off alcohol en masse. The reason for this, the first sweeping “prohibition”
movement in North India, differs dramatically from those that would come later. This
first agitation regarding drink in the Bombay state was neither aimed at decreasing
drunkenness nor increasing temperance. Rather, its goal was to realize a reduction in the
sharply increased duty on country liquor and toddy and to reduce the government
regulation that was steadily forcing small-scale producers and sellers of alcohol out of the
market.
The very geography of the environs of Bombay city was conducive to the
production of alcoholic drinks. Much as today, the low lying areas near the coast are
dotted with palm trees which can be tapped for a fermentable juice known as toddy.90
This toddy can easily be distilled into more powerful “country liquor.”91 The hilly terrain
90
Toddy is the fermented juice of the toddy palm. The term, toddy, was often used loosely and could also
refer to beverages made from date and brab palms. Toddy is produced by cutting a flower-stalk at the top
of the tree. The cut stalk oozes sweet sap in the form of unfermented toddy juice, or nira, collected in the
pot. Full pots of sap were then placed in the sun to maximize heat and speed up the fermentation process,
usually about 24 hours. Toddy is approximately 3-4% alcohol by volume. Finished toddy can then be
distilled to yield alcohol levels commensurate with other distilled alcohols such as corn whiskey or rum.
Distilled toddy is most commonly called “country liquor.” The Bhandari still was described as “consisting
of two earthen pots, connected together by a hollow piece of wood; the larger pot is the boiler, and contains
the toddy, the steam of which passes through the tube into the other pot or condenser which is partly buried
under ground and is every now and then sprinkled with water. See Whitworth, George Clifford. An AngloIndian Dictionary: A Glossary of Indian Terms Used in English, and of Such English or Other Non-Indian
Terms as Have Obtain Special Meanings in India. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885.
91
C.B. Pritchard, Collector for Bombay in the 1880’s described the process as follows: “A pot of
fermented toddy can be converted into a ready-charged still, and distillation can be set going anywhere in
less than five minutes. All the apparatus necessary, beside the pot of toddy, is an earthen saucer (and a
little wet earth) with which to close tightly the mouth of the pot; also a small bowl to be placed floating on
the surface of the toddy in the pot. If a pot of fermented thus made is set up to boil, and the saucer which
closes its mouth is kept cool by pouring water on it, the spirit given off from the toddy in the shape of
steam is condensed on the under side of the saucer, and drips from the saucer into the bowl floating on the
45
around the city provided fertile ground for the indigenous Mhowra or Mahua tree (Bassia
Latifolia), whose flowers, blooming for a few weeks each year, can be crushed and
brewed. Castes of relatively low status, such as the Bhandaris and Kolis, as well as Bhils
in the Bombay area collected these 92flowers for fermentation and distillation into fairly
potent country liquor for both sale and domestic use. Although toddy pots could be
spotted easily among groves and in population centers and thus broken or knocked to the
ground, rural areas and isolated toddy trees proved trying for excise police. Even more
challenging from a regulatory standpoint, the Mhowra tree’s flowers could be picked for
fermentation and distillation virtually anywhere. Isolated gullies and streams leading
from the Western Ghats to the sea were dotted with tiny distilleries like the one below.
toddy to receive it. Two or three bottles of strong spirit can be made by this simple process in a couple of
hours from an ordinary-sized pot of toddy. The distillation can be carried on anywhere, in the houses, in
the fields, or in the jungles; wood and water are plentiful in the coast talukas. See Hunter, William
Wilson. Bombay 1885 to 1890: A Study on Indian Administration. Bombay: B.M. Malabari, Indian
Spectator Office, 1900.
92
Image from Vikram—find info for proper citation. The above photo, taken in 2009, is of a small still
operated by a group of Bhils in the Narmada valley. The fermented flower-based solution is heated in the
pot which sits atop hot coals. A bamboo collector funnels the gaseous alcohol into a pot, partly immersed
in a stream. The stream causes the alcohol to condense into finished Mowhra liquor.
46
Figure 1. Mowhra Still
Source: Vikramaditya Thakur, Yale University
While the paucity of sources make it challenging to know exactly how lower class
people in the Bombay area thought about drink, it remains important not to project
contemporary conceptions of alcohol use as a category onto them. One of the arguments
frequently made by petitioners and journalists against the 1878 Abkari Act was that it
was treating toddy, and to a lesser extent, mowhra liquor, as a luxury when it was seen by
its consumers as a food. 1879, the year during which colonial administrators made it
more difficult for people to make and drink toddy, followed one of the most disastrous
47
periods for Western India in terms of food production. The late 19th century witnessed a
series of some of the worst famines it had seen in modern history.93
Indigenous alcohol production was highly decentralized and was fundamentally
entangled with local economies. The scale of this production was sufficiently large that
an entire caste numbering 79,259 in Bombay Presidency organized itself around its
production.94 Although alcohol was doubtlessly fermented by individuals within
numerous different castes, the Bhandaris of Western India of the low-ranking Sudra jati
were most closely associated with it. The precise contractual arrangements for tapping
the palm species that produced toddy juice varied a great deal from locality to locality.
Extremely small scale production occurred in rural areas where the necessary palm, or
palmyra, trees grew. More commonly, toddy groves were overseen by large landowners
who sold the right to tap the trees to families of Bhandaris.95 The toddy then could be
sold either at the foot of the tree or in toddy stands located in the poorer, “out of the way”
sections of urban areas.96
93
See McAlpin, Michelle Burge. Subject to Famine : Food Crises and Economic Change in Western India,
1860-1920. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. And Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts
: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London ; New York: Verso, 2001.
94
Government of India, The Indian Empire: Census of 1881, Statistics of Population, vol. II (Calcutta:
Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1883).
95
Over 1000 Landed Proprietors, Owners of Toddy Trees and ryots of the District of Thana. "Petition to
His Excellency the Right Honourable Lord Reay." In Revenue, Bombay, 10. Mumbai: Maharashtra State
Archive, 1886.
96
Tree foot stands were not favored by administrators who complained that they were too diffuse and
difficult to monitor, thus “opening the door to illicit distillation and sale.” In most districts they were
eliminated by the 1878 Abkari Act in favor of toddy shops, located away from the groves. See Moore, J.G.
, Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari. "Confidential Letter to J. Nugent, Secretary to
Government, Revenue Department, Bombay." In Revenue, Bombay, 2. Mumbai: Maharashtra State
Archives, 1885.
48
Generally speaking, Bhandaris did not drink the products of their labor,
particularly in its fermented state.97 Drinking fermented toddy was considered a serious
offence, one that could be answered by expulsion from the caste.98 Although the
Bhandari caste was occupationally associated with the production of toddy, their
abstention from its use afforded them the claim to a higher level of purity.
Toddy production was quite labor intensive. The nature of their work required
that Bhandaris climb the very high toddy palm to obtain juice expressed from cut flowers
at the top of tree, collected in a clay pot. Bhandaris also had to care for the trees,
watering when necessary, fertilizing with manure or night-soil, and checking daily for the
goliath beetle, a common pest that had to be removed manually before it killed the tree.99
Precisely how these tasks were performed and by whom--that is, men or women, does not
appear in period sources.
Drinking among non-Brahmans appears to have been common.100 In a cash-poor
society, many groups made, sold and drank toddy, using it as barter “for the commonest
97
Bhandaris themselves claimed to the Kshatriyas, stemming from their assertion that they had historically
acted as treasury guards for the Peshwars of the 18th century. See Reginald Edward Enthoven, The tribes
and castes of Bombay, Native races of India. (Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1975).
98
Bhattacharya, Jogendra Nath. Hindu Castes and Sects: An Exposition of the Origin of the Hindu Caste
System and the Bearing of Sects Towards Each Other and Towards Other Religious Systems. Calcutta:
Thacker, Spink & Co., 1896, 260.
99
Barlow, Edward. Indian Museum Notes, Issued by the Trustees. Vol. V. Calcutta: Office of the
Superintendent of Government Printing, 1900, 38.
100
Castes comprising the drinking classes include Dharallas, Rajputs (Girassias), Kolis,Khastris, Adivasis,
Dheds and “other poorer classes.” See John Lorimer, Superintendent, Opium Preventive Services, "Letter
to Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari," in Revenue, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State
Archives, 1905).
49
of human needs” instead of coins.101 It was a significant part of village economies and
conferred some social power on toddy sellers who could then sell alcohol on credit.
These sellers would complain vociferously when, in 1882, the Government of Bombay
forbade the recovery of money for credit extended to alcohol buyers.102 Families of
meager means could also use it as a household industry to help finance their needs.
Populations most likely to engage in frequent drinking were largely below the
radar of those who wrote documents that would eventually make their way into extant
archives. The best records we have to make sense of exactly who was drinking and in
what quantities comes from different groups who alternatively had a vested interested in
either their continued drinking or who agitated for temperance. British administrators,
particularly tax collectors and assessors, provide some of the most comprehensive data on
the ‘drinking classes’ because their relationship was much more dynamic. Some
collectors seemed to have had a legitimate concern regarding the amount of drinking
among the poor and sympathized openly with the aims of temperance reformers both
‘native’ and Euro-American. Others, possibly solely from the perspective of revenue
collection, professed concern for the ‘rights’ of drinkers to choose to imbibe.103
At no point was the ambiguity of the colonial state’s position related to alcohol
consumption made more manifest than during the public reaction to the implementation
101
See Quarterly Journal of the Hindu Sabha 20, no. 40 (1892): 40. See also India, Report of the
Prohibition Enquiry Committee 1954-55. Members of the Agri and Koli castes in Bombay, though not
traditionally associated with toddy tapping to the degree of Bhandaris, were known to supplement their
income with illicit alcohol production.
102
103
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 1. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1882.
Anti-temperance activists deployed the same rationale in the United States and in Britain. See Craig
Heron, Booze : a distilled history (Toronto, Ont.: Between the Lines, 2003).
50
of the 1878 Abkari Act from 1879 through the early 1890’s. Administrators had
professed two reasons for enacting the new excise policy. First there was a need to
respond to growing criticism over a perceived increase in alcohol production from both
European temperance activists and Indian nationalists arguing for constitutional reform;
second, there was a frank need to increase state revenue. The controversial act went into
force in 1879.
The 1878 Abkari Act
Bombay’s administrators came to believe that abkari reform was urgently
required for a number of reasons. The problems administrators saw with the pre-reform
system included the costs of selling great numbers of licenses increased government
expenditure. Also, “only capitalists could afford to purchase [tax] farms, and their
tendency was to keep down the prices offered [at auctions]. From a moral point of view
it was impolitic, because farmers naturally tried to push their sales, and neither
endeavoured nor desired to put a check on consumption.”104 Most important for
Bombay’s government, “from the revenue point of view, it was unprofitable.”105 As one
government apologist explained, “the new system was introduced to check these
evils.”106
Passed on 19th September, 1878, the Abkari Act was ambitious in scope. The
entire Bombay Presidency fell under its purview. Its authors, primarily C.B. Pritchard,
104
William Wilson Hunter, Bombay 1885 to 1890: A Study on Indian Administration (Bombay: B.M.
Malabari, Indian Spectator Office, 1900).
105
Ibid.
106
Ibid.
51
Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium, and abkari for Bombay, sought to dramatically
alter this arrangement. The act placed alcoholic beverages under three categories—
toddy, liquor (imported), and country-liquor (liquor produced in India).107 Many of the
complaints against the law stem from the aforementioned distinctions between different
kinds of alcohol.
Prior to the act, liquor in all its forms could be sold by anyone on payment of a
license fee. This was the only mode of revenue extraction for toddy prior to enforcement
of the new act in 1879 which brought the “tax farming” or “farming system” into force.
Would-be alcohol sellers could only obtain the right to do so by purchasing a monopoly
at a government-operated tender or auction. The winner of the monopoly had the sole
right to manufacture or sell liquor within the boundaries of his district. Some producers
managed to hold monopolies in multiple districts.
At the same time, the new law also increased the tax payable on the toddy trees
themselves. All toddy-producing trees were subject to a duty that increased from as little
Rs 1 to Rs 16 with almost annual additional increases. P.B. Dantra, a Parsi in possession
of many toddy trees, described the situation facing Bhandaris in the district of Salsette:
…the tree tax is Ra. 16, rent Rs. 4, and the selling price is 8 pies or say 4 annas per
gallon; the average yield according to the Government Resolution is 80 gallons, 80 by 4
as. = Rs. 20. These Rs. 20 is the income of a Bhandary [sic] and the same amount he has
to pay only in tax and rent, and then what can he live upon? There is no fixed price in
Bombay city now, but by the ill advice of the Abkari Department, the Government is
going to fix selling price in Bombay at 9 pies or 4 ½ annas per gallon, and in Thana and
Colaba district at 6 pies per bottle, or 3 annas per gallon; the income of a dealer in Mahim
on 80 gallons at 4 ½ annas is Rs. 22 ½ per tree, and the net profit Rs. 3 ½ per tree, after
107
India, Government of. "Bombay Act No. V of 1878." In The Bombay Code in Four Volumes: The
Unrepealed Acts of the Governor of Bombay in Council in Force in Bombay, from 1862-1887, Inclusive:
And a Chronological Table of Enactments Reproduced in the Volume, 583-607. Calcutta: Government of
India, 1907.
52
deducting Rs. 19 as alluded to above. In Girgaum on 50 gallons at 4 ½ annas, the income
will be Ra. 14 that is a loss of Rs. 5.108
Government fixed the price of toddy so low that “considering the heavy tree tax and other
expenses…that the licensees could not carry on their trade with honesty.”109 This
resulted in great pecuniary loss to the wealthy landowners, primarily Parsis, who formed
the Bombay liquor lobby. More tragically, it placed thousands of Bandharis whose hardscrabble lives were predicated on the tapping of toddy in a “pitiable” condition.
Responses to the Act
Popular responses to this act reveal Western Indian drinking practices strikingly at
odds with the rhetoric of abstemious India described by temperance advocates of all
stripes. In fact, popular responses to the Abkari Act represent the first large-scale,
organized public opposition to public drinking- but to an intriguing end; the reasons
behind this public opposition were antithetical to the rationale for later temperance
movement, indeed, even to the stated goals of the nascent contemporary temperance
movement.
Large swaths of the “drinking classes” refrained from drink in protest of
higher prices and greater difficulties in procuring it.
Activists were protesting to lower the price of alcohol and roll back certain
regulations in the 1878 Act that proved troublesome for small producers and vendors.
The terms of licenses granted demanded that vendors keep detailed records keeping an up
to date register “in a bound book, paged and sealed with the Collector's seal, plain and
108
Dantra, Pestanjee Byramjee. "Appendices: The Bombay Abkari Administration." In Indian Abkari
Administration, Being Notes on the Despatch of the Government of India, Relating to the System of
Licenses for the Distillation and Sale of Spiritous Liquors in Force in the Various Provinces of India,
Presented to the House of Commons, edited by Dinshaw E. Wacha, 57-106. Bombay: Bombay Gazette
Steam Press, 1888, 74
109
Ibid, 73.
53
correct accounts showing the quantities of toddy received into and sold at his shop.”110
Collectors, or their surrogates, had the right to demand at any moment that vendors
produce those records. Failure to so could result in the immediate revocation of their
licenses and, inevitably, livelihoods.
The resulting tensions arising from the new regulations for alcohol use pitted two
coalitions against each other, both claiming to act on behalf of the poor and downtrodden.
Activists, mostly western in the 19th century with a handful of conservative Indians,
championed the cause of temperance, hoping to rescue the wretched of the earth from the
sin or pollution of alcohol.111 For this reason, they strongly opposed the 1878 Act which
had the effect of rationalizing the consumption of alcohol, rendering it more respectable
through the imprimatur of the state. Others, based on both their own commercial
interests and stated concern for the economic wellbeing and personal rights of the
drinking poor, sought to mitigate or reverse the damage caused by the 1878 Abkari Act.
Long before temperance agitation would reach its acme in India, it featured
prominently in British politics. The record-keeping of the colonial state created a metric
for alcohol consumption in India; these showed a striking increase after 1879. The
annual average revenue from fixed alcohol taxes for 1878 and the five years before it was
Rs. 11,99,688; by 1880 this had increased to Rs. 25,93,792. By 1881 this revenue had
again increased to 38,32,858. During this same period, taxes on toddy plummeted from
110
Bombay, Government of. "License for the Retail Sale of Palm Toddy." edited by Revenue. Bombay,
1884.
111
These activists will be discussed in much greater detail in the following chapter. They included liberal,
temperance-crusading M.P.’s W.S. Caine and Samuel Smith. A small collection of missionaries like
Thomas Evans also worked in India. Virtually all western temperance workers operating in India in the
19th century were associated with the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association (AITA). Members of the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) did not begin their work in India in earnest until the
1910’s.
54
19,63,668 in 1878 to 11,24,809 in 1883, this despite much higher taxes on the drink.
Toddy has less than 50% the alcohol of ale while country liquor alcohol level was on par
with distilled grain alcohols.112 The revenue data certainly suggested that Indians were
drinking more alcohol, and stronger alcohol.113
Whether the rise in abkari receipts provided unimpeachable data in terms of
volumes consumption patterns is open to debate. As colonial officials would later argue,
some of the increased revenue may well have been due to higher rates of regulation and
record keeping rather to an actual increase in drinking. Nevertheless, annual increases in
abkari revenue quickly raised the eyebrows of temperance advocates in Britain. In
response, the 1886 Temperance Congress of Britain sent a petition to the Earl of
Dufferin, then Viceroy of India, expressing alarm at, “the habits of intemperance greatly
on the increase,” evidenced by the fact that excise revenue from spirits had more than
doubled in the previous ten years. The President of the 1886 Temperance Congress, F.
London, then made reference to a trope that would become increasingly popular over the
decades, the notion that the historical drinking habits of all Indians was reducible to, “the
112
Wacha, Dinshaw E. "Indian Abkari Administration, Being Notes on the Despatch of the Government of
India, Relating to the System of Licenses for the Distillation and Sale of Spiritous Liquors in Force in the
Various Provinces of India, Presented to the House of Commons on 4th August 1887." Bombay: Bombay
Gazette Steam Press, 1888.
113
The law dramatically reconfigured the production and sale of alcohol. It also changed the drinking
habits of Indians who continued to imbibe through this period. While it remains hyperbolic to suggest that
Indians, as a whole, were traditionally abstemious, it is nonetheless true that patterns of drinking changed
dramatically during the period of British administration. This state of affairs is not unlike the destruction of
the Indian textile industry in favor of the looms of Lancashire. In the case of Indian alcohol, a household
industry that had once been extremely large, if diffuse, was suddenly replaced by a system encouraging
large-scale, capital-intensive production of European-style liquors rather than beverages with a much
longer Indian pedigree, toddy and Mowhra Liquor.
55
well-known fact that the religious and social customs of India ruling many centuries have
frowned upon the use of intoxicating drink.”114
Temperance Activism on the Eve of the Drink Strike
Although European and American temperance advocates would eventually play
an important role within the Indian temperance movement, they did not feature
prominently in the first alcohol-related agitation in Western India from 1885-1890. Their
role was primarily post facto, celebrating movements that they saw as similar enough to
their own in impetus to disregard the significantly different meanings and goals behind
them. A handful of petitions from abroad to the Governments of Bombay and India
drifted in during the 1880’s, most of these in protest of Government’s crackdown on the
liquor strike. Contra Lucy Carroll, the involvement of European and American
temperance advocates in the earliest alcohol-related popular movement was more reactive
than active.115 Seeing the abkari liquor strikes of the 1880’s through temperance colored
glasses, they all but ignored the underlying motivations of strikers and began the long
process of reinventing the liquor strike as a genuine, if slightly misguided, temperance
movement. Their tendency to essentialize Indians, with their heartfelt goal of reducing
temperance, blinded British activists to the more complex realities that had provoked
early Indian temperance advocacy and the fierce response to it. European and American
temperance advocates will be discussed in much greater detail in chapter two.
114
London, F. "Letter to the Earl of Dufferin, Governor-General and Viceroy of India." In Revenue,
Bombay, 1. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1886.
115
See Carroll, Lucy. "The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform." Modern Asian
Studies 10, no. 3 (1976): 30.
56
Temperance advocacy among Indians changed a great deal in the last two decades
of the 19th century. Poona, a traditional capital of Hindu political regimes in Western
India long known for its social conservatism, emerged as an early center for indigenous
temperance activities from the 1882.116 The proliferation of alcohol shops in that area
drew the ire of many. Poona’s Anglo-Marathi newspaper, Dnyan Prakash, complained
of the growing vice, expressing alarm at the growing number of liquor shops in the city.
The paper expressed particular concern regarding the increase in drinking among the
“higher classes of Hindus,” appealing to government to remove the liquor shops from
main thoroughfares to “an out-of-the-way locality.”117 The author’s wish to see shops
moved to these, “out-of-the-way” localities is a departure from more generalized themes
regarding concern for the poor. Clearly the author is most concerned with an alleged
increase in intemperance among the well-to-do rather than among the urban population
more generally. One can only assume that the localities to which he would like to see the
shops removed were areas where the vice of alcohol belonged—among the poor, rather
than around places of respectability.118 This effort was aimed at purifying only those
Indians who could be purified, not the drinking classes at large.
116
This was when complaints about increasing drunkenness began appearing in the Government of
Bombay’s Native Newspaper Reports. Prior to 1882, the only criticism to draw the attention of
government was the frequent complaint that abkari laws were too severe and taxes to heavy. See Kurkaray,
G.W. "Native Newspaper Report, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1882.
117
118
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 8. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
Writing in 1931, C. Rajagopalacharia, a key member of the Indian National Congress and Gandhi’s
stalwart advocate in Tamil country, implied that the drinking classes were difficult to enumerate. He wrote
that “the movement of Total Abstinence is especially strong among those hitherto relegated to an inferior
social status. Apart from the age long superstitions of caste gradation, and doubtful theories of race origins,
their inferiority has been maintained by their hopeless poverty and indebtedness. See Rajagopalachari, C.
"The War against Drink." In C. Rajagopalachari, 4. Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931.C.
Rajagopalachari, "The War Against Drink," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
57
Poona’s upper classes could take comfort from similar movements against alcohol
in other Bombay Presidency cities like Ahmedabad. Having received a petition from the
“leading representatives of the people,” warning of “evil increasing daily” as a result of
the liquor trade, the district collector redirected their complaints to the Government of
India.119 Thus two forces were at work, pushing alcohol-related concerns to a national
level. The pleas of local, upper class Indians eventually arrived at the level of the
Presidencies and the Government of India in Calcutta.
Despite the protestations of local administrators to the contrary, they did have
something of a free hand when it came to their decisions of local alcohol policy, as events
would later show. On the one hand they were resistant to petitions threatening abkari
receipts; on the other hand, they had a tendency to refer petitioners to higher levels of
government. The success or failure of these petitions (more often the latter) were duly
reported in the press further and further afield. Disputes regarding alcohol policy in
Bombay appeared in the newspapers of Madras and Calcutta. In this way, criticism of a
liquor shop on a given intersection in Poona was imbued with greater importance, not
only by the passion stirred up by activists, but by institutional habits of administrators
who referred their complaints to higher levels where they might die quiet deaths in the
sea of paperwork in Bombay and Calcutta. In reporting on events across India,
temperance journals played a role in the construction of the nation. This national
attention directed at drinking included new concerns extending beyond the low-status
people of the drinking class.
119
Pavgi, Raoji Bhavanrao. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 7-8. Bombay: Government of Bombay,
1883.
58
The danger of the corruption of high-class Indians became a national issue. The
newspapers of Poona expressed concerns regarding alcohol that were unique and that
would eventually wane in the 20th century. The conservative Indian temperance activists
of the 1880’s saw Alcohol as toxic, not just to the drinker, but to the very social fabric.
This was particularly true in cases where people outside the “drinking classes” chose to
imbibe. A writer in the Marathi weekly, Poona Vaibhav warned that the vice of drinking
was making, “rapid strides in the city of Poona… The lower classes have always been in
the habit of drinking intoxicating liquors, but fortunately this vice was up to the present
time confined to men.”120 He describes the scenes of drunken women as “revolting.”
What is more, the author laments, is that, “even the well-to-do and educated natives are
not free from this vicious habit.” The conduct of these upper-class men was “difficult for
respectable persons to tolerate.” Alcohol is seen as turning respectable society on its
head. The challenge of alcohol is not so much the damage it inflicts on those who, “have
always been in the habit of drinking” but, rather to the collapse of previously
fundamental divisions between men and women, upper class and the poor.
Not all localities featuring agitation against increased drunkenness had
historically abstemious populations. Bombay’s Gujarati-language, Kaside Mumbai,
reported in 1880 that “during the last century not a single liquor shop was ever kept open
all night on the Bhendi Bazaar thoroughfare…[but that] they were now kept open all
night.”121 Given the descriptions of heavy drinking among Bombay’s population, the
implication that liquor was not previously available at all hours strikes one as rather
120
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Report, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1882.
121
Kurkaray, G.W. "Report on Native Newspapers, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1880.
59
dubious. Notwithstanding, it may well be the case that alcohol was not available after
hours in a Bazaar that included “respectable” Indians among its patrons.
Curiously, in 1880 a newspaper in Thana, a city near Bombay which would later
become a center of the liquor strike in protest of high drink prices and regulation, shared
the fears of their conservative brethren elsewhere. The Marathi language Arunodaya
warned that the use of intoxicating liquors would soon become a “national vice in India”
on par with the use of opium in China.122 Two years later in 1882, when the liquor strike
was in full swing in Thana, the editor/translator of the Government of Bombay’s Report
on Native Newspapers did not cite any further criticism of Government on the basis that
it promoted drink.
One of the perceived threats to morality was the notion that upper class Indians
were drinking to emulate the behavior of Europeans. Bombay’s Indu Prakash warned in
1882 that “the vice of drinking intoxicating liquors is making rapid strides among the
higher classes of natives.” Even more alarming, the author noted that, “natives,
considering that everything which Europeans do is right, began to imitate them in
drinking intoxicating liquors.” He went on to suggest that native officers in the service
of Government “should be called upon to sign a pledge of complete abstinence.”123
It appears that at least some high-status Indians consciously emulated the drinking
proclivities of Europeans so they might enjoy higher levels of success. As some level,
this may well have been obligatory. For example, reports of Government-employed
122
Tarkhadkar, D.R. "Native Newspaper Report, Bombay." 20. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1880.
123
Ibid.
60
Indians being pressed to share a drink with their Europeans supervisors were common.124
Yet conservative social commentators saw the behavior of those Indians who chose to
imbibe as damaging much more than themselves. The drink-saturated bodies of “higher
class” Indians polluted Indian culture and “undermined native society.”125 Indeed, those
in the habit of drinking alcohol were beginning to exceed the “ignorant men” who once
chose to do so.126
Increased drinking among the upper class was clearly a point of concern among
various interest groups in Poona. A Parsi liquor contractor, G.A. Dorabji, hoping to open
a factory for the production of rum saw his efforts stymied by a fellow Parsi, “country
liquor contractor of Poona, Mr. Dadabhoy Hormusjee and others, actuated by motives of
self-interest.”127 In an appeal to have his plans reconsidered by the Revenue Secretary of
Bombay, he averred that, “the consumption of my rum will not be among the high
classes,” but, “entirely consumed amongst the middle classes.”128 Dorabji’s hope to see
his plans come to fruition were based on a careful navigation of the alcohol market that
124
A writer for the Poona Vaibhav complained of late-night drunken carousing by Indian “Government
Servants.” Similarly, a writer for Bombay’s Indu Prakash complained in 1882 that upper class Indians
considered “everything Europeans did” as right and thus drank with impunity. R. Pringle, Surgeon Major
for the Bengal Army, complained of educated Bengalis “to whose existence brandy was thought to be
necessary.” See Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Report, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay,
1882; Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 9. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1882;
and Pringle, “British and Colonial Temperance Congress. Edited by Frederick Temple. London: National
Temperance Publication Depot, 1886.
125
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 9. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1882.
126
Kohiyar, Jehangirshah E. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 18. Bombay: Government of Bombay,
1881.
127
Dorabji, Ghasvala Adarji. "Letter to John Nugent, Secretary to Government, Revenue Department,
Bombay." In Revenue, Maharashtra State Archives, 9. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1885.
128
Italics added.
61
took into account the delicate question of exactly which Indians would be drinking his
product.
The Bhandari Strike of Western India, 1885-1886
Implementation of the 1878 abkari law triggered a number of responses in
Western India and proved to have unintended consequences. Government found itself
under attack by both upper-class, conservative elements and by those who sold and
consumed alcohol. Drinking patterns among Indians changed, both in terms of who
constituted the drinking population and what kind of drinks were consumed. The Act’s
implementation also significantly influenced the small-scale village economies within
which the majority of Indians operated. Entire castes of people who produced or drank
alcohol found themselves pitted against both the Government and its temperance critics.
A great deal of anger smoldered among poorer populations, eventually resulting in a
large-scale social movement—a drink strike—which European Temperance advocates
and the nascent nationalist movement would both desperately try to co-opt.
Under the licensed outstill system prevalent in the Bombay Presidency before
1879, individuals paid a flat fee for the right to produce and vend toddy. 129 Restrictions
were few and, by all accounts, Bhandaris to carried on a brisk trade. From 1879,
contracts offered by Government represented a significant departure from this precedent.
The stipulations of the new license warrant quoting at length,
129
India, Government of. Report of the Prohibition Enquiry Committee 1954-55. Delhi: Government of
India Press, 1955, 2-3.
62
At the time of the issue of his license, he shall have received and agreed to the
conditions of a separate license for tapping not less than 25 trees.130 He shall not have in
his shop above described or sell any spirituous or fermented liquor or any toddy drawn
from trees other than the date palms duly licensed to be tapped.
The licensee shall not sell or keep or store toddy in any place except in his shop
above described. He shall keep and sell toddy unadulterated and undiluted as drawn from
the tree without any admixture of any liquid whatsoever.
The licensee shall not keep his shop open or sell toddy after 9 o’clock p.m., nor shall he
open his shop or sell date toddy before 6 o’clock a.m., nor shall he sell or give at any time
any toddy to, or the use of, any non-commissioned officer or private European or Native
army or to any Police Officer.
The licensee shall keep in his said shop and write up daily in a bound book, paged
and sealed with the Collector’s seal, plain and correct accounts showing the quantities of
toddy received into and sold at his shop. Such accounts and the whole stock of toddy in
the licensee’s shop, shall always be open to inspection by the Collector, the
Commissioner of Police or any officer deputed by the Collector or Commissioner of
police to inspect the same.
The licensee shall not allow any person to drink to intoxication in his shop, nor shall he
permit disorderly persons to remain in his shop, or allow gambling there. He shall give
immediate information to the nearest police officer of any suspected person who may
resort to his shop, and of any irregularity tending to disturb the public peace. The police
shall at all times have free access to every part of his shop for police purposes. He shall
not receive any wearing apparel, or ornament, or any consideration except coin, for any
toddy that he may sell. He shall not sell more than four gallons of toddy to any one
person in a given day.’131
As can be seen, only those Bhandaris able to tap a sizable grove could obtain a license for
tapping toddy trees could obtain a license for vending the toddy. No less than 25 trees
could be tapped by a single licensee, a threshold preventing many small-scale producers
from supplementing their income by tapping a small number of trees. Writing against the
Abkari Act, D.E. Wacha, early nationalist and Parsi from Bombay, averred that “a
130
This minimum number of trees to tap for a license varied district by district, ranging from as little as 25
to as many as 100.
131
Bombay, Government of. "License for the Retail Sale of Palm Toddy." edited by Revenue. Bombay,
1884. The Parsi landowner, P.B. Dantra noted that the four gallon limit did not apply to other forms of
alcohol such as country and foreign liquor. He argued that the four gallon limit was yet more proof that the
true aim of the 1878 Abkari act was to phase out the use of toddy. See Dantra, Pestanjee Byramjee.
"Appendices: The Bombay Abkari Administration." In Indian Abkari Administration, Being Notes on the
Despatch of the Government of India, Relating to the System of Licenses for the Distillation and Sale of
Spiritous Liquors in Force in the Various Provinces of India, Presented to the House of Commons, edited
by Dinshaw E. Wacha, 57-106. Bombay: Bombay Gazette Steam Press, 1888.
63
Bhandari can hardly tap 15 trees” in a day.132 This meant that Bhandaris who continued
their trade would be as underworked as they were underpaid.
Most burdensome for licensees was the detailed record keeping requirement.
Surat’s Anglo-Gujarati language newspaper, Gujarati Mitra, observed the harshness of
the license requirements, noting that, “the vendors of liquors are not educated and good
accountants” and that they, “often commit mistakes…and are fined for such faults.”133
P.M. Mehta, early nationalist, barrister, and member of the 1886 Abkari commission
tasked with investigating the alleged severity of alcohol policy, noted that “the class of
people going into these shops is hardly able to read or write,” thus, record keeping,
“involved a considerable amount of time and trouble.”134 Bhandari petitioners
complained explicitly of, “the stringent rules for the sale of toddy.”135
The new scale of toddy enterprises and the extensive documentation required
drove out small producers in favor of wealthier, large-scale producers. After 1897 it was
the Parsis, with had greater capital reserves and literacy rates than Bhandaris, who filled
the void created by Government’s regulation of the liquor trade. Even if this did result in
some pecuniary benefit for some within the Parsi community, it created resistance among
individual Parsis. Bombay’s noted Parsi nationalist and temperance activist, Dinshaw
132
Wacha, Dinshaw E. "Indian Abkari Administration, Being Notes on the Despatch of the Government of
India, Relating to the System of Licenses for the Distillation and Sale of Spiritous Liquors in Force in the
Various Provinces of India, Presented to the House of Commons on 4th August 1887." Bombay: Bombay
Gazette Steam Press, 1888, 74.
133
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884.
134
Mehta, P.M. "Address of P.M. Mehta before the Abkari Commission Consisting of Mr. J.H. Grant
(President), Sir Frank Souter and Mr. Sorabjee Shapoorjee Bengalee." In Revenue, Bombay, 11. Mumbai:
Maharashtra State Archives, 1886.
135
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 13. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884.
64
Edulji Waccha, went so far as to sign a petition in favor of the Bhandaris, warning that
new liquor monopolists had incentive to adulterate their drinks.136
Other Parsis were less sympathetic to the plight of the Bhandaris. Bombay’s
Gujerati-language, Parsi Punch, featured an editorial cartoon described by the
editor/translator of Native Newspaper reports as, “representing a Bhandari in the act of
adulterating liquor with the following letter-press below it:--A Bombay Liquorvalla—
‘Well, I can't help it. When Sirkar takes such exhorbitant fees, no course is left to a poor
devil like myself but to adulterate and use chillies and tobacco-leaves and all sorts of
things to keep my trade up!’” Another Gujarati-language Bombay newspaper, Jame
Jamshed, printed a letter observing that, “the number of Parsi liquor shops has increased
in proportion to the decrease of the Bhandari liquor shops, and that the liquor sellers are
thriving.” The authors of the letter credited the relative success of the Paris vis-à-vis the
Bhandaris to their “intelligence in achieving success in business,” and their ability to
work on a larger scale. As Waccha’s petition shows, opinion among the Parsi
community varied considerably with regard to the impact of the 1878 law on Bhandaris.
Yet accusations regarding the adulteration of liquor did not hit the Bhandaris alone.
Many petitioners argued that adulteration was occurring across the board as a
direct response to the new abkari law. D.E. Waccha argued that, “limiting the number of
toddy shops [was] a direct incentive…to adulterate the drink.”137 With monopolies, there
was no competition and thus no pressure to earn the patronage of customers. If drinkers
136
Association, Bombay Presidency. "Petition to the Secretary to the Government, Revenue Department,
Bombay." In Revenue, Bombay, 35. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1887.
137
Ibid.
65
disliked the products of their district liquor dealer, their only choice was to stop drinking
it. A writer for Bombay’s Gujarati-language Kaiser i Hind warned,
In the sharp competition to secure the contract the price of the monopoly has
considerably risen and the abkari revenue has largely increased; but the liquors and toddy
have become very dear. These articles being dear fraudulent admixtures are made in
them, and the poor people, though paying a high price which they cannot conveniently
afford, get mixtures which injure their health. 138
Administrators had been warned; as early as 1879, Bombay Samachar warned that,
although adulteration was nothing new, it was certain to, “increase by putting up licenses
to public auction.”139
Thus the new law consolidated the liquor trade into the hands of, “a few rich
persons, who will try to make as much profit as possible,” and to increase that profit by,
“selling adulterated drinks.”140 These early critics of the abkari law noted that it, at once,
increased the revenue of the colonial state, profited only the rich who could trade in
liquor on the scale required by Government, and poisoned the drinking classes with,
“mixtures which injure their health.”141 Invited to speak before the abkari Commission
to discuss the ill effects of the law, P.M. Mehta’s warnings about the increase in
adulteration fell on deaf ears.142 State revenues were higher and the bureaucrats duly
resolute.
138
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884, 32.
139
Kurkaray, G.W. "Report on Native Newspapers, Bombay." 8. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1879,
11.
140
Ibid.
141
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884, 41.
142
Little documentation remains regarding the abkari commission held on October 5th, 1886, save the
statements of P.M. Mehta. No substantive policy changes after the commission are evident.
66
Adulteration was not the sole threat to those Indians who consumed toddy with
regularity. Wacha’s petition to the Government of Bombay averred that, “from time
immemorial [toddy] had been used by certain classes as a portion of their food. In times
of famine the poorest in certain localities have been known to have subsisted on a small
quantity of coarse grain, supplemented by toddy.” From virtually the moment the law
was enacted, memorialists and petitioners, rich and poor, noted the dependence of many
upon toddy, calling it both a “food of the poor,” and a “beverage of the poor.” The
always pithy P.B. Dantra differentiated between beer as the “drink of the classes” and
toddy as the “drink of the masses.”143 Land-owning propagandists like the Parsi,
Manekshah J. Taleyarkhan, joined the fray, noting that “nothing was more common than
to find the poorer classes, such as Kolis, Bhils, Warlis, Kunbis, and Parsis in certain tracts
of the Mofussil, eating their rice with curry made of Toddy, which served to season the
rice, and at the same time, afford considerable nourishment to the body.”144
Even articles generally lamenting the increase in drunkenness in India left room
for the use of toddy as a nutriment. Jame Jamshed noted that many survived the Gujarat
famine of 1878 by “mixing their meager fare with toddy and using as part of their food to
pass over the crisis.”145 A petition to Government from “1000 Landed Proprietors” in
1886 also warned that the new law amounted to depriving the poor of, “a portion of their
143
Dantra, Pestanjee Byramjee. "Appendices: The Bombay Abkari Administration." In Indian Abkari
Administration, Being Notes on the Despatch of the Government of India, Relating to the System of
Licenses for the Distillation and Sale of Spiritous Liquors in Force in the Various Provinces of India,
Presented to the House of Commons, edited by Dinshaw E. Wacha, 57-106. Bombay: Bombay Gazette
Steam Press, 1888, 92.
144
Taleyarkhan, Manekshah J. "Notes on the Taxation of Toddy in Bombay." Bombay: Industrial Press,
1885, 2.
145
Over 1000 Landed Proprietors, Owners of Toddy Trees and ryots of the District of Thana. "Petition to
His Excellency the Right Honourable Lord Reay." In Revenue, Bombay, 10. Mumbai: Maharashtra State
Archive, 1886.
67
daily food.”146 Although self-interest is likely at play in the case of landowners, many of
them toddy tree owners, their criticisms were shared by many others. Virtually every
“native” newspaper regularly inspected by the translators and editors of Native
Newspaper Reports decried the “harsh and barbarous rules,” regulating, “the food and
drink of the people.”147 In 1879, a mere two years after some of the most devastating
famines in the history of modern India, the British government placed significant
restrictions on the sale of a major food source. By 1885, the petitions and dissatisfaction
expressed in the press had been of no avail.
From 1879 the change in abkari laws placed toddy, “the drink of the people,”
beyond the means of toddy drinkers. Much to the disappointment of concerned
observers, these drinkers simply moved to more affordable alternatives such as illicit
toddy and other intoxicants. Changes in drinking patterns generally involved recourse to
more potent forms of alcohol such as European liquors and distilled “country” liquor. In
fact, the new tax structure rendered the price of toddy, “nearly equal to that of the cheaper
kinds of European spirits.”148 As a result, “the people were driven to drink spirituous
liquor,” to their detriment.149 Some critics went so far as to accuse Government of
willfully “tempting our lower classes who are now content with country-made drinks, to
stronger and more ardent spirits.”150 In this sense, it is arguable that even if the numbers
146
Ibid.
147
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 10-11. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1885.
148
Kurkaray, G.W. "Report on Native Newspapers, Bombay." 7. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1879.
149
Ibid.
150
Pavgi, Raoji Bhavanrao. "Native Newspapers Reports, Bombay." 5-6. Bombay: Government of
Bombay, 1883.
68
of drinkers had remained static, the potency of the drinks imbibed generally increased in
the late 19th century. The consequent increase in European-style spirits increased
drunkenness and, as Kaiser i Hind’s correspondent put it, “tended to destroy Native
industry.”151 While the Bombay Samachar may have been exaggerating with the claim
that “natives generally prefer English articles to native ones,” it is fair to assume that the
high duties associated with toddy pushed drinkers toward large-scale country liquor
producers and “English spirits.”152 Thus critics like Thana’s Marathi-language
Suryodaya accused Government “encouraging the use of European liquors at the sacrifice
of the interests of country drinks,” a charge that Government never bothered to explicitly
deny.153
In the critics’ view, drinks were becoming more alcoholic and less “Indian.”
Bombay’s Gujarati-language newspaper, Kaiser I Hind, was most explicit in its
condemnation, reporting that some country liquor sellers were encouraged to “instead
take out licenses for the sale of European liquor.” The situation led Kaiser i Hind to
make an easy comparison with the destruction of much of India’s textile industry in favor
of “the merchants of Manchester.”154 The new abkari law represented “an obstacle in the
way of indigenous industry.”155 Pushed away from more traditional forms of alcohol
such as toddy, those Indians who drank were moved toward the consumption of European
151
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884.
152
Patker, Atmaram V. "Report on the Native Newspapers, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay,
1878.
153
Pavgi, Raoji Bhavanrao. "Native Newspapers Report, Bombay." 6. Bombay: Government of Bombay,
1883.
154
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 16. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884.
155
Ibid.
69
liquors or, more commonly, country liquors produced in vast quantities that resembled
European spirits in potency.
Toddy production had historically been a decentralized affair, firmly embedded in
the communities within which it was imbibed. Alcohol policy from the 1879 removed
the means of alcohol production from the community to the factory while the labeled
glass bottle replaced its unregulated hand-made ceramic predecessors. Increasingly, the
material culture and economic relationships associated with the use of alcohol was
externalized to the community. Along with the clanking bottles of brandy entered
another force external to communities of drinkers—the abkari police.
Abkari Police
Implementation of the 1878 abkari law was the responsibility of the district
collector. Each collector had at his disposal a local abkari force composed of inspectors,
sub-inspectors and abkari police. The salaries of abkari police were paid by licensees
entitled to produce or sell alcohol. Abkari police had the same powers as ordinary police
but reported to the collector rather than to the inspector of police of a given district.156
Complaints against abkari police citing excessive force and venality were common. The
onerous bookkeeping required by the law created a situation in which liquor vendors
could scarcely conduct business without running afoul of the law. Dantra claimed that
minor bookkeeping infractions were more often dealt with through payments of “hushmoney” to corrupt abkari inspectors.157 Surat’s Gujarati Mitra complained that when
156
157
Mackenzie, T.D. "Letter to Thana Collector's Office." edited by Revenue, 15. Thana: unpublished, 1884.
Dantra, Pestanjee Byramjee. "Appendices: The Bombay Abkari Administration." In Indian Abkari
Administration, Being Notes on the Despatch of the Government of India, Relating to the System of
Licenses for the Distillation and Sale of Spiritous Liquors in Force in the Various Provinces of India,
Presented to the House of Commons, edited by Dinshaw E. Wacha, 57-106. Bombay: Bombay Gazette
Steam Press, 1888, 93.
70
vendors were prosecuted for supposed infractions “the unfortunate vendors” faced
punishment for evidence given solely by the “Inspector and his peon.”158 A license may
have enabled one to sell alcohol, but it also placed the seller at the mercy of the abkari
police.
Abkari police had the right to investigate any conveyance or home. Private
domestic spaces were routinely violated. Surat’s Gujarati Mitra lamented that abkari
inspectors, “without sufficient and reasonable cause, searched houses for contraband
liquors, spreading consternation and awe among the people.”159 Property could be
confiscated for minor infractions. Yajdan Parast warned that, “a cartman could be
deprived of his cart and bullocks…if he be employed by a smuggler for the surreptitious
conveyance of toddy or spirits, a devastating blow to one’s livelihood.”160 With the
power to dramatically alter the lives of those they surveilled, abkari police were feared
members of the bureaucracy.
Individual collectors had a great deal of latitude with regard to the enforcement of
law, both in terms of vending law violations and contract payment from license holders.
Occasionally local newspapers praised local collectors for their magnanimity but, more
often, condemned them for high-handed enforcement or graft. When contracts were
oversold and license holders found they could not pay agreed-upon rates, the collector
could allow for delayed or deferred payment. Collectors did occasionally show leniency,
but more often their enforcement of the statutes was characterized by severity and the
158
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884.
159
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports." 11-12. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884.
160
Kurkaray, G.W. "Report on Native Newspapers, Bombay." 10. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1879.
71
strictest letter of the law. In 1883, Surat’s Aglo-Gujarati –language, Lok Mitra, accused
individual collectors of, “never listening to the complaints of the poor,” and, “never
allowing any claim against Government to be valid.”161
In the pages of the Presidency’s newspapers, Indian critics frequently accused
abkari police of specifically targeting the poor. The “unreasonable severity,” of revenue
law enforcement had, “given rise to the greatest distress and disaffection among the large
and poor class of people.”162 Several other newspapers answered the 1885 plea of
Bombay’s English newspaper, The Indian Spectator, “for the native press of Bombay [to
take] combined action against the irregularities of the Abkari Department.”163 Abkari
rules had never before been so oppressive, the result of which The Indian Spectator
described as “slow starvation and legalized plunder.”164
By 1888 little had changed; the
same newspaper would repeat its criticism of revenue policy, remarking that, “mysterious
are the ways of the abkari witches, and this mystery of iniquity is such as to make the
angels weep.”165
As early as 1879, the first year of the 1878 Abkari Act’s implementation, the
situation for Bhandaris became desperate. Owners of toddy palms, particularly the poor
who could not engage in the trade on a large scale, were forced to cut down their trees to
avoid incurring the wrath of the abkari police. By 1883, 1,10,000 toddy trees in Thana
161
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 10. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1880.
162
Pavgi, Raoji Bhavanrao. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 3. Bombay: Government of Bombay,
1883.
163
Sathe, G.M. "Natvie Newspaper Reports, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1885.
164
Ibid.
165
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 7. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1888.
72
district were left untapped owing to the to a tax rate ranging from Rs. 3 to Rs. 14 that
could be assessed for each tree. Since the law required that licensees hold a minimum
number of toddy trees, thousands of toddy tappers found themselves excluded from the
only occupation they had ever known.166 The inability to tap toddy trees represented not
only a loss of future profit, but also of investment capital.167 Complaining in 1882 of the
iniquity of the law, a critic in the Indian Spectator reminded his readers that toddy trees
were the product of years of care and financial investment, with Bhandaris having,
“nursed them and spent money on them for years.”168 Ratnagiri’s Maratha-language
Satya Shodhad argued that the almost annual increases in tax rates for toddy trees kept,
“the public mind in a state of ferment.”169
In 1885, the collector of Bombay informed the Commissioner of Customs, Salt,
Opium, and abkari of an interview he had granted with “principal Bhandaris” and toddyshop keepers who informed him that it had become, “quite impossible to draw and
manufacture toddy and spirit under existing conditions.”170 The Bhandaris of Bombay
166
Munshi, Indra. "On Drinking and 'Drunkenness': History of Liquor in Colonial India." In State
Intervention and Popular Response: Western India in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Mariam & Ruby
Maloni Dossal, 127-46. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 1999, 130.
167
Toddy trees require a great deal of care. Seedlings were covered with white ash to repel ants and are
watered every 2-3 days. By the fifth year, “watering is then generally stopped. During the rains from its
fifth to tenth year, a ditch is dug around the palm and its roots cut, and little sandbanks are raised round the
tree to keep the rainwater from running off. In the ditch round the tree, 22 pounds of powdered dry fish
manure is sprinkled and covered with earth and watered if there is no rain at the time.” Toddy trees are
also susceptible to pests for which detailed interventions are necessary. “A well-watered and manured tree,
in good soil, begins to yield when it is five years old.” See Ferguson, J. Alll About the Cocoanut Palm
Including Practical Instructions for Planting and Cultivation with Estimates Prepared for Expenditure and
Receipts, a Special Chapter on Desiccating Cocoanut and Other Suitable Information from a Variety of
Sources. Bombay: Thacker Spink & Co., 1904, 138-153.
168
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 1. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1882.
169
Kurkaray, G.W. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1884.
170
Grant, J.H. "Letter to J.G. Morley, Esq., Commisioner of Custom, Salt, Opium, and Abkari, Bombay
Collector's Office." In Revenue, Bombay, 2. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1885.
73
who submitted a petition to change the policy saw their hopes dashed just as they had
been for so many other petitioners. The Government of Bombay replied that they,
“declined to interfere with the orders of the local government on the subject of taxes on
the sale of toddy spirit in Bombay.”171 Thusly, government disregarded the pleas of
Bhandaris and others involved in the liquor trade, both as producers and consumers.
With few exceptions, outside of those associated with the Parsi liquor lobby, few
nationalists answered the urgent call of Bombay Samachar in 1886 that “native political
associations” take up the matter of alcohol policy.”172
After five years of frustrated efforts, the Bhandaris had few avenues remaining for
fighting against the new alcohol regulations. In July of 1885, Abkari Commissioner, J.H.
Grant acknowledged receipt of an, “urgent telegram” from the collector of Bombay. The
telegram announced the news that, “no bids have been offered for toddy spirit shop
licenses for the following year.”173 In a remarkable show of solidarity, of the
approximately 80,000 Bhandari males in Bombay Presidency, not a single one put in a
bid to tap toddy in the City of Bombay.174 In response, R.J. Moore, Collector for
Bombay, enthusiastically drew up plans to break the strike by, “making some permanent
arrangement for the manufacture and sale of toddy spirit in Bombay independent of
171
Moore, J.G., Under Secretary to the Government of Bombay. "Letter to Secretary to the Government of
Bombay, Revenue Department." In Revenue Department, Bombay, 1. Mumbai: Maharashtra State
Archives, 1884.
172
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 8. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
173
Moore, J.G. , Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari. "Letter from Bombay Collector,
Morley (or Moore) to Commisioner of Abkari, J.H. Grant." In Revenue Department, Bombay, 15. Mumbai:
Maharashtra State Archives, 1885.
174
Enthoven, Reginald Edward. The Tribes and Castes of Bombay, Native Races of India. Delhi: Cosmo
Publications, 1975, 96.
74
[Bhandaris].”175 The new plan would threaten their, “trade and profit altogether and
perhaps forever.”176 He then encouraged Abkari Commissioner, J.G. Moore to allow the
Bhandaris to, “come to their senses,” with the knowledge that Government would not
change the existing regulations.177
To decide whether or not to give up their traditional family occupations or to
submit to the regulatory whims of the Revenue department, the Bhandaris were given
three days to, “consider and bring their reply.” If the former was their decision,
“exclusive privilege” of producing toddy would be given to a “monopoly farmer for a
long period of time.”178 Faced with the certainty that continuing the strike would force
them to join many of their fellows who had already, “obtained work in the mills or as
Hawals or labourers,” some Bhandaris relented.179 In other areas such as Surat, where
too few Bhandaris were willing to tap trees at current rates, district monopolies over all
toddy production and sale were awarded to individuals for as long as three years.180
Simply put, Government held all the cards and could easily ignore the Bhandari
strike.181 Toddy could just as easily be produced under a monopoly system and if
175
Moore, J.G., Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari. "Letter from Bombay Collector,
Morley (or Moore) to Commisioner of Abkari, J.H. Grant." In Revenue Department, Bombay, 15. Mumbai:
Maharashtra State Archives, 1885.
176
Ibid.
177
Ibid.
178
Ibid.
179
Moore, J.G., Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari. "Confidential Letter to J. Nugent,
Secretary to Government, Revenue Department, Bombay." In Revenue, Bombay, 2. Mumbai: Maharashtra
State Archives, 1885.
180
181
Sathe, G.M. "Native Press Reports, Bombay." 10-11. Government of Bombay, 1886.
It is debatable whether or not “strike” is the appropriate term for the decision of Bhandaris to
temporarily boycott license tenders. Although there are numerous petitions from Bhandaris asking for a
relaxation of abkari regulations, no documentation referring to collective action is extant in the archives.
75
consumers moved from toddy to another form of taxed alcohol, it hardly affected
revenue.182 Even during the brief strike period, the Bombay Abkari Commissioner could
report to the Secretary of Revenue for the Government of India, J. Nugent, that, “the
present strike among the Bhandaris has not influenced the supply of raw toddy for sale or
its selling price.” He reassured his supervisor that “equilibrium” would be restored if
Government held fast; otherwise, hesitation would render Government unable to make
any changes in the future. Accordingly, the increasingly desperate Bhandari petitioners
were notified that, “the taxation and the sale of toddy spirit in Bombay was fully
considered by the Government of India and that the case cannot be re-opened.”183
Over a series of letters and memorials with, J.G. Moore, in 1885 Bhandaris of the
Bombay presidency made it clear that they were, “quite determined to hold back on tree
tapping and toddy distillation.”184 Moore himself was dismissive of the strike threat,
reporting that it was, “impossible to convince these men by figures or reasoning that
[present regulations] are reasonable and would leave them a fair margin of profit.”185
Moore, and most within the abkari department, complained that Bhandari liquor strike
That being the case, I refer to this brief collective action with the only word used to describe it in the
archives- strike.
182
As mentioned above on page 15, total abkari receipts soared even as receipts from toddy-related excise
fell.
183
Moore, J.G., Under Secretary to the Government of Bombay. "Abkari: Memorial from Bhandaris of
Bombay against the Arrangements Sanctioned by Government for Regulating the Taxation and Sale of
Toddy Spirit in Bombay." In Revenue, Bombay, 1. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1885.
184
Moore, J.G., Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari. "Letter to the Secretary to
Government, Revenue Department, Bombay." In Revenue, Bombay, 11. Mumbai: Maharashtra State
Archive, 1885.
185
Ibid. Moore’s sanguine position regarding the profitability of toddy production under the 1878 law was
later disproven by facts. By the 1900’s it was acknowledged be even the most staid observers that
Bhandaris had been largely forced out of toddy production. See Enthoven, The tribes and castes of
Bombay.
76
was, “kept by the action of well-to-do Bhandaris for their own interests while the
poorer…take their role from the more influential of their class.”186 In this sense,
Government officials dismissed the claims of petitioners as a conflict between wealthy
liquor contractors and the state—an accurate but ironic position in light of the fact that
the situation was the result of government’s doing, for it was precisely small-scale
producers who had been driven out of the trade. With the complaints of Bhandaris thus
dismissed, licenses for the tapping and distribution of toddy were issued to yet largerscale producers, many of whom held contracts in multiple localities.
With only large-scale toddy producers in operation after 1886, dissatisfaction with
the abkari law grew by leaps and bounds. Bombay newspapers continued to lament that
drinkers were paying higher prices for poorer quality drinks as harsh regulations pushed
small-scale producers out of the trade.187 The exchange of money or goods for alcohol
within the community had been radically reconfigured. Those who persisted in drinking
were increasingly moving towards stronger country liquor taxed at a lower rate.
Bhandaris, having withheld their labor in a desperate attempt to change policy, hit the
wall with a government resolved towards increasing revenue and quite happy to deal with
long-standing monopolists rather than myriad small scale traders. This new state of
affairs proved satisfactory to Government, enabling the Abkari Commissioner of Bombay
186
187
Ibid.
British temperance advocates began to take much greater notice of Indian excise policy during this
period. As some of them journeyed to India to foster temperance there, complaints of increased
drunkenness grew, leading to a flurry of newspaper articles written by Indians concerned with growing
intemperance. Despite the new interest in temperance by some Indians, complaints of high prices and poor
quality continued to vastly outnumber articles in favor of temperance. The relationship between European
temperance advocates and their Indian colleagues will be discussed in much greater detail in chapter 2.
77
to report to the revenue department that, “the present strike among the Bhandaris has not
affected in any way the supply of raw toddy for sale or its selling price.”188
With Bhandaris slowly drifting towards different occupations after 1886, “in the
mills or as Hawals or labourers,” Government seemed poised on the cusp of a minor
victory and abkari administrators were sanguine about the future.189 Twenty five years
later, Enthoven’s The Tribes and Castes of Bombay would refer to toddy tapping as the
hereditary occupation of Bhandaris, “but since the rise in the palm-tree cess (1877) many
had become husbandmen and labourers.”190 Most remaining liquor producers, both of
toddy and of other forms, were now large-scale capitalists who had benefited from
government regulation that had choked off the livelihoods of thousands. Indian liquor
was still produced, but less often by friends and neighbors and more frequently by
moguls with an interest in defending extant abkari policy.191 From the perspective of
colonial administrators, their policy appeared to be a success, but they would soon
discover that reactions to their policy shift had only begun. As drink prices rose and
quality deteriorated under the care of monopoly holders, Government soon found itself
beset with the ire of a more influential group of people—drinkers.
188
Moore, J.G., Under Secretary to the Government of Bombay. "Abkari: Memorial from Bhandaris of
Bombay against the Arrangements Sanctioned by Government for Regulating the Taxation and Sale of
Toddy Spirit in Bombay." In Revenue, Bombay, 1. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1885.
189
190
Ibid.
Enthoven, Reginald Edward. The Tribes and Castes of Bombay, Native Races of India. Delhi: Cosmo
Publications, 1975, 103. Enthoven incorrectly cites 1877 as the date when the Bhandaris faced an
occupational crisis. As previously mentioned, the legislation leading to this was changed in 1878 and
enacted the following year.
191
Anger over strike-breakers proved long lived with those continuing to tap trees as late as the 1920’s
lowered in estimation compared with those who had moved towards other occupations.
78
The Drink Strike
In October 1886, the first drink strikes emerged in Western India. Panvel, just
east of Bombay, was the first taluka to strike. Toddy and other traditionally produced
forms of liquor had increased in price now due to both the increased duty placed upon it
by Government, and by Government’s decision to sell the contracts to monopolists who,
in absence of competition, could both adulterate their liquor more freely and charge more
money for them. Since toddy was the most heavily-taxed liquor, monopoly holders
phased out all but a trickle of toddy production in favor of much stronger Mowhra and
country liquors. On the coast of the Arabian Sea, Panvel had an abundance of toddy trees
and its denizens a taste for toddy.192 With toddy production at a fraction of its previous
volume and quality, Panvel was the first taluka to publicly adopt a resolution to, “abstain
from the use of liquor and toddy” until such time as “abkari rigor relaxed in order to
enable them to easily procure liquor and toddy.”193 This movement spread quickly
across Western India as both civic and caste organizations took up the abstinence pledge
in an effort to deny Government its drink revenue. The movement emerged among those
low status Indians long associated with drink rather than among elites such as those who
populated the Bombay Presidency Association, whom a correspondent for Bombay
Samachar hoped would take an interest in the movement.194
192
Wacha, Dinshaw E. "Indian Abkari Administration, Being Notes on the Despatch of the Government of
India, Relating to the System of Licenses for the Distillation and Sale of Spiritous Liquors in Force in the
Various Provinces of India, Presented to the House of Commons on 4th August 1887." Bombay: Bombay
Gazette Steam Press, 1888, 64.
193
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 8. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
194
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, 1886." 9-10. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
79
Panvel’s anti-drink strike, aimed at reducing the cost of alcohol locally, soon
became a movement, quickly spreading across Western India.195 In Gujarat, the Kali
Paraj tribe, residing in some 30 villages made drinking alcohol “punishable with fine and
excommunication.”196 The Kali Paraj were shortly followed by Khalpas and other
castes.197 Some of these strikes were for a fixed period,such as the Gola and Ghanchi
castes of Navsari who outlawed drinking for the space of one month. By December of
1886, Jame Jamshed could report that other castes such as the Dhedas were following
suit.198 The motive for the drink strikes as described in both Native Press Reports and in
internal government documents in the latter half of the 1880’s was solely to increase
access to quality alcohol. Only by the 1890’s did temperance advocates (primarily from
Britain and the United States) begin to refer to these strikes as purity movements, as will
be discussed in much greater detail in the following chapter.
As the movement gathered strength, descriptions of it increasingly appeared in the
Indian press. Bombay Samachar wrote that the Dhorias and Kolis of 32 villages took up
abstinence, joined by, “oil-makers, rice-beaters, fishermen and other classes in Bulsar.”
One correspondent reported that in the native-state, Dharampor, “out of 360
villages…100 to 150 villages have of their own accord resolved to abstain from the use
195
The power of local collectors to set the specific rules for their districts led to a great deal of variation.
Although dissatisfaction with abkari affairs more generally were widespread, liquor strikers seemed most
concerned with affecting change in their own locality. As village panchayats initiated strikes, it was
increasingly defined as a “movement” in the press. Reporting on local strikes, each concerned with
district-level policy, had the effect of making these diffuse events appear more coordinated, or more like
broad movement.
196
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 12-13. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
197
Ibid.
198
Ibid.
80
of toddy.”199 The Dhorias of Surat also outlawed the use of alcohol within their caste.200
By as November of 1886, Jama Jamshed could report that, “the movement to abstain
from the use of liquor now appears to have been joined by the whole of the Bulsar
Taluka.” In 1887 the movement penetrated some of the princely states of Rajasthan,
where the leather-working Chamars joined in prohibiting the use of alcohol. Native
Christian groups, sensitive to accusations that their sect was best recognized by their
drinking, followed suit, punishing drinkers with, “excommunication.”201
At least some of the time, the decision for group abstention from alcohol use
could be fairly democratic. Thana’s Arunodaya reported 1,100 agriculturalists between
Bhandup and Kolshet had agreed at one such meeting that the use of alcohol would be
punished by a caste fine of Rs. 50.202 The Parsi-owned Jama Jamshed’s correspondent
noted that, “excepting the Parsis, almost all the classes of people…have, it is said, to
resolved to abstain from it.”203
Concerned with the ability to purchase safe alcohol at reasonable prices, the antidrink movement of this period was at first decidedly lower-class affair, drawing little
commentary from prominent nationalists of the time. Bombay Samachar reported that,
“no educated Native gentlemen” were involved in the movement.204 Class was
fundamental to the matter as “the poor openly complained of the government plundering
199
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 12-13. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
200
Ibid.
201
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 10-11. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1887.
202
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 2. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
203
Ibid.
204
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 12-13. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
81
the people with a view to replenish their treasury,” amounting to nothing less than,
“sucking the blood of the people.”205
Some critics of the strike placed its impetus in the hands of “Brahmin wirepullers,” in an attempt to discount the credibility of the movement.206 Bombay’s AngloMarathi Native Opinion excoriated those critics, writing, “the poor people of [Bombay]
have often complained of the exorbitant taxes on their native drinks.”207
Those taxes
were now so severe that, “toddy almost disappeared or was made so dear as to be
inaccessible to the ordinary people.” Far from being a movement inspired by the upper
classes, this people’s movement, “laid down a lesson worth of being imitated by the most
advanced sections of the native community. Talk loudly as we may of our education,
these uneducated people have put us all to shame.”208
By the end of 1887, elites had indeed begun to take an interest in the movement
and were thus praised for their newfound interest in the drinking habits of the poor.
Bombay Samachar congratulated, “some individuals of the higher classes of the Hindus
[for] taking interest in the spontaneous temperance leagues among the poor classes of
people in the Konkan and Gujarat who have entered into the union for the purposes of
escaping from the severities of the abkari laws.”209
As with most social movements spread over a large geographical space,
determining its degree of social adherence is difficult. Surely, not all within a given
village-based caste supported the decision to abstain from alcohol. Indeed, the levying of
205
Ibid.
206
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, 1886." 5-6. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
207
Ibid.
208
Ibid.
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 12-13. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
209
82
fines rather than strict excommunication seems to have been the rule, though there were
some notable exceptions. The levying of fines hints at fears that at least some drinkers
would persist in the habit despite the proscription. Attaching a fine to the violation rather
than social ostracism suggests that those changing the policy were keen to avoid the
social upheaval associated with expelling from their caste those who continued to drink.
On the other hand, the word most often used to describe these movements is
“spontaneous.” Since the anti-abkari and anti-drink sentiment emerging was not ex
nihilo, we can assume that the ‘spontaneity’ of the movement lies in the fact that its
impetus was found outside of more typical centers of social power. That is to say, large
numbers of drinking Indians were sufficiently unhappy with abkari policy that they
organized publically to change it. Moreover, this agitation against the policy was large
enough to provoke a response from Government.
Faced with a lack of funds from the once lucrative tax on alcohol production and
consumption in 1886, the Government of Bombay found itself faced with something of a
dilemma. One the one hand, allowing a mass movement among the lower classes to
dictate public policy would undermine the authority of British rule. On the other hand,
the strike impaired the ability of the state to collect revenue from the population. Further,
those Indians who held licenses were now petitioning the government to relent on the
guaranteed minimum payments to the state demanded under some licenses because sales
had dropped significantly. Government responded to the new crisis with an attempt to
limit the ability of caste panchayats to penalize the use of alcohol by its members.
Some local magistrates responded to caste proscriptions on alcohol by attacking
such activities as illegal. Local officials carefully observed villages, with police patels
83
receiving instructions to, “report immediately to head-quarters all gatherings of the
people, as though there is treason in the [liquor strike] movement.”210 In 1886, at the
onset of the liquor strike, Bombay’s newspapers had urged Government to state publicly
that it would not interfere with the desire of “the people…to improve their morals by
abstinence,” and to refrain from, “placing obstacles in the way of these determinations of
the people.”211 Yet Indians associated with the anti-drink movement were targeted by
the police for harassment. One case which received some notoriety involved an Inamdar
(landowner) who, in connection with the movement was forcibly disrobed, “treated
roughly and degraded…in terms of food and then harassed.”212 Arundoya lamented of
the case, “does it not throw discredit upon the goodness of the English? Do they look
upon the Hindus as so many worms?”213
Local magistrates were invested with a great deal of discretion regarding what
steps to take against “unlawful combinations.” Police began arresting villagers who took
leading roles in the drink strike. One particular hotspot was in Kolaba, where the
Poona’s Marathi-language Sri Shivaji accused a magistrate of, disrespect, abusive
language, and imprisoning leaders of the movement. The writer warned in this
connection that, “British rule would not last long,” if Government persisted in placing
210
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 12-13. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
211
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 2. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
212
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 9. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1887. It is
noteworthy that although the drink strikes at this point were not explicitly associated with purity,
Government chose to harass this strike-organizer by “degrading him in terms of food.” To foster the drink
trade under now current arrangement, the magistrates were polluting local leaders. In at least this case,
Government officials reinforced the connection between alcohol use and pollution. Government
bureaucrats further indicted the purity of drink strikers by degrading their leaders. If drink had long been a
marker of low status, Government associated it even further with pollution.
213
Ibid.
84
“political” considerations before, “morality.”214 One particular case in the Panvel Taluka
of Kolaba featured the trial of eight “agriculturalists” convicted of ‘intimidation against
intemperance and sentenced to seven days’ rigorous imprisonment.” This struck the
Poona Vaibhav as something that, “smacks the Mogul policy, destined to estrange the
hearts of the public.”215
Strong feelings were present on both sides, and it should be noted here that even
supporters of the anti-drink strike observed that, in a minority of cases, “overly zealous
men, in the desire to have their temperance rules obeyed, have gone beyond the law and
used physical violence in enforcing temperance.”216 Nevertheless, the draconian
response of the Kolaba magistrate even drew the attention of the Free Church of
Scotland, which petitioned the Government of Bombay to end the practice of, “forbidding
all interference with the buying and selling of liquor [and]…for endeavouring to restrain
[Indians] from indulgence in strong drink.”217 The organization would later send a
petition to the Government of Bombay, asking for an immediate enquiry into
Government interference with, “a Temperance Society working among fellow
countrymen.”218 Noting with “mortification” the stance of Government in the matter, the
Anglo-Marathi Dnyadoya condemned, “opposition to the important temperance
214
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 12. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1887.
215
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, 1886." 7-8. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
216
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 16. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
Scotland, General Assembly of the Free Church of. "Petition on Intemperance." In Revenue, Bombay, 1.
Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1887.
217
218
Bradshaw, Chairman, Mission Hall High Street, Edinburgh. "Letter to the Governor of Bombay." In
Revenue, Bombay, 1. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1887.
85
movement.219 Critics complained that Government saw, “their combination as a sort of
revolt which they would gladly put down if they could.”220
The Colonial Government was not alone in its stance against the anti-liquor strike;
it found its natural allies among the large-scale alcohol producers who had replaced the
Bhandaris. During the strike, critics observed that the movement had, “so decidedly
diminished the sale of liquor in some places as to alarm the liquor sellers [who]…are
actively engaged by intimidation and bribery in endeavouring to break up this
combination against their iniquitous traffic.”221 For the first time, the Government of
Bombay found itself explicitly allied with liquor sellers in their effort to break the liquor
strike. Once firmly ensconced in village economies, the production of alcohol now took
place both spacially and politically outside of the community. Critics were quick to
observe that the current state of affairs was advantageous only to Government and, to
“liquor farmers.”222
Although Government had shed its responsibilities to Bhandaris
and other small scale producers, it became forever wed to the fortunes of large-scale
producers. The relationship between large-scale alcohol producers and British
Government administrators would consistently be made exposed and condemned
throughout the nationalist movement. From this point forward, British administrators and
alcohol monopolists saw their fortunes bound together, a relationship that would
eventually provide a central plank of the nationalist movement.
219
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 12-13. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
220
Ibid.
221
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 16. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
222
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 2. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
86
In 1887 the magistrate of Kolaba, Alfred Keyser, found himself compelled to
rescind a notification, “distributed throughout the district,” outlawing caste proscriptions
on liquor use.223
Bombay’s Indu Prakash was not alone when it asked, “what right has
the Collector of a district to tell that community or any of its members that any one
forcing people to abstain from drink will be prosecuted?”224
The conservative and
nationalist Poona Vaibhav suggested that, “Government are afraid that if we succeed in
our anti-liquor league we may succeed in similar other leagues and thus endanger British
Government.”225 Keyser was ultimately forced to rescind his, “puerile order by proper
authorities.”226 The way in which the nullification of that notice proceeded, with merely
sending the new edict to “village officers” rather than posting it more publicly, exhibits
some degree of humiliation on the part of the magistrate. Thana’s Arundoya complained
that the magistrate should have rescinded the notification with all the fanfare with which
the initial edict has been promulgated so that, “they have full liberty to resolve to not
drink liquor.”227
The response of authorities to the liquor strike proved nothing less than an
unmitigated disaster for the Colonial Government. In some cases, the crackdown itself
was cited as the very reason for participating in the strike. As late as 1890, some
individual magistrates were still prosecuting those seen as responsible for spreading the
liquor strike. Bombay’s Anglo-Marathi, Vartahar, praised the fishermen and Dublas of
223
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 8-9. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1887.
224
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, 1886." 7-8. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
225
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 2. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
226
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, 1886." 7-8. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1886.
227
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." 8-9. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1887.
87
Thana for responding to, “the oppression of punitive police” for “unanimously” agreeing
to abstain from liquor use. The police, Vartahar sarcastically suggested, should be
thanked for their oppression for otherwise, “these men would never have given up the
vice to which they have been long addicted.”228 Government flew its obstinacy like a
flag, turning what might have been a minor excise policy issue into a public fight pitting
the colonial state against virtually all sectors of the Indian public, including a nascent, yet
burgeoning, Indian temperance movement.
This line of government criticism grew in prominence from 1890. The notion that
those involved in the liquor strike had been “addicted” to drink is an important deviation
from the original intent of the strikers. The stated goal of liquor strikers from 1887 had
been to reduce the price and increase the quality of drink. By 1889 the movement’s new
supporters backed the efforts to the lower classes to rid themselves of, “vice,” never a
stated goal of the movement. As middle class reformers rose to the defense of liquor
strikers in the 1890’s, they appropriated and reconfigured the meanings and social
significance of the movement. The original goal of reducing the cost of alcohol was
subsumed by the importance of Indian morality in the face of Government of India
oppression.
Government’s attempted crack-down on the ability of caste organizations to
police the drink habits of their ranks drew the ire of middle class Indians. Government’s
actions against poorer liquor-strikers energized the drink strike with implications far
beyond initial concerns with price and access. What was once a matter of economics
became one of Indian morality in the face immoral British governance. Where once
middle-class reformers focused their energies primarily on seeing alcohol use removed
228
Sathe, G.M. "Native Newspaper Report, Bombay." 14. Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1890.
88
from ‘respectable’ areas, they now set to the task defending the rights of Indians to
dictate their own social affairs. Government interference with the behavior of Western
India’s drinkers ran afoul of both liberal constitutionalist reformers such as Dinshaw
Waccha and staunchly conservative nationalists like Lokmanya Tilak.
In 1891, hundreds of the inhabitants of Thana sent a petition to Lord Reay, the
Governor in Council of Bombay, complaining about the monopoly system with its
incumbent increases in both prices and adulteration. In one of Government’s first
reversals on the issue of drink, the duration of licenses for the sale of alcohol were
reduced from 12 to 5 months.229 In a capitulation to toddy drinkers, taxes on toddy palms
and licenses for tree-foot stands were also lowered, allowing some Bhandaris to resume
their trade. Large-scale producers still controlled much of the drink market, but this
reduction in taxes was sufficient to induce the petitioners to, “see that toddy is sold
cheap, in order that it may come within the means of the poor.”230 An auction system
was introduced, prompting some competition from competing monopolists over a limited
number of licenses for favored locations.
Although monopolists still accounted for a great deal of the production, the price
of toddy was reduced, making it much more affordable for the drinking classes of
Western India. Accordingly, the drink strike lost much of its momentum. Villages that
had sworn off drink slowly gravitated back towards allowing the use of alcohol,
229
Dorabji, Manjii and others, owners of Toddy trees, Bhundaries, ryots, agricultural labourers and others,
Inhabitants of the Taluka Dahanu and Peta Umargaum in the Thana District. "Petition." In Revenue,
Bombay, 4. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1891.
230
Dorabji Nanjibhai and others, Inhabitants of the Taluka of Dahanu-Umargaum in the Thana District.
"Petition to Lord Reay, Govenor and President in Council, Bombay." In Revenue, Bombay, 4. Mumbai:
Maharashtra State Archives, 1891.
89
continuing to strike intermittently as local abkari arrangements were altered.231 Despite
the brevity of the drink strike, its scale made an impression on British temperance
advocates who now saw former drink strikers as low-hanging fruit for campaign they
would launch in India. International temperance activists like The Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association (AITA) and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union WCTU
in tandem with middle class Indians prepared to make their mark.
231
On-again off-again liquor strikes continued to puzzle European temperance advocates. See Caine, W.S.
"Mahant Kesho Ram Roy and the Surat Liquor Strike." Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 20 (1895): 1.
90
CHAPTER III:
STRANGE BREW: ALLIES AND ADVERSARIES IN INDIAN TEMPERANCE,
1890-1919
Introduction
An influential Temperance Association has been formed in Poona. Its inaugural meeting
was held in the General Library Hall on August 20th 1907, the Hon. Mr. G.K. Gokhale,
C.I.E., president, being the chair. About a hundred leading members of the various
communities in Poona joined the society which has the support of Mr. B.G. Tilak and
many other prominent men in the city. The secretaries are Mr. L.R. Gokhale Pleader, Mr.
N.C. Kelkar (editor of the Mahratta), and the Rev. A. Robertson, M.A. All the
missionaries have joined in the effort. The Committee have already taken steps to
educate public opinion and to secure a more restrictive administration of the Excise laws.
–Frederick Grubb232
As soon as the temperance movement is found to be represented by Messrs. Tilak and
Kelkar, it is as idle to say it is not political as to say that a meeting organized by Miss
Pankhurst did not aim at female suffrage. Such others are working with them to some
extent (Messrs. [missionaries] Macnichol and H. Mann) are of course their dupes.—
F.G.H. Anderson, Assistant Collector, Poona.233
In this chapter I examine the beginnings of large-scale temperance agitation in
India and the diverse coalition that supported it from the 1890’s through 1919, with a
particular emphasis on a “temperance disturbance” occurring in Poona in 1908. I argue
that temperance organizations born of cooperation between British temperance activists
and early Indian nationalists created an important political space for the incubation of
Indian nationalism.234 Long before overt calls for home rule were utterable in the public
232
Frederick Grubb ed., "Cuttings from the Press," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 71 (1908).
233
F.G.H. Anderson, Personal Assitant to the Collector of Poona, "Report on Poona Disturbances," in
Judicial, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1908).
234
Ian Tyrrell wrote in 1991, “…the role of the WCTU remains an almost totally neglected aspect of the
historical development of Indian cultural nationalism.” And so too are the roles of the AITA (as discussed
91
sphere, temperance organizations created a rhetorical space within which very pointed
criticism of colonial rule on moral grounds was possible, along with the implication that
the problem of temperance was solely a colonial construction. That is to say, that if
alcoholism was a product of empire, then empire itself was to blame.
Secondly, I will argue that during this period several castes long associated with
drinking, many of which had participated in the drink strikes of the 1880’s, moved
towards temperance, enacting penalties for drinking. This movement towards the
abstention of alcohol has been erroneously attributed to the conscious imitation of highcaste norms, or “sanskritization.” Both the colonial government and the nascent
nationalist movement had largely turned a deaf ear towards the grievances of the drinking
classes related to access, quality, and price of alcohol.
From the 1890’s through 1920,
those same low-caste groups began “spontaneous” temperance and prohibition
organizations, resisting elites—both Indian and British—who had earlier ignored their
pleas. Temperance organizations like the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association (AITA)
visited these areas, attempting to channel local anger regarding alcohol policy into the
formation of local temperance organizations that would affiliate with the AITA.
“Support” for these movements carried with it the marginalization of low-caste
temperance associations under the larger umbrella of regional, national, and international
temperance organizations let by Britons, Americans, and high-caste Indians.
I will begin the chapter with a description of the earliest organized temperance
activities in India, most of them associated with the efforts of the AITA. Prominent
members of the AITA like W.S. Caine and Thomas Evans travelled across the
in this chapter) and the Prohibition League of India, discussed in Chapter four. Ian R. Tyrrell, Woman's
world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international perspective, 18001930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Caronina Press, 1991). 164.
92
subcontinent in the 1880’s and 1890’s, working with Indians to form local temperance
organizations in cities and on college campuses.235 These organizations were peopled by
Indian activists who would later become key figures in the nationalist movement. It will
become evident that the AITA served as a network for early nationalists, publishing a
journal, Abkari, that documented the sins of colonial rule in various localities. The airing
of grievances against the colonial state in a single journal played a vital role in integrating
myriad local disputes within India into a single, national discourse. It has long been
argued, and correctly so, that the common experience of colonialism was largely
responsible for the formation of a distinctly Indian identity. This chapter will argue that
temperance work in India is an under-examined contributing factor towards that national
identity.
I will also discuss how the temperance component of early nationalism influenced
the demographics, and thus, the social character, of the Indian National Congress (INC,
or Congress). From its foundation, the INC was peopled by high-caste men, many of
whom were the products of English-language education. These current and former
students were the focus of criticism from conservative, high-caste Indians who expressed
anxieties that students exposed to Western culture were being degraded by that contact.
One reason for the dramatic level of student participation in, and in the formation of,
temperance organizations stemmed from a conscious defense of their continued Indianness despite close contact with Europeans and their institutions.
235
W.S. Caine was a co-founder of the AITA and author of a Parliamentary statement condemning colonial
alcohol policies in India. Thomas Evans was the AITA’s first paid lecturer in India.
93
Early Stirrings of Indian Temperance
The Indian temperance movement was born in an imperial context as a
cooperative effort between British and American temperance activists and high-caste
Indians in the 1880’s. Prior to this time, rhetoric within India about alcohol was most
frequently infused with the language of caste. That is to say, an historically abstemious
past for India had not yet been created, and the value of a temperate Indian had not yet
been generalized. As shown in chapter two, a large number of Indians had been doing a
great deal of drinking in the late 19th century. Revenue from abkari sales marched
steadily higher and higher. This increase in abkari revenue did not go unnoticed by
educated, elite Indians or by British temperance activists. Reports of growing revenue
from alcohol taxes alarmed and then brought together progressive British temperance
men and western-educated Indians who were pioneers in the nascent Indian nationalist
movement.
Imperial administrators were consummate record-keepers and Western-educated
Indians soon used those very records to question the nature, if not the very legitimacy, of
British rule. The colonial city of Bombay was home to a number of Western-educated
Indians like Dinshaw Edulji Wacha and Dadabhai Naoroji who used data created by
British administrators to interrogate India policy. In 1867, Naoroji, “the Grand Old Man
of India,” put forward his famous “drain theory”: the notion that British rule simply
drained capital out of the Indian economy without reciprocity, thereby depriving the
country of substantial economic resources. As a professor of mathematics and natural
philosophy he was well-equipped for the task of criticizing the colonial economy.
Similarly, Wacha’s training in economics, his sharp mind, and sharper tongue made him
94
an ideal critic of the effects of British rule. His attacks on military spending and excise
taxes vis-à-vis poverty earned him the epithet, “the Firebrand of Bombay.”236
In the winter 1887, Member of Parliament and staunch temperance man, W.S.
Caine visited India for the first time. In Bombay he was met by a deputation, “consisting
of influential citizens-Hindus, Moslems, Parsees and Christians [who]…expressed a
strong desire that some organization should be formed in England” to act in Parliament,
and “also for the purpose of promoting and assisting an agitation throughout India for
drastic restriction of liquor traffic.”237 The deputation of “educated Hindoos,” as Caine’s
biographer described them, called his attention to “the abuses of the Excise
administration.”238 Wacha and Naoroji, both Parsis, were among the deputation asking
for Caine’s help in preventing “the Government policy of demoralizing the country.”239
On the 24th July, 1888, after his return to England, Caine formed the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association (AITA).240
AITA Activism in Britain
For the first year of the AITA’s existence, the organization focused on
parliamentary action in London rather than working within India itself. British
administrators in India were casually dismissive of allegations impugning abkari
administration. Official opinion among these administrators tended to echo those of C.B.
Pritchard, Commissioner for Sind, who wrote with regard to excise,
236
Dinshaw E. Wacha, in Voices of Indian Freedom Movement, ed. J.C. Johari (New Delhi: Akashdeep
Publishing House, 1993).
237
Frederick Grubb, Fifty Years Work in India: My Temperance Jubilee, 1st ed. (London: H.J. Rowling
and Sons, 1942).
238
239
240
John Newton and Alexander Maclaren, W.S. Caine, M.P. : a biography (London: J. Nisbet, 1907), 236.
Henry J. Osborn, "Mr. Caine’s report to the President," I, no. 5 (1891).
Ibid.
95
There is no subject on which the recent action of Government, especially in the Bombay
Presidency, has been more persistently and mischievously misrepresented by the public
press, and none, I think, on which more misunderstanding prevails even among persons
who have sought for information. Under these circumstances the publication of an
authoritative exposition of the policy pursued and of results obtained is likely to be
useful. I would suggest that copies of the papers be circulated to the missionaries and
chaplains and Temperance Societies as well as to newspaper editors and Native
Associations. Many of the misstatements that attracted attention in England have
emanated from missionaries and other persons interested in the spread of temperance,
who are altogether ignorant of the real facts of the case.241
Likely adding to the frustration of colonial officials was that the AITA facilitated
communications between temperance activists in Britain and Indian critics on the
subcontinent. Pritchard noted with some consternation that abkari data and
accompanying criticisms reported in the Bombay Gazette had “not yet been published by
the Government of India but have [only] been published as a Parliamentary paper and
four letters under the signature of "’D.E.W.’"242 Criticism of colonial alcohol policies
originating in Britain appeared on the pages of Indian newspapers before the Government
of India could respond. Dinshaw Edulji Wacha’s association with Caine and the AITA
was already paying dividends. But with the complaints of “educated Indians” ignored in
India and the AITA membership labeled as naive, the AITA moved to change public and
governmental opinion in Britain.
On April 30, 1889, Caine and his temperance allies in Parliament achieved
something of a legislative coup.243 He and Samuel Smith244 offered for the House of
Commons a resolution that
241
C.B. Pritchard, "Letter to Lord Reay, Governor and President in Council, Bombay," in Revenue,
Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1887), 145.
242
"Untitled Note," in Revenue, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1887).
243
Temperance was a key aspect of Liberal politics in the 1880’s and 1890’s. It haunted Liberals and
contributed to electoral defeats as Conservatives allied with the drink industry. See David M. Fahey,
96
In the opinion of this house, the fiscal system of the Government of India leads to the
establishment of spirit distilleries, liquor and opium shops in large numbers of places,
where, till recently, they never existed, in defiance of native opinion and the protest of the
inhabitants, and that such increased facilities for drinking produce a steadily increasing
consumption, and spread misery and ruin among the industrial classes of India, calling
for immediate action on the part of the Government of India with a view to their
abatement.245
The motion carried, 113 to 103, sending the Government of India scrambling to rebut
criticisms that could no longer be ignored.
Interested members of Parliament were in a position to demand that colonial
authorities respond to the criticisms of their Indian subjects. Caine forwarded the
findings of a local Indian temperance worker, Sabapathy Moodeliar, reporting a large
number of liquor shops in Bellary. In internal memos, the Government of Madras was
confident that “local Government will, doubtless, expose Mr. Moodeliar” and looked
forward to taking, “any steps against Mr. Moodeliar for supplying a Member of
Parliament with such inaccurate information.”246 Much to the disappointment of the
Government of Madras, Moodeliar’s information was reliable and he was safe from these
“steps.” He and other Indian temperance workers could count on the support of
"Temperance and the Liberal Party - Lord Peel's Report, 1899," Journal of British Studies 10, no. 2 (1971):
133.
244
Samuel Smith was a former cotton dealer from Liverpool who had long known and admired Dadabhai
Naoroji. He was a cofounder of the Anglo Indian Temperance Association along with Caine and Naoroji.
For more information regarding the cooperation of early Indian nationalists with liberal members of
Parliament, see Mary Cumpston, "Some Early Indian Nationalists and Their Allies in the British
Parliament, 1851-1906," The English Historical Review 76, no. 299 (1961).
245
246
Newton and Maclaren, W.S. Caine, M.P. : a biography: 237.
Government of India, "Excise, General Matters, Letter from Mr. W.S. Caine, M.P., concerning Liquor
Shops in the Towns of Adony and Hospet in the Bellary District of the Madras Presidency," ed. Separate
Revenue Department of Finance and Commerce, Excise, General Matters. A-Proceedings, Excise, General
Matters (Shimla: Government of India, 1890), 3.
97
important politicians in London, mitigating the heavy-handed proclivities of the colonial
state.
AITA activities in Britain were not conducted by Britons alone. Dadabhai
Naoroji, the first non-Anglo member of Parliament, was among the founders of the
AITA. With the help of AITA members, and fellow members of Parliament, William
Wedderburn, and Caine, Naoroji attempted to apply pressure to the colonial state through
a different avenue—he penned a personal note to the Queen accompanied by a pamphlet
on Indian drink policy.247 The letter was returned by the Queen’s personal secretary, A.
Briggs, who initially ignored it, replying after a third copy was received that the package
“deals with subjects of a controversial nature and could not be submitted to Her
Majesty.”248 After some delay, and likely some deliberation on the matter, Briggs
asserted that sending the letter to the Secretary of State for India was a more appropriate
choice.249 Occurring seven years after the Parliamentary resolution on the need to abate
drinking in India, this rebuff likely offered some solace to the Secretary of State. The
colonial government still had to answer to Parliament, but it appeared they would not
have the added problem of placating a displeased Queen.
Other British Temperance Organizations and India
The AITA was not the only organization working in Britain for temperance in
India, and it was far from the first one founded. Other institutions like the United
Kingdom Alliance (est. 1852) the British and Foreign Temperance Society (est. 1831)
247
See William Wedderburn, "Letter to D. Naoroji," in Dadabhai Naoroji (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library,
1895). And W.S. Caine, "Letter to Dadabhai Naoroji," in Dadabhai Naoroji (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1896).
248
A. Briggs, "Letter to D. Naoroji," in Dadabhai Naoroji (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1896).
249
Ibid.
98
had long technically included temperance in India among their goals. Yet despite their
international (or imperial) scope they had little influence on Indian policy and virtually
none among Indians living in India. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union,
founded in the United States in 1874, counted a large membership in Britain but had
relatively little impact on India policy within Britain. Its influence in India, on the other
hand, was much greater and will be discussed below.
The International Order of the Good Templars (IOGT) had branches across
Britain and boasted over 96 lodges in India in 1900.250 There were approximately 3,500
Templars in India, with membership drawn primarily from “British soldiers with a
sprinkling of civilians and natives.”251 Although there were notable exceptions and some
controversy, Templar lodges, particularly in the southern United States and in India,
tended to be segregated by race. However, London’s “Indian” Templar lodge invited
“enrollment of natives of India, and others, desiring to become associated with a WorldWide Temperance Association, admitting all nationalities and religions into
membership.” 252 But British-populated lodges in India had fought to remain racially
segregated in practice if not by rule. After all, as one British Templar in India
250
William W. Turnbull, The Good templars (n. p.,1901). 153. Founded in the United States in 1850, the
IOGT was truly international in scope, with lodges across the globe. Its constitution was surprisingly
egalitarian for the time, inviting membership from all “races” within their lodges. The facts on the ground,
proved different entirely. David Fahey has written about a split in this organization over the refusal of
American (particularly southern) lodges to racially integrate. Most British Templars argued against this,
eventually splitting from their American brethren. Yet beneath this veneer of racial harmony, most British
lodges remained effectively segregated and in India, officially so. See David M. Fahey, Temperance and
racism : John Bull, Johnny Reb, and the Good Templars (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky,
1996). Despite the large number of Templar lodges in India, little archival evidence remains.
251
252
Turnbull, The Good templars: 153.
International Order of Good Templars, "Advertisement for International Order of Good Templars,
"Indian Lodge"," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 106
(1916).
99
commented, “should open our doors wider for our coloured brothers than for our own
race?”253 Indian lodges eventually trod a middle path, with some local lodges admitting
Indians and others not. British IOGT members supporting their Indian sympathizers
encouraged them “to open a Native lodge and to frame a set of rules inculcating such
principles as has been tried in their own case and have proved fruitful in harmonising
mutual relations and creating brotherly love.”254 In a colonial context, “brotherly love”
was often best enjoyed in segregated lodges. Nominally integrated lodges practicing
racial segregation could still count on the Grand Lodge of India’s constitution, which
endorsed a black-ball system and thus allowed racial segregation to continue in the name
of generalized exclusivity.255
The activities of the IOGT in late 19th and early 20th century India are obscure.
Pictures of lodge members appear in the journals of other temperance organizations.
These other temperance organizations, like the AITA and the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU), noted the involvement of IOGT members in joining other
temperance organizations, occasionally sharing resources like bioscopes and temperance
literature. Despite the number of lodges in India, their own records remain elusive.
Extant sources suggest that the Indian IOGT concentrated more on the social dimension
of a fraternal order of teetotalers than on politics. That said, individual members of the
IOGT were very active in numerous other organizations that focused a good deal more on
253
Anonymous, "Untilted Editorial," The Good Templar Journal: A Monthly Devoted to the Cause of Total
Abstinence 1, no. 3 (1878).
254
"Report of the Fourteenth National Social Conference Held in Lahore on 30th December 1900,"
(Poona: Indian National Social Conference, 1900), 45.
255
Independent Order of Good Templars, Independent Order of the Good Templars, Grand Lodge of India,
Constitution and Bye-Laws, Grand and Subordinate Lodges (Ahmedabad: Grand Lodge of India, 1879).
41.
100
reaching out to the unconverted. For instance, Harold Mann, head of the Grand IOGT
lodge of India, was also an active member of the AITA whose contributions frequently
appeared in Abkari, The Indian Temperance Record and White Ribbon, and other
temperance journals in India and abroad. The 1900 Indian National Social Conference
praised the IOGT for, “taking a great interest by co-operating and sympathising with us
in our undertakings. They now and then deliver lectures in English and have a shown a
great fervour and zeal in furtherance of the cause.”256
There were also some indigenous efforts concerning alcohol along gender lines.
During the nationalist period, Indian men competed with British administrators to
“protect Indian women.”257 One way to “protect” women was by keeping the bar or
drink-stand as an exclusively male space. Alarmed by the appearance of Indian
“barmaids,” Indian social organizations joined the AITA in petitioning Calcutta that “no
woman shall be employed in connection with [liquor sales] in any capacity.”258 This
“protection” of Indian women removed the option of participating in the liquor trade for
low-status women, but at the cost of occupation. Women who could at one time profit
from their degraded status as liquor women found themselves no longer able to do so in
Calcutta after 1901.
Bhalchandra Krishna, a respected physician and member of the Bombay
Municipal Corporation, delivered a petition to achieve the same reforms in Bombay in
256
"Report of the Fourteenth National Social Conference Held in Lahore on 30th December 1900," 45.
257
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial masculinity : the 'manly Englishman' and the' effeminate Bengali' in the late
nineteenth century, Studies in imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press; Distributed
exclusively in the USA and Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1995).
258
Frederick Grubb, "Barmaids in India," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 47 (1901): 116.
101
1901. Numerous European and Indian led temperance organizations signed on to the
petition.259 Yet the effort failed in Bombay the next year, stymied by the British
Government of Bombay.260 In December of 1905 Krishna vented his frustration that
despite the fact that keeping women out of bars was a “moral cause,” the Government of
India saw nothing, “offensive or objectionable in the presence of women at liquorbars.”261 Elite Indian men were already “protecting” Indian women by protesting the
proximity of liquor shops to places “frequented by women or respectable homes.”262 The
Government of India, on the other hand, hardly recognized this as a moral problem at all.
This distinction between British and Indian protection of Indian womanhood become
more important as the nationalist movement grew in strength. If British masculinity
proved unequal to the task of protecting Indian women, Indian men could not but
intervene.
Colonial Government Response to
Temperance Activism in Britain
The colonial government mobilized to defend itself against the charge that it was
contributing to the moral degeneration of India. Officials recorded instances of press
259
Organizational signatories included the AITA, the Independent Order of Rechabites, The independent
Order of Good Templars, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, The Church of England Temperance
Society, the Free Church of Scotland, the Young Men’s Christian Association, The Bombay Temperance
Union, the Kshatriya Temperance Association, the Telugu Temperance Association, the Khoja Social
Progress Union, the Zoroastrian Brotherhood, the Arya Samaj, the Aryan Social Union, the Bhatia Mitra
Mandal, the Maratha Aikechhu Mandal, the Phathare Prabhu and the Prabhu Social Samaj. See Sir
Bhalchandra Krishna, "Letter to Chief Secretary of Government, Revenue Division," in Revenue, Bombay
(Bombay: Maharashtra State Archive, 1901).
260
Frederick Grubb, "Barmaids in Bombay," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 48 (1902): 49-50.
261
Sir Bhalchandra Krishna, "Address Delivered at the Second All-India Temperance Conference Held at
Benares on December 26th, 1905," in Revenue, Bombay (Bombay: Maharashtra State Archives, 1905).
262
Syed Shamsuddin Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, 1907," (Bombay: Bombay, 1907).
102
criticism both in India and within Britain. They noted the similarity of criticisms posited
by Wacha in the Indian press and by Caine in the British press and sent their own
rebuttals to newspapers, arguing against Caine and his Indian allies.263 Yet abkari
revenue in the 1880’s was generally higher than hitherto and in this sense, the
Government of India’s own records seemed to bolster criticism that intemperance was on
the rise. Administrators attributed the increase in revenue to more effective taxation
methods, the “gradual relaxation of caste restrictions, to increased prosperity and
consequently greater purchasing power.”264 In other words, growing abkari revenue
indicated not degradation, but social and economic progress.
Yet Parliament’s 1889 resolution required more than responses confined to the
press alone. The Government of India took eight months to provide a formal response to
the House of Commons. It steadfastly maintained its position that its critics were
ignorant of the facts on the ground. That said, the colonial government had to
acknowledge increasing anxieties on the part of some Indian subjects regarding what they
perceived as growing intemperance. Colonial administrators thus settled on a policy they
hoped would mitigate these anxieties without unduly affecting the dependable revenue
stream.
“Local option,” the principle that local people had the democratic right to
determine whether to allow alcohol within their area, had long existed in the public
263
"A--Proceedings, December," ed. Separate Revenue Department of Finance and Commerce, Excise,
General Matters. A-Proceedings, Bombay Government Requested to Furnish the Government of India with
a Copy of the Reply that may be sent to the Secretary of State regarding Mr. Wacha's Pamphlet on the
Excise and Liquor Question in the Bombay Presidency (Simla: Government of India, 1889), 4.
264
Government of India, "Correspondence on the Subject of the Alleged Increase of Intemperance in India
Ending with a Despatch to Secretary of State Forwarding the Opinion of the Governmnet of India on the
Whole Question," ed. Separate Revenue Department of Finance and Commerce, Excise, General Matters.
A-Proceedings (Simal: Government of India, 1887).
103
discourse on temperance and drink. As early as 1855, British temperance advocates drew
inspiration from the Maine Law of 1851 in which the American state of Maine had voted
to prohibit traffic in alcohol within its borders.265 If an entire U.S. state could outlaw
alcohol by public acclamation, then certainly it could work equally well in smaller
constituencies. The Government of India began a local option pilot program in Bengal
for experimenting with alcohol policy. This included the gradual removal of the out-still
system, causing an increase in the number of liquor shops.266 It also included a uniquely
autocratic brand of local option.
In Europe and the United States, the right of self-determination was the bedrock
upon which local option functioned. The elected legislature of state of Maine had voted
for that measure. Similarly, in Britain, temperance advocates were able to argue for
public option because they operated within a quasi-democratic state. Colonial
administrators, on the other hand, rarely consulted public opinion and legislated topdown. Local option as practiced elsewhere anathema to colonial rule. Yet in the matter
of alcohol, the Government of Bengal advised its Collectors that, “responsible
officers…[should] ascertain, though not in all cases conform to, local opinion.”267 The
Government of India found in Bengal an answer to its “ignorant” critics in India and in
265
Dawson Burns, W. S. Caine, and William Hoyle, Local option, 3d. ed. (London,: S. Sonnenschier,
1896). 16.
266
267
See chapter two for a discussion of the out-still system in greater detail.
Government of India, "Questions Affecting Generally the Principles of Excise System: Resolution by
the Government of Bengal on Mr. C.E. Buckland's Report on the Results of his Enquiry into the Systems of
Excise in Bombay and Madras," ed. Separate Revenue Department of Finance and Commerce, Excise,
General Matters. A-Proceedings, A-Proceedings, October (Shimla: Government of India, 1889), 7.
104
Britain. The Secretary of State sent out a memo to the revenue departments of the
presidencies that local opinion would be consulted, but not necessarily adhered to.268
This colonial version of local option was never more than a veneer. Indeed, some
collectors occasionally closed or moved drink shops that raised the alarm of local Indians.
But more often, they dismissed the concerns of Indians who protested liquor shops,
saying that those who petitioned for the closing and removal of shops were not truly
representative of local opinion. This reply served the needs of local collectors to keep
revenue-generating shops open, and in any case was not entirely divorced from the truth.
Those who petitioned against shops were a self-selecting group. They were more likely
to be educated, high-caste, and socially conservative. “Respectable” drinkers who
purchased (or had purchased for them) alcohol were generally not keen on the idea of
advocating for the shops publicly. Those who most often purchased liquor were of low
caste, uneducated, and less likely to protest against their employers, landlords, and social
betters in favor of liquor shops. ICS officers complained to the Secretary of State for
India that
In the first place, it is not allowable for members of the Mohammedan community to
openly countenance or tolerate in any way the consumption of spiritous liquors. The use
of spirits is forbidden by the Koran, and the representatives of this community would
undoubtedly, were it in their power, uniformly declare against the grant of licenses to sell
alcoholic stimulants. And again, notwithstanding that many Hindu gentlemen are
entirely free from all prejudice in the matter, the general feeling amongst them is adverse
to the consumption of spirits, and they would in most instances join with the
Mohammedans in negating proposals to grant licenses. On the other hand, the lowerclasses who habitually resort to stimulants, and who seldom use them in immoderate or
injurious quantities, but in many cases as an antidote to the climactic influences to which
they are exposed, are entirely unrepresented upon Municipalities and District Boards, and
would, were their supply of liquor removed, be undoubtedly forced to have resort to illicit
distillation and consumption. We are led by these consideration to the conclusion that it
268
E.F. Jenkins, "Letter to All Local Governmental Administrations on Local Option," in Revenue, Bombay
(Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1889).
105
is altogether chimerical to expect that the lower classes could by the removal of liquor
shops be driven to habits of strict temperance, and that the Government would be guilty
of a dereliction of duty if it were to permit the creation of the class tyranny that would
inevitably result from the adoption of a system of local option.269
The above argument is unquestionably self-serving from the fiscal perspective of the
colonial government, but it rings true nonetheless. As abkari revenue indicates, many
Indians were drinking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but they were not nearly as
vocal or vociferous as their temperate, conservative countrymen.270 Colonial
administrators tried to accommodate the latter by removing liquor shops from “near
market places, schools…and other places where they are likely to afford more than usual
temptations to drink or to offend local opinion.”271
Local opinion varied markedly. While the upper-castes eschewed drinking, at
least publically, imbibing was widely accepted—indeed emphatically defended—by the
members of low castes and tribal groups. Kolis, a caste organized around fishing and
known for their drinking, were particularly problematic for abkari officials. One local
official, John Lorimer, complained to his superiors that
they are very clannish in their ways and adhere closely to one another, and except for
strong reasons they do not give information against one of their own caste, but on the
contrary defend him against arrest if occasion warranted. Instances have been known
269
F.S. Roberts Lansdowne, G. Chesney, A.R. Scoble, C.A. Elliot, P.P. Hutchins, & D. Barbour, "Letter to
Viscount Cross, Her Majesty's Secretary of State for India," in Bombay, Revenue (Mumbai: Maharashtra
State Archives, 1889).
270
This also marks the beginning of an important theme in later nationalist discourse. The colonial
government allied itself with drinkers and drink-makers, an association that would prove quite damning by
the 1930’s. See chapter five.
271
India, "Questions Affecting Generally the Principles of Excise System: Resolution by the Government
of Bengal on Mr. C.E. Buckland's Report on the Results of his Enquiry into the Systems of Excise in
Bombay and Madras," 7. Colonial administrators continued a long-established pattern here of attempting
to remove liquor shops from “respectable” areas to “out of the way” locations. See chapter two for a larger
discussion of this issue.
106
where Abkari officers have been roughly handled, and difficulty is experienced in tracing
offenders of this class under the Abkari or any other law.272
No little danger was associated with abkari work among drinking populations. Lorimer
recounted that “a party of the Abkari and Opium Police met with some difficulty in
November…when the Dharallas273 made an attack on the Government men, and had it
not been for the Opium Police, who threatened to shoot the Kolis if the rioting did not
cease, matters would have ended very seriously.”274
Nevertheless, colonial “local option” was a practical solution for the Government
of India. In October of 1889, it ordered its revenue officers to “take every
precaution…regarding the licensing and location of spirit shops in their respective
areas.”275 Each collector was “first to carefully to consider the representation made by
the Abkari farmer, the proximity of other shops in the district, the distance of the villages
from neighbouring foreign territory where liquor is easily procurable, and the chances of
distillation or smuggling.”276 As one Collector explained, after consulting the local liquor
man, he “ascertained the population of the village, the castes of the villagers, their
general character as to drinking proclivities and crime, and [he] finally used to ask the
opinions of the village people themselves as to whether they wanted a shop opened
272
John Lorimer, Superintendent, Opium Preventive Services, "Letter to Commissioner of Customs, Salt,
Opium and Abkari," in Revenue, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1905).
273
Dharallas are a community among the Kolis, that British administrators labelled a “martial caste.” See
Vinayak Chaturvedi, Peasant pasts : history and memory in western India (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007). 30.
274
Lorimer, "Letter to Commissioner of Customs, Salt, Opium and Abkari."
275
Bombay Revenue Department, "Abkari: Suggestions of the Government of India as to the best method
for ensuring the payment of due regard to local public opinion in the matter of licensing liquor shops," in
Revenue, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1889).
276
Ibid.
107
there.”277 In some cases good public order mandated continued liquor sales rather than
their suppression.
It is important to note here that the AITA would not take a position in favor of
absolute prohibition of alcohol until well into the 1930’s. In fact, Wacha, a founding
member of the AITA, was a signatory to a petition sent to the Government of Bombay
asking for a decrease in taxes applicable to toddy.278 Caine argued for removing taxes on
toddy altogether.279 Other key organizations such as the Indian National Social
Conference and the Indian National Congress also avoided taking firm positions in favor
of prohibition. Although members of these organizations spoke in favor of temperance
generally, they issued no resolutions on the subject for decades. Even the Indian National
Social Conference did not pass a resolution on temperance until 1893.280 Absolute
prohibition of all alcohol was a virtually unthinkable proposition for Indian nationalists
and social activists until the 1930’s. In the early years of the 20th century, universal
temperance was not yet a value applicable to all Indians. As missionary and temperance
worker D.J. Melchizedek put it in an 1893 plea for financial support from Britain, “the
rich [in India] generally are indifferent and hence the movement suffers.”281
Another key activity of the AITA within Britain was surveillance of the
Government of India. Not willing to take the colonial government at its word, Caine and
277
Ibid.
278
Bombay Presidency Association, "Petition to the Secretary to the Government, Revenue Department,
Bombay," in Revenue, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1887).
279
Newton and Maclaren, W.S. Caine, M.P. : a biography: 241.
280
Indian National Social Conference, "Report of the Sixth Indian National Social Conference," (Lahore:
Indian National Social Conference, 1893), 41.
281
D.J. Melchizedek, An Outline of the History of 'The Temperance Mission' Est. 1893 (Madras: The
Temperance Mission, 1897). 6.
108
his fellows at the AITA used their political clout to demand answers to questions posed
by Indians that were ignored by administrators in India. Servants of the colonial
government now operated under the watchful eyes of temperance advocates back in
Britain. Acting on the information of local informants, Caine penned a letter to Lord
Cross, Secretary of State for the Government of India, complaining of a “considerable
increase in the number of liquor shops” in the Bellary district of Madras.282 Caine went
further, citing this as evidence that “the various administrations of India are continuing a
policy which has been condemned in the House of Commons.”283 The critic who tipped
off Caine to this increase was a local reformer, Sabhapathi Mudaliar. The Collector of
Bellary, probably unaccustomed to this level of scrutiny, groaned that “the introduction
of [Mudaliar’s] name into [government] correspondence is a source of unfeigned
regret.”284
The Collector of Bellary, Harry Goodrich, initially acquitted himself of Mudaliar
and Caine’s accusations, finding that Mudaliar had erroneously counted “toddy-shops” as
“liquor-shops.” Although both shops sold alcohol, it was of differing strengths and had
long been categorized differently by the British administration. In his report to Lord
Cross he averred that the number of liquor shops had actually fallen, and sneered at
Caine’s faith in the veracity of a report written by an Indian. He said of Caine that he
282
Government of India, "Alleged Increase in the Number of Liquor Shops in the Towns of Adoni and
Hospet in the Madras Presidency," ed. Separate Revenue Department of Finance and Commerce, Excise,
General Matters. A-Proceedings, A-Proceedings (Shimla: Government of India, 1889), 1.
283
284
Ibid.
"Excise, General Matters, Further information regarding the alleged increase of Toddy Shops in Hospet
and Adoni in Bellary District, Secretary of State's remarks on the reduction of licensed Spirit and Toddy
Shops in the Madras Presidency," ed. Separate Revenue Department of Finance and Commerce, Excise,
General Matters. A-Proceedings (Shimla: Government of India, 1891), 2.
109
“might have anticipated…the vague character that is apt to distinguish oriental ideas of
time and space.”285 In his parting shot at Caine he bewailed “any attempt on the part of
English party-politicians to force on the high-handed closure of shops in India, while at
the same time they neglect the reform which is so urgently called for in their own
country.”286
The Collector’s casual racism aside, one could hardly blame him for his indignant
feelings. An “oriental” had forced him to explain the details of his work before no less
august an administrator than the Secretary of State of India who would go on to report his
findings to the House of Commons. At any rate, subsequent investigations by the
Secretary of Finance and Commerce for the Government of India, J.F. Finlay, found the
Collector’s report erroneous. Lord Cross then ordered the revised numbers be published
in the Fort Saint George Gazatte.287 As the Collector of Bellary discovered to his
humiliation, an Indian who had the ear of a Member of Parliament was a powerful man
indeed.
Activism in India by the AITA and Others
AITA members worked tirelessly to influence India policy in Westminster, but
their activities in India had even greater repercussions. In 1889, before introducing his
resolution in condemnation of Indian excise policy, Caine had made his second trip to
India, this time as an official representative of the AITA in the company of the AITA’s
first paid lecturer, the Reverend Thomas Evans. Born in England, Thomas Evans was a
285
Ibid., 3.
286
Ibid., 4.
287
"Alleged Increase in the Number of Liquor Shops in the Towns of Adoni and Hospet in the Madras
Presidency," 8.
110
retired Baptist missionary of Mussoorie whose personal acquaintance with his fellow
missionaries would prove invaluable to the AITA.288 While Evans brought missionaries
into the AITA fold, Caine consciously sought out the support of prominent Indians in the
Indian National Congress.289 In fact, Caine boasted that half of the membership of the
AITA belonged to the INC and that almost all men involved in temperance work in India
were members of the INC.290 INC members frequently paid all the costs associated with
temperance meetings convened and operated by the AITA.291 This alliance between
western missionaries and Indian nationalists granted legitimacy to the former in the eyes
of the latter. Meanwhile the Government of India was loathe to crack down on
increasingly radical criticism couched in the language of temperance. From the very
beginnings of the AITA, the lines between it and the INC were blurred by design.292
The AITA also won support from what they called “purity associations,” making
the temperance movement in India truly multi-religious.293 Temperance organizations’
criticism of colonial alcohol policy with regard to alcohol resonated with nationalist
288
Lucy Carroll, "Origins of the Kayastha Temperance Movement," Indian Economic and Social History
Review 11, no. 4 (1974): 433.
289
Ibid.
290
Ibid., 434.
291
"The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform," Modern Asian Studies 10, no. 3
(1976), 421.
292
This contrasts sharply with the WCTU which, to the extent that its activists in India spoke on empire
was fairly supportive until 1920 with the appointment of Emma S. Price. She found nationalistic feeling as
a catalyst to further the temperance cause. See Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union in international perspective, 1800-1930: 166.
293
The vast majority of these purity organizations seem to have been Hindu in religious orientation.
Muslim temperance organizations were present since Caine’s first tour but remained a minority.
111
Indians as a means to achieve “unity and moral regeneration.”294 Henry J. Osborn, editor
of Abkari, praised “The various Purity associations in connection with the Various
Brahmo-Somaj and Arya-Somaj churches, [who] devote much of their time and energies
to the Temperance movement.”295 Indeed, Brahmo-Somaj also appointed travelling
lecturers to spread their gospel of abstinence.296 These organizations would remain
bulwarks against intemperance into the 1940’s.
Caine and Evans toured across India, holding “upwards of 300 meetings..[with]…
at least 250,000 persons” in attendance.297 Caine and Evans assisted in the formation of
local temperance associations that would then affiliate with the AITA. Caine and Evans
also carefully tended these organizations long after their inception. On the advice of
Evans, Caine encouraged the formation of caste-based temperance associations, the most
successful of these being the Kayastha Temperance Association.298 Caine also wanted
“special attention…given to the formation of Student’s Total Abstinence Societies. At
Bombay, Ahmedabad, Lahore, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Agra, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Patna,
Hooghly, Serampore, Howrah, Calcutta, Bhowanipore, Dacca, Madras, Madura, Bellary,
294
Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international
perspective, 1800-1930: 164.
295
Henry J. Osborn, "Purity Associations," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 14 (1893): 102.
296
Carroll, "The Temperance Movement in India: Politics and Social Reform," 424.
297
Henry J. Osborn, "Anglo-Indian Temperance Association Report," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the
Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 2 (1890): 32.
298
Carroll, "Origins of the Kayastha Temperance Movement," 434. The Kayastha Temperance Association
went so far as to publish the names of individuals found drinking prohibited alcohol in the organization’s
journal, Hitkari. See Frederick Grubb, "Kayastha Temperance Movement," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ
of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 86 (1911): 123. Kayasthas were a jati associated with
writing. Many Kayasthas worked in the employ of the colonial state as clerks and lower-level bureaucrats.
112
and many other towns and cities throughout India, vigorous Students’ Total Abstinence
Societies have been formed.”299
Students were attractive to the AITA for some important reasons. Firstly, they
were very similar to in terms of demographics, class, and caste to members of the INC
who helped make the AITA so successful. They represented the pool from which
subsequent generations of India’s elite reformists cum nationalists would emerge,
cementing (for a time) the alliance between nationalists and British temperance
advocates. Secondly, English-speaking college students were easier for monolingual
speakers like Caine to address. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Indian college
students, many of them from higher castes, found themselves under attack for
“westernizing” due to their close contact with Europeans. Indian college students
responded defensively by forming student temperance and purity associations “to create a
moral atmosphere round the student community.”300
Indian social reform organizations, temperance advocates of all stripes, and
colonial administrators, had all observed an increase in drinking among college students.
As early as 1870, the eminent Bengali reformer, Keshab Chunder Sen spoke at the United
Kingdom Alliance warning that “this poison [alcohol] was not once tasted by our uppermiddle classes, and yet now you see a different state of things.”301 In 1893, The National
Social Conference (NSC) expressed concern over their own elite members, asking them
to “include total abstinence from all intoxicating and narcotic drugs as a necessary part of
299
Osborn, "Anglo-Indian Temperance Association Report," 32.
300
Indian National Social conference, "Report of the Tenth National Social Conference Held in Calcutta on
1st January 1897," (Poona1897), 58.
301
Keshub Chunder Sen, "Liquor Traffic in India," in ULAN Livesay Papers, Preston, ed. United Kingdom
Alliance (Manchester: James Clark & Co., 1870).
113
the programme of reform, to which the members of such Associations should pledge
themselves to adhere on all occasions.”302 They further expressed gratitude to the AITA
for “doing all they possibly can to promote the cause of temperance chiefly among the
educated classes.”303 The NSC praised the results of these efforts, noting “the growing
sympathy of educated young men with the cause of temperance.”304 As Caine had put it
in 1894, “educated young men are the very backbone of the [temperance] movement in
India.”305 They also represented the future of the AITA. As Grubb would write in 1942,
“It was always understood that the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association would transfer
its main functions to its Indian collaborators so soon as the necessary organization could
be established.”306
Indian college students had good reason to be sympathetic with the mission of the
AITA. Their drinking habits came under increasing scrutiny as indicators for the moral
future of Indians of high social status, and the future looked dark indeed because some
Indian elites were already moving towards alcohol. Mary Campbell, who began
missionary work in 1880’s, recalled the “Muslim gentleman” who encouraged her to
devote more of her time to temperance work. He lamented “the present day fashion…to
drink, and offer drink, at all dinner parties, and no formal call is up to date without drink.
Western ways are not good for our people. There are men in our town who use two
302
Conference, "Report of the Sixth Indian National Social Conference," 41.
303
Ibid., 135.
304
Ibid., 136.
305
W.S. Caine, "Current Notes: Harji Ram Kaisth," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 16 (1894): 10.
306
Grubb, Fifty Years Work in India: My Temperance Jubilee: 18.
114
bottles of whisky daily in entertaining their friends.”307 Madras Christian College
Magazine also noted the new taste for drink among the upper classes:
In the City of Madras the use of foreign liquor among Indians has become distressingly
common. Attention has frequently been directed to this in the public prints [pamphlets
and posters] conducted by Indians, and, in particular, protests have from time to time
been made against the presence of a bar in the Cosmopolitan Club as a source of evil.
Besides this Club, I have been told of two clubs in Madras where Indians drink in a more
private way; and that private parties, called “upstairs parties” and “jollifications,” at
which drinking goes on, are not uncommon.308
Campbell recalled the response of local elite drinkers when she decided to begin her own
temperance work in the Punjab. She recounted the dismissive clucking of the “well-to-do
drinking classes” who wondered, “doesn’t she know that is the fashion of men of our
social standing to drink?”309 A temperance deputation visiting the Secretary of State for
India in 1912 led by AITA member, Herbert Roberts, expressed alarm over the growing
alcohol problem among “classes in which its use was previously very limited and
discredited.”310 Agnes Slack, a member of both the WCTU and the BWTU (British
Women’s Temperance Union) reported on an interview with Sir Balchandra Krishna,
who told her, “in every caste religious restrictions with regard to drink are breaking
down, largely owing to contact with the English.”311 The middle class was at the
307
Mary Campbell, The Power-House at Pathankot: What Some Girls of India Wrought by Prayer
(Philadelphia: Board of Foreign Missions of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, 1918). 28.
308
Unknown, "Clipping from Madras Christian College Magazine," in Charles Roberts Collection
(London: British Library, India Office, 1909).
309
Campbell, The Power-House at Pathankot: What Some Girls of India Wrought by Prayer: 30.
310
Government of India, "Criticisms made on the Excise Administration in India by the Temperance
Deputation which waited upon the Secretary of State in July 1912," ed. Excise A Department of Commerce
and Industry (Calcutta: Government of India, 1914), 37.
311
8.
Agnes Slack, My Travels in India (London: National British Women's Temperance Association, 1908).
115
epicenter for this breakdown of religious values. As the Indian Social Reformer put it,
the middle classes “who were not usually addicted to taking liquor,” has developed quite
a taste for imported liquor due to “the tendency to imitate western customs in this respect
and by their superior attractions and real or fancied greater respectability as compared
with the country spirit shops.”312
Colonial administrators did not contest these observations of increased drinking
among the upper class/caste young men. They granted that it had occurred during British
rule but argued that it was not because of British rule—unless, of course, a given officer
claimed that increased drinking was due to increased prosperity. In 1920 the Government
of Bombay’s revenue department reported that “the use of alcoholic liquors among the
educated classes is no doubt spreading but here it is used in moderation and cases of
drinking to excess are not common.” Three years later A.W. Pim, a United Provinces
(UP) revenue officer, attributed growing consumption to the weakening of “religious
sanctions and caste restrictions.”313 C.E. Wild, Commissioner of Excise for UP
downplayed the increase in drinking, writing, “The use of alcoholic liquors among the
educated classes is no doubt spreading but here it is used in moderation and cases of
drinking to excess are not common.”314 The Kayastha Temperance Association shared
this assessment, noting that although private drinking continued among upper caste
312
Uknown, "The Consumption of Foreign Spirits," Indian Social Reformer XIX, no. 14 (1908): 1.
313
India, "Criticisms made on the Excise Administration in India by the Temperance Deputation which
waited upon the Secretary of State in July 1912," 41.
314
Ibid., 47.
116
people, “no gentleman is now found drinking openly for he dares not defy the sense
which prevails in the community against intemperance.”315
Both passionate temperance-advocating nationalists and colonial administrators
agreed that there was an increase in drinking among the upper-classes, particularly
among educated young men. The heartfelt concern of students who founded and joined
student temperance associations for the drink problem cannot be denied. Nevertheless,
membership in a temperance organization also served another purpose—an implicit
rebuttal of the accusation that western education was necessarily connected to
intemperance. That is to say, participating in temperance activity also served as an
effective answer to critics implying that their Indian identity and social purity had been
degraded by close contacts with British educators. Indian degree-holders vocally asserted
their social status and Indian-ness through their participation in the temperance
movement. This connection with the temperance movement, specifically with the AITA,
provided them with yet another connection to nationalism due to the blurred boundaries
between the two movements.
The AITA also supplied a communication network among affiliated institutions.
The personal and institutional relationships facilitated by shared membership in the AITA
brought elite Indians from different localities together. The AITA’s Abkari provided the
names and temperance organizations and their organizers across India and reported on
their shared efforts. What the INC did in terms of knitting together far-flung elites into a
fairly cohesive movement also occurred with the AITA in a more localized manner.
Temperance organizations shared equipment (like magic lanterns, slides, and the
315
Babu Lalta Prasad Saxena, Short History of Temperance Reform in the Kayastha Community (Agra:
Moon Press, 1911). vi.
117
projector seen below), propaganda techniques, and missions. Taken in 1917, the image
below puts together two activists, Lala Nand Lal, a Hindu social reformer with Nadir
Shaw, a Muslim social reformer, united in common cause.316 Lala Nand Lal also
collaborated a great deal with Mary Campbell of the WCTU.317 The issue of temperance
formed coalitions within organizations and among organizations.
Figure 2: The Bioscope in Temperance Work, Amritsar
Source: Frederick Grubb, "The Amritsar Temperance Society," Abkari: The
Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 107 (1917): 10.
The AITA also closely watched newspaper reports and the journals of other
temperance organizations for reports of “spontaneous” temperance movements when they
316
Frederick Grubb, "The Amritsar Temperance Society," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the AngloIndian Temperance Association I, no. 107 (1917): 10.
317
Campbell, The Power-House at Pathankot: What Some Girls of India Wrought by Prayer: 24.
118
emerged among lower-caste and lower-class groups. Instances of these movements were
reported in local newspapers, watched by temperance advocates, and repeated in the
journals of temperance organizations. For instance, in 1895 the lower-caste drinking
classes of Surat collectively refused to buy government alcohol in protest of its poor
quality and high price in an echo of earlier drink strikes of the 1880’s and 1890’s.318
Acting on reports of the Surat drink strike, the AITA responded by “concentrating the
forces of our open air lecturers upon these districts.”319 In another instance the AITA
responded to a similar movement in 1905 by the Khatiks, a fruit-vending caste, by
dispatching an Indian temperance lecturer, Sirarankar Tiwari, to encourage a Kahtik
leader to “persevere in the good work he had begun, and told him to send for [Tiwari]
when a meeting of Khatiks is held again.”320
The assistance and support of the AITA for low-caste, “spontaneously-organized”
temperance agitation, also iterated the social divisions between high status temperance
activists and their low-status brothers. Providing alms to the poor was a long tradition for
high-status individuals. This new temperance work brought high-caste people into
crowds of low caste persons—a notion that resonated with European (and almost
exclusively Christian) temperance advocates.
The image below, depicting AITA temperance preacher Yashwant Javagi Debir,
reveals how images used in Indian temperance could be seen in different ways by Indian
and British members of the AITA. Christian iconographic styles were adapted for the
318
See Chapter two for a discussion of these earlier drink strikes.
319
W.S. Caine, "Current Notes," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 20 (1895): 3.
320
Temperance Lecturer Sivarankar Tiwari, "A Caste Meeting of Khatiks (or fruit-vendors)," Abkari:
The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 59 (1905): 26.
119
purposes of temperance propaganda by the AITA.321 Debir gave “open-air lectures all
the year round in the crowded bazaars and in the neighbourhood of the cotton mills
throughout Bombay.”322 In the image, Debir stands, his skin gleaming white, against a
background of dark-skinned Indians, wearing turbans. They squat on the ground or lead
against a tree as Dabir’s right hand gestures beatifically. In his left hand is a large book
which we can assume represents a religious book. Dabir and his colleagues at the AITA
brought the word of temperance to drinking (or formerly drinking) populations as a holy
cause. For Indians, Debir resembled Tilak, a Chitpavan Brahman and nationalist
firebrand discussed in greater detail below.
321
322
Caine, "Current Notes: Harji Ram Kaisth," cover.
W. S. Caine, "Mr. Caine's Report to the President," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 5 (1891): 102.
120
Figure 3: Yashwant Javagi Debir
Source: Temperance Lecturer Sivarankar Tiwari, "A Caste Meeting of Khatiks
(or fruit-vendors)," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 59 (1905): 26.
121
Both the AITA and local temperance societies organized by low-caste persons
benefited from the arrangement. AITA gained assets for gathering information about the
local implementation of abkari policy. It made it possible to claim that the AITA’s
interests extended far beyond elites. Through these contacts they were able to collect
stories of redemption from demon drink that raised the spirit of those contributing to the
coffers. This also won the AITA a respected place among global temperance
organizations. Many people were members of numerous temperance organizations at any
given time. The activities of the AITA were reported in temperance journals around the
world. Now the success of such low-caste organizations as the Tanners of Sholapur in
petitioning for the removal of a liquor shop were construed as AITA victories as well.323
Locally organized, low-caste temperance organizations also benefited from the
arrangement. The attention of AITA members, many of them with great political and
monetary resources, upon the local activities of these groups afforded them a measure of
protection from the caprice of colonial administrators. The AITA, WCTU, and other
temperance organizations often proved eager to aid these organizations with resources
from lantern slide projectors and brick-and-mortar temperance meeting halls to that most
fundamental need--food.324 Like missionaries, their mission of enlightening the
population involved charity. This forged a relationship between benefactor and recipient
that, it was hoped, would make enlightenment more likely. Temperance workers, much
323
Henry J. Osborn, "Tanners of Sholapur," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 16 (1894): 13.
324
Krishnama V.K. Chari, Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I,
no. 52 (1903): 64.
122
like the missionaries that comprised so many of their numbers, were the consummate
institution-builders.325
Of all the temperance organizations operating in India between 1890 and 1920,
the AITA and the WCTU were the most influential. The AITA had been largely (though
never entirely) sympathetic to the goals of nationalists from its inception. The WCTU,
less intentionally political, began its work in India by fusing together the causes of the
Christian mission and temperance. According to Tyrell, it ended its work by contributing
to “the emergence of the very nationalism they had only partly comprehended.”326
Both the AITA and the WCTU were fairly anti-racist for the time. The AITA
included Indians in positions of leadership from the very beginning, and employed Indian
temperance preachers to spread their message. Pictures of Indian temperance workers
graced the cover of the AITA journal, Abkari, from its earliest issues. Although the
leadership of the AITA favored integration of Indians in its upper echelons, there were
some exceptions to this racial amity. For some members of the AITA, their work was the
product of paternal responsibility. AITA member J. Bryce worried that if alcohol had
done such damage to the minds of Europeans, then it would damage the minds of Indians
even more. At an 1891 AITA meeting in London he averred, “the like mischief will tell
more severely upon races whose will is less able to resist temptation, and whose mental
fibre, perhaps I might even say whose brain substance, [are not the] same strength and
325
See Jeffrey Cox, Imperial fault lines : Christianity and colonial power in India, 1818-1940 (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002).
326
Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international
perspective, 1800-1930: 168.
123
quality as that of our Northern races.”327 Yet Bryce’s opinions on the relative weakness
of the Indian “race” were in a minority. Records of annual AITA conferences in London
contain a small number of these kinds of observations, usually made by members living
in England. Even this small number gradually diminished. By the end of the noncooperation movement in 1922 they had all but vanished.328
In contrast, the WCTU did not place Indians in the upper echelons of their
organization, even within its Indian branch. In 1892 the Indian WCTU lecturer, Pandita
Ramabai, who worked primarily in England, remained loyal to the organization despite
complaints regarding the racism of some of its members.329 When Agnes Slack’s tenure
as head of India’s WCTU drew to a close, her position was filled by American women
like Mary Campbell and Ruth Robinson. Unlike Slack, who derided Parsis as “the Jew of
the East,” Campbell and Robinson avoided making controversial statements on race.330
In the pages of WCTU’s India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon, and in the
published recollections of Campbell, Indian women were mentioned primarily in
aggregate.
Temperance Halls and the WCTU
Temperance Halls, like the Mission Halls upon which they were modeled, served
as community centers within the Indian localities in which they were built. Determining
the exact number of temperance halls in India at the beginning of the 20th century is
327
Henry J. Osborn, "Proceedings of the annual conference held April 4th 1891," Abkari: The Quarterly
Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 6 (1891): 141.
328
See chapter four.
329
Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international
perspective, 1800-1930: 102.
330
Slack, My Travels in India: 7.
124
difficult. That said, it is clear that there were at least dozens of them. Some of them were
in shared purpose buildings—for instance, a mission building that also housed a
temperance hall. But from the late 19th century, temperance activists were constructing
more and more buildings for the sole purpose of temperance meetings. This purpose, one
that was (mostly) religiously inclusive, brought together vocal critics of government
policy with an audience that sympathized with their larger aims.331 Temperance activists
and nationalist speakers (who more often than not, were one and the same) increasingly
had public, brick-and-mortar venues for their speeches extolling the virtue of abstinence
and the pollution of colonial rule.
331
I use “mostly” advisedly here. While Christians, Hindus, and Muslims each could point to various
religious traditions against drink, some minority religions in India were excluded. Far from prohibited,
alcohol was actually a necessity for the religious practices of some tribal groups. Adivasis would thus not
likely have found temperance halls entirely inclusive of all religions. Secondly, as the above photo
demonstrates, some of the emaciated poor attendees were more interested in food than in sustenance.
125
Figure 4:
Source: Krishnama Chari, "Feeding the poor in the Compound of Teynampet
Temperance Hall, Madras, 24th January 1903,” Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the
Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 52 (1903): 64.
Foremost among organizations building temperance halls was the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU). The WCTU was founded in Cleveland, Ohio by Frances
Willard in November of 1874. Early activities in America included “pray-ins” at saloons,
the collection of abstinence pledges, and lecture tours to both raise awareness of
intemperance and to found new, local chapters of the WCTU. The popularity of the
WCTU, which identified a distinctly gendered responsibility of women to address the
problem of drinking, quickly spilled across the borders of the United States with chapters
126
appearing across the globe. In the mid-1880’s, American Mary Greenleaf Clement
Leavitt began founding new WCTU chapters in India.332 Before the founding of the
AITA, the WCTU was the only temperance organization that could claim to have
branches across the subcontinent.333 These chapters attracted Indian Christians, AngloIndian Eurasian women, and high-caste widows.”334 The WCTU in India organized
meetings across India with audiences often “comprised almost entirely of native
women.”335
The content of WCTU propaganda and speeches varied by audience. WCTU
required that its members be Christians, but spoke in myriad venues under the auspices of
other temperance organizations. Early WCTU workers in the 19th century continued to
focus their efforts on Christians alone, with occasional exceptions, but by the early
1900’s this began to change. In settings in which Christian language might be offensive
to temperance activists of other faiths, WCTU speakers toned down explicitly Christian
content—though never entirely so. Many WCTU temperance meetings occurred in
Christian mission halls and opened with Christian prayers, but at the conclusion of the
prayer the explicitly Christian content was reduced to such a degree that people of
different faiths rarely contested it. Mary Campbell, who will be discussed in further
detail below, remarked that only once in all her temperance meetings did a “rabid, green-
332
Ian R. Tyrrell, David M. Fahey, and Jack S. Blocker, Alcohol and temperance in modern history : an
international encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003). 309.
333
Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international
perspective, 1800-1930: 164.
334
Tyrrell, Fahey, and Blocker, Alcohol and temperance in modern history : an international encyclopedia:
309.
335
Woman's Board of Missions., "Life and light for woman," ([Boston: Woman's Board of Missions,
1922), 278.
127
turbaned Mohammedan” object to the Christian prayer.336 He was silenced by a Muslim
attendee who admonished him, “Brother, be quiet; this is our custom.”337 Temperance
was in fact an ecumenical movement and brought together the devout of several faiths,
forming, “societies in which Hindus, Buddhists, Mohammedans, and Christians unitedly”
fought demon drink.338 Although the WCTU was explicitly Christian, its members
facilitated the organizations of new temperance organizations, many of which were
explicitly not Christian. They also helped those organizations win access to propaganda
materials, and celebrated their successes in the pages of WCTU of India’s journal,
Temperance Record and the White Ribbon.
In many respects, the work of the WCTU and the AITA were quite similar.
Although the WCTU was an explicitly Christian organization (unlike the AITA), most of
its prominent workers in India were willing to tamp down religious dogmatism to appeal
to broad Indian audiences with their message of temperance. It conducted “notable work
through public meetings, medal contests, suitable literature and efforts to bring about
better legislation.”339 Agnes Slack, “a bright, forceful little Englishwoman” from
London, was a friend of WCTU founder, Frances Willard, and secretary of both the
World’s and British Women’s Christian Temperance Unions.340 She first went to India
336
Campbell, The Power-House at Pathankot: What Some Girls of India Wrought by Prayer: 34.
337
Ibid., 35. Emphasis original.
338
Wilbur Fisk Crafts and Sara Jane Timanus Crafts, World book of temperance: temperance lessons,
Biblical, historical, scientific, 3d rev. and enl. ed. (Washington, D.C.,: The International reform bureau,
1911), 125.
339
Brenton Thoburn Bradley, "Total Abstinence: India's Goal," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the
Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 118 (1919): 66.
340
Unknown, "Agnes Slack Here," New York Times, 2nd August, 1896 1896, 7. Born in Derbyshire to
Liberal, Methodist parents, Slack also campaigned for women’s suffrage in Britain. See Eve Colpus,
128
for the cause of temperance in 1907, addressing public meetings, taking temperance
pledges, enrolling new members into the WCTU, and collecting subscriptions to the
newly-minted WCTU journal, Indian Temperance Record and the White Ribbon.341
Unlike the WCTU activists in India who followed, many early British WCTU activists in
India like Slack and Margaret Denning, were very much in favor of empire.342 Drink, she
believed, was a threat to empire because it invited sedition among the capricious
“natives.”343 Like AITA organizers, WCTU leaders were also keen to help organize
other societies. Slack boasted of her achievement in enrolling “575 men for other
temperance organizations” and “forming 15 new unions.”344 This interaction between
Slack and high-status Indians occasionally caused friction as when she “appealed to the
Indian men [of Ludhania] to organize a temperance society,” one of whom suggested
that, before doing so, “Miss Slack should first get the British Government not to send
drink to India.”345
Slack and the WCTU were well aware of the limitations of their white members
in India. Much (though not all) of Slack’s work during her 1907 tour of India involved
working with elites alone. She dined with temperance-minded government officials and
the temperance nawabs of the princely states. Owing to the “isolation” of WCTU
"Slack, Agnes Elizabeth (1858-1946)," in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012).
341
Women's Christian Temperance Union, Report (Illustrated) of the Seventh Convention of the World's
Women's Christian Temperance Union (Boston: Tremont Temple, 1906). 69.
342
Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international
perspective, 1800-1930: 165.
343
Ibid., 163.
344
Union, Report (Illustrated) of the Seventh Convention of the World's Women's Christian Temperance
Union: 69.
345
Slack, My Travels in India: 19.
129
workers and their “absorption in their missionary work,” Slack used her status as national
secretary in India to push for “paid organizers, who shall be constantly on the move.”346
The first of these paid organizers, Mary Lochhead, a White Ribbon missionary, was sent
by the Scottish Christian Union to work in India solely on the cause of temperance in
1910.347 Slack lamented that “English-speaking W.C.T.U.’s can hardly appreciate the
difficulties of language in India” but was happy to report that temperance literature in
“Hindustani, Bengali, Hindi, Nearathi, Gegerali, Tamil and Telagu” had been produced in
1906.348
The WCTU in India was “guided mostly by capable and enthusiastic American
women” like Mary Campbell.349 These American WCTU activists were much more
likely to be openly critical of colonial rule than their British predecessors.350 The
national temperance organizer for India, Campbell was born in Illinois in 1865, the eldest
of eight children. When her parents died suddenly, various relatives took on the
responsibility for her and her siblings and, inspired by a visiting missionary recounting
his work in Egypt, she resolved to become a missionary herself.351 She arrived in Punjab
346
Union, Report (Illustrated) of the Seventh Convention of the World's Women's Christian Temperance
Union: 69.
347
Report of the Ninth Convention of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union (Evanston,
Illinois: Women's Christian Temperance Union, 1913), 37.
348
Report (Illustrated) of the Seventh Convention of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union:
70. By “Nearathi and Gegerali” Slack likely meant Marathi and Gujarati.
349
Bradley, "Total Abstinence: India's Goal," 66.
350
Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international
perspective, 1800-1930: 166.
351
Anderson D.D. Gordon, Our Indian Mission: A Thirty Years' History of the Indian Mission of the
United Presbyterian Church of North America, Together with Personal Reminiscences (Philadelphia:
Andrew Gordon, 1886), 494-496.
130
in 1884 to do missionary work for the American Presbyterian Church, but over the next
20 years her activities began to shift more in the direction of temperance than of
evangelism. She also built a Christian girls’ school in Pathankot called Avalon. This
shift in focus was not entirely unproblematic. Agnes Slack worried that Campbell’s
multi-sectarian work for temperance was becoming too divorced from the Christian
mission.352 Nevertheless, as a paid “temperance organizer for all India” her job was to
aid Indians, “both Christian and non-Christian” in the fight against drink.353 Campbell’s
work is illustrative of Ian Tyrrell’s assertion that, “the linking of the prohibition cause
with democratic themes of American progressivism was implicitly corrosive to British
rule.”354
The crown jewel of Campbell’s work in India was the building of a temperance
hall in Pathankot, a Punjabi city north of Delhi. Built with donations from Christian
missionaries, Hindu gentlemen, well-to-do Muslims, and at least one sympathetic British
colonial official, one Indian “gentleman” praised it as “worth far more to India’s ultimate
good than that ‘dream of marble’ on the banks of the Jumna by Shah Jehan.”355 The
Presbyterian Church of North America celebrated its completion with a book entitled The
352
Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international
perspective, 1800-1930: 167.
353
Aurthur T. Pierson, "News From Many Lands: Blue Ribbon Army," The Missionary Review of the
World XXXIII, no. 3 (1920): 271.
354
Tyrrell, Woman's world/Woman's empire : the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in international
perspective, 1800-1930: 167.
355
Campbell, The Power-House at Pathankot: What Some Girls of India Wrought by Prayer: 18. “The
dream of marble” refers to the Taj Mahal.
131
Powerhouse at Pathankot: What Some Girls of India Wrought by Prayer, printed in
English and at least one Indian language in 1918.356
Temperance Halls were important structures as local community centers and for
material evidence of the efficacy of the labors of temperance activists. The temperance
hall acted as a community center for Pathankot and as a beacon for temperance.
Campbell wrote of her achievement, “in villages near and remote the news of the
wonderful work in Pathankot spread, and it was not long until requests came,” to help
organize new temperance organizations.357 A deputation from Sujanpur, some four miles
from Pathankot, was among the first. Campbell came to their aid, organizing a boys’
school there and founding a new temperance organization there. Characteristic of the
multi-sectarian nature of Indian temperance, the meeting began with Christian prayer but
the leadership of the new organization was populated by Hindus and Muslims as well.358
Finally, temperance halls stood as brick and mortar evidence of unity in the temperance
cause. They made a claim to public space, an assertion that these public buildings were
bastions of pan-religious respectability. Temperance organizations vociferously
protested plans to allow liquor shops in the vicinity of their temperance halls.359
International Temperance
356
The Delhi Branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union owns a copy of The Powerhouse at
Pathankot printed in Urdu.
357
Campbell, The Power-House at Pathankot: What Some Girls of India Wrought by Prayer: 66.
358
Ibid, 67.
359
Syed Shamsuddin Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports," (Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1907), 32.
132
Temperance organizations, both those operating solely within a given nation and
those working internationally, remained in close contact with each other. Their journals
often contained notes regarding the progress of sister temperance organizations in other
countries. For instance, Frederick Grubb of the AITA made regular contributions to
journals for the WCTU, the AITA, and later, to the Prohibition League of India (PLI).
Moreover, organizations that might otherwise have been too obscure to garner
international notice came to the attention of temperance workers in distant lands.
Recording the successes of the Kayastha Temperance Association, Babu Prasad Saxena
boasted in 1911 that “several foreign newspapers…have published encouraging reviews
on the reports of the Kayastha Temperance Reform in India and the famous quarterly
magazine Abkari of London has often dwelt on the valuable services of this mission.”360
There were also regular world conferences at which delegates from numerous countries
informed colleagues about their local activities.
Events regarding alcohol, even in small Indian villages, fell under the gaze of
Indians at a national level, of Britons at an imperial level, and of numerous countries as
far flung as Japan and Sweden. The existence of the global temperance community and
its interest in events in India would become increasingly important over time. By 1931,
at least one nationalist favored a raid on a government distillery in the hope that deadly
violence might be used against the raiders, thereby creating martyrs for the cause. Such
an event, he believed, would bring international condemnation of state/imperial violence
in the defense of demon drink.361 The Indian National Social Conference appreciated
360
Saxena, Short History of Temperance Reform in the Kayastha Community, vi.
361
See chapter 5 for a more detailed discussion of this raid. Fortunately, not such event took place.
133
efforts to grant Indians the right to choose whether or not to allow drink in their localities.
Such a goal could not “be secured without the cooperation of the English and American
Temperance Societies.” 362
The INC and the Politics of Purity in Poona
On August 20th, 1907, the Poona Temperance Association (PTA) was formed.
G.K. Gokhale, the famous reformer who would eventually be known as Gandhi’s guru,
was elected chair of the organization, aided by other leaders like Lokamanya Tilak ally,
N.C. Kelkar, and the missionary, A. Robinson.363 The organization had the support of
“B.G. Tilak and many other prominent men in the city [and of] all missionaries” in its
efforts to “educate public opinion and to secure a more restrictive administration of
abkari laws.” 364 The PTA was a coalition of Congressmen of both “extremist” and
conservative stripes, Christians, and conservative, high-caste Hindus. For the first
several months of its existence, the PTA seems to have done little. They sent a petition to
the commissioner of excise for Bombay complaining that there were far too many liquor
shops in Poona and that the shops represented a danger to children who were served
liquor there.”365 Yet the petition-writing phase of the PTA’s work was soon to come to a
close.
The formation of the PTA roughly coincided with another key event in the
nationalist movement. Just four months after the founding of the PTA, the INC, the
362
Conference, "Report of the Tenth National Social Conference Held in Calcutta on 1st January 1897,"
Appendix K.
363
ed., "Cuttings from the Press."
364
Ibid.
365
ed. Frederick Grubb, "Poona Temperance Society," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 72 (1908).
134
foremost organization for Indian nationalists of the early 20th century, split into two
factions at an annual meeting in Surat. Moderates and extremists differed on the fate of
British rule in India. Moderates were willing to fight for constitutional reform under the
aegis of imperial Britain, while “extremists” demanded autonomy and home-rule.
“Extremists” accused moderates of weakness and vacillation, while moderate accused
extremists of dangerous radicalism. The INC split was devastating to its political
effectiveness. Congresswallas of both camps sought reconciliation to no avail.
Continued debate seemed only to widen the rift but temperance agitation would provide
an opportunity to mitigate nationalist factionalism.
In addition to the INC’s plenary, national meetings such as the one in Surat in
December 1907, the Congress held meetings at the district level. Many of the key
players in the Congress split lived in the Bombay presidency, so the March 23rd meeting
of the Poona District Conference in 1908 promised to bring face to face longtime foes
like Gokhale and Tilak. The nearly 300 also attendees included “extremists” like Tilak,
and Kelkar, and editors of moderate newspapers along with several professors from the
local Furgusson College—a demographic that closely resembled that of the AITA.366
The Poona District Conference afforded the two Congress camps an opportunity to repair
the rift. The conference passed a unanimous resolution urging the two Congress factions
to settle their differences and reunite, but differences continued under the surface and
moderates associated with the Bombay Presidency Association continued to hold the
resolution suspect.367 Despite the hopes of Congress supporters, the two factions did not
366
Gordon Johnson, Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism: Bombay and the Indian National
Congress, 1880-1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). 178.
367
Ibid., 179.
135
reach a true accord at the 1908 Poona conference and, in the end, the resolution failed to
convince. For all their differences, however, there remained one cause that could depend
on the steadfast support of both moderates and radicals. Very soon, events in Poona
would still serve to mitigate, to some degree, the animus between leaders of the two
factions, Gokhale and Tilak—temperance. After all, Congress was not the only
organization in Poona capable of uniting nationalists in common cause.
The Poona Temperance Association (PTA) provided a second opportunity to heal
the rift and give fillip to Indian nationalism more broadly. Even if reconciliation proved
elusive within the Congress, the diversity of the PTA demonstrated that union remained
possible. As The India Social Reformer would later observe, “when men like the
Honourable Dr. Bhandarkar, the Honourable Mr. Gokhale, Mr. Tilak and the Rev. N.
MacNicol unite in a common protest,” it follows that the cause is just.368
Less than one year after its founding, the PTA found itself confronted by a
colonial government increasingly suspicious of the merits of the Indian temperance
movement. Meanwhile, the coalition of missionaries, nationalists of all stripes, and
conservative, high-caste Hindus endure the first test, described below, of what would
prove to become a central plank of the freedom movement-temperance advocacy. All the
while, both temperance advocates and colonial officials claimed to speak for low-caste
drinkers. The 1908 clash described below pitted upper-caste activists against lower-caste
drinkers, nationalists against the bureaucrats, and revealed bitter divides among colonial
administrators. The coalitions and conflicts that appeared in the 1908 Poona temperance
368
Syed Shamsuddin Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay," (Bombay: Government of Bombay,
1908).
136
“riot” in embryonic form culminated three decades with the introduction of prohibition in
limited areas in 1939.369
Mere days after the Poona District Conference, a temperance meeting was held in
the John Small Memorial Institute. The meeting was addressed by a “European
gentleman” whom the Free Church of Scotland missionary, Nicol Macnicol observed,
“was outside the influence of Mr. Tilak and the politicians.”370 The meeting was attended
by “a large number” of dependable allies of both Indian nationalism and temperance
reform, including, “students belonging to Fergusson and other Colleges.”371 Energized
by the meeting, “a considerable number of the young men expressed an earnest desire to
do some practical Temperance work.”372 Those young men were assisted by the Poona
Temperance Association, which helped to arrange for a temperance address to be given to
a larger audience, complete with magic lantern illustrations. The “young men”
themselves promoted the event by “inviting the people in from the street,” by singing
temperance songs in bands, and by “preaching in the vicinity of liquor shops.”373 The
college students then became yet “more eager,” and began to organize the “systematic
work” of picketing.374 Macnicol recounted that it was only after the students themselves
369
See chapter five.
370
Rev. Nicol Macnicol, "The Temperance Movement in Poona," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the
Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 73 (1908): 100.
371
Ibid.
372
Ibid.
373
Ibid., 110.
374
Ibid.
137
had begun picketing that “Mr. Tilak and the [Poona] Temperance Association [PTA]
began to lay hands on the movement.”375
The PTA “laid hands on the movement” on April 2nd, passing a resolution that
“the agitation for temperance should now be pushed in the city to its utmost limits within
the law, seeing the cooperation of temperance workers of all classes and creeds.”376 Like
the AITA with which they were affiliated, they hoped to capture of the energy of the
student picketers while guiding them to avoid breaches of the law.377 To that end the
PTA appointed a subcommittee “consisting of Dr. Mann, Mr. Tilak, Mr. Manicol,
R.S.V.A. Patwardham, Mr. Khadilkar…for the above object, [and] also to draw up rules
to guide temperance volunteers in the city.”378 To balance the decidedly Hindu and
Christian tilt of Poona’s temperance movement they resolved to “send a deputation
consisting of Mr. Gokhale, Mr. Tilak, and Dr. Mann to the leaders of the Mohammedan
community and request them to interest themselves.”379 There is little evidence
documenting how successful they were in this endeavor, but they did manage to recruit
two Maulvis (Islamic religious scholars) to address temperance audiences in “Muslim
375
Ibid.
376
ed. Frederick Grubb, "Cuttings from the Press," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 73 (1908): 102.
377
Frederick Grubb, "The Poona Episode," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 74 (1908).
378
Frederick Grubb, "Temperance Movement in Poona," 102.
379
Ibid.
138
areas.”380 The Maulvis held at least two temperance meetings under the auspices of the
PTA for Muslim audiences.381
Macnicol knew Poona quite well. He worked as “western India” missionary for
the Free Church of Scotland, having moved to Poona in 1900 where he “entered into a
heritage of goodwill among both Christians and non-Christians.”382 Macnicol cultivated
a close relationship with Poona Brahmins. He believed that evangelism was most
effective when one had a clearer understanding of the faith from which he hoped to win
converts. An active member of the Royal Asiatic Society and a learned intellectual who
knew Indian languages; his 1915 book Indian Theism: From the Vedic to the
Mohammedan Period was widely read and favorably reviewed, as were his translations
of the Upanishads and The Psalms of the Maratha Saints.383 While it is impossible to
know what, exactly, Macnicol thought about the temperance movement in India, it seems
unlikely that the nationalist hue of the movement in Poona escaped his notice.
Beginning on April 2nd, temperance volunteers began to picket liquor shops in
Poona under the auspices of the PTA. The picketing was remarkably effective, and
liquor shops that once sold as much as 25-30 gallons per day saw their sales plummet to a
mere one or two gallons, and “even that sold only during the early morning or when the
volunteers were temporarily absent.”384 The successful picketing of liquor shops drew
the attention of the Assistant Collector for Poona, F.G.H. Anderson. He saw it as
380
Ibid., 103.
381
Syed Shamsuddin Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports," (Bombay: Government of Bombay, 1908).
382
E.G., "Nicol Macnicol," International Review of Missions 41, no. 3 (1952): 353.
383
Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay."
384
Anderson, "Report on Poona Disturbances."
139
impossible that a “sane man maintain that such an effect can only be produced by mere
moral conviction of the religious and ethical evil of drink and the self-denial of sudden
converts.”385 He was certain that such results could only be borne of “forcible
prevention, to fear of abuse and insult, and to fear of the social obloquy of being publicly
upbraided for their resort to the shop.”386
Despite widespread support for the Poona temperance agitation, some Indians
questioned what they saw as the sudden concern of Brahmins for the plight of low-caste
drinkers. Anderson did enjoy support from one group of Indians, albeit
unenthusiastically. Parsis, more numerous in the Bombay Presidency than anywhere else
in India, had long been associated with alcohol sales. Parsi-edited newspapers such as
Jame Jamshed, Akhbar-e-Soudagar, Rast Goftar, and The Poona Observer lauded the
rectitude of the movement but questioned its tactics, particularly picketing. Jame
Jamshed lamented the participation of moderate scholar and medical historian, Sir
Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, a former Vice Chancellor of Bombay University, in the
movement and suggested that “government were perfectly justified in taking up the
cudgels against picketing.”387 At least one Mahrathi paper, Dinbandhu, noted that “the
majority of the volunteers are Brahmins” who were only able to picket because they were
“well-off.”388 What is more, it suggested that at least one temperance meeting was “as a
matter of fact…a Brahmin meeting, for all its proceedings were carried on by
385
Ibid.
386
Ibid.
387
Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay."
388
Ibid.
140
Brahmins.”389 Bombay’s government shared that conclusion, noting that “nearly all” of
the volunteers were “Brahmin youths.”390
In any event, Anderson became aware of the pickets and their impact on sales on
the 3rd of April.391 Anderson would later claim that picketers at any given shop typically
numbered ten “Brahmin students who were conspicuously acting at the head of the
movement” picketing before a crowd of “100 or more.”392 On April 5th, Anderson
resolved to break up the pickets and “scatter[ed] the groups without using force, or more
than a mere gesture, possibly with a light push.”393 Much to Anderson’s surprise, the
picketers “closed in again behind us…considering the propriety of resistance.”394
Hearing some commotion, Anderson turned to see “one of the students engaged in a
tussle with a sepoy and another man, who seemed so far as I could tell at a glance to be
assisting the Police and the shop-keeper.”395 Anderson,
went up at once and saying (in English this time as he was plainly a College student) 'you
must move on as I have ordered.' I laid hold of his upper arm and thrust him along; but
he was in the midst of a group and seemed to have the intention of obeying, but rather his
demeanour was that of a man who meant to fight. I then took him by the scruff of the
neck and almost simultaneously he laid hold of me by the coat just by the collar bone; as
I had no intention of being pulled about by him, I immediately let drive at his face to
compel him to let go and at the same time said to the Constable and to the Chief
Constable and others who had naturally come up during the second or two that this
389
Ibid.
390
Bombay Secretary to Government, "Letter regarding Poona Disturbances to the Secretary of the Home
Department, India," in Judicial, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1908).
391
G. Esq. Charmichael, District Magistrate, Poona "Report," in Judicial, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra
State Archives, 1908).
392
Anderson, "Report on Poona Disturbances."
393
Ibid.
394
Ibid.
395
Ibid.
141
incident required 'he must be arrested.' I still had him by the fore-arm and now instead of
thrusting him away from the shop, hauled him out and put him formally under arrest.396
The response of the crowd alarmed Anderson all the more. He recounted that
the attitude of several of the volunteers was aggressive and even pugnacious. I saw
walking sticks brandished; and one or two others of the crowd, volunteers or not I cannot
say, tried to interpose and prevent me dispersing the group. On my first visit to the shop,
one of them had asked my name and tried to prevent me from dispelling the gathering.397
Recognizing the precariousness of his situation, Anderson “decided that it would be
desirable to get more force before further dispersing the crowd.”398 The local police
force was short 41 men that day, with that number assigned to “escort prisoners and
treasure.”399 Moreover, word reached him that the much-feared local nationalist
firebrand, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, planned to address the crowd.400 With only “six sowars
and one detachment of armed Police available” to quell the disturbance, Anderson
decided to “give word to the military” to assemble forces.401 Accused later of
precipitating the very riot he wanted to avoid, he responded that “there would have been
no battle at Thermopylae if the Spartans had gone home.”402 Anderson’s grandiosity did
396
Ibid.
397
Ibid.
398
Ibid.
399
Charmichael, "Report."
400
H.O. Quin, "Letter to the Secretar to the Government of India, Home Department," in India Office
Collection (London: British Library, 1908).
401
Anderson, "Report on Poona Disturbances."
402
Ibid.
142
not go unnoticed by his critics, one of whom sarcastically praised the former’s
“heroics.”403
Official opinion did not entirely support Anderson’s zeal. His supervisor, G.
Carmichael, returned the next morning to find “no further disorder” and volunteers
“assisted in preventing crowds of other youths from assembling.”404 Unlike Anderson’s
condemnation of all Poona temperance agitation as “political”—read nationalist—
Carmichael was much more charitable. He, like virtually all colonial officials, held
Tilak’s motives suspect; nevertheless, he differed with his subordinate on the movement
more broadly, averring that a “number of people are supporting the movement from
purely honourable and conscientious motives, and he [Anderson] is in my belief mistaken
in his view that those who were engineering the movements for political reasons were
prepared to risk an open conflict with authority.”405
Carmichael’s view of the Poona disturbances—questioning the motives of some
participants while praising the beneficence of others—found support among his
supervisors. Acting Secretary to the Government of India, H.O. Quin, agreed with
Anderson that “there is every reason to believe that Mr. B.G. Tilak and a number of his
followers lent their support with the object of creating trouble, and, if possible, bringing
discredit upon Government.”406 But he too differed from Anderson in some important
ways. While Anderson believed the missionaries were mere “dupes,” and Indian activists
403
Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay."
404
Quin, "Letter to the Secretar to the Government of India, Home Department."
405
G. Esq. Carmichael, District Magistrate, Poona "Report," in Judicial, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra
State Archives, 1908).
406
Quin, "Letter to the Secretar to the Government of India, Home Department."
143
were “political,” Quin praised the movement’s support by “a number of respectable
gentlemen, such as the Honourable Dr. R.G. Bhandarkar, C.I.E., and the Rev. Mr. R.
Macnicol, [who acted] from conscientious motives.”407
Regardless of the laudable motives of some temperance agitators in Poona,
Carmichael outlawed picketing of all kinds on April 18th because “it was found that the
pickets acted in co-operation with other persons who obstructed and annoyed customers
after leaving the shops.”408 A secretary for the PTA responded to the district magistrate
that they had, under protest, “given orders to their men…to cease work [picketing] and
withdraw.”409 One of the few Indian publications to praise the magistrate’s decision was
the Parsi-run Jama Jamshed. It lamented the “mischievous” nature of picketing and
praised “the action of the Poona authorities in putting down rowdyism and protecting the
frequenters of the liquor-shops against undue interference with their liberty of action.”410
Most magistrates in the Bombay presidency followed Carmichael’s lead, voluntarily
outlawing picketing altogether.
Yet this repression was far from universal, even among colonial officialdom. The
collector of Nasik, A.M.T. Jackson, some days after most Bombay districts had
criminalized picketing, released a circular stating that “So long as Advocates of
Temperance confine themselves to peaceful persuasion, or to the Lawful enforcement of
407
Ibid.
408
W. Esq. Commisioner Doderet, C.D., "Poona Picketing," in Judicial, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra
State Archives, 1908).
409
"Report of a disturbance which took place in Poona on the 5th April 1908 in consequence of certain
boys attempting to dissuade customers from going to liquor shops," in Judicial, Bombay (Mumbai:
Maharashtra State Archive, 1908).
410
Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay." English was the original language for this article.
144
religious tenets or Caste Rules, they should not be interfered with.”411 To ensure that no
illegalities arose from the picketing, Jackson ordered that “a Constable should be posted
at the place to see that no force or intimidation is used and that the traffic is not
obstructed by the assembling of crowds in the roadway.”412
Jackson’s perceived leniency drew the ire of many of his colleagues. Although he
continued to allow picketing, he noted that there had been some intimidation earlier.
Temperance agitation occurred in only two towns under his supervision—Malegaon and
Yeola. The methods employed in the two towns varied. The methods of “picketers” in
Malegaon was to “post persons in a house opposite to the liquor shop in order to note the
names of customers, which are then reported to their caste Panchayats who inflict
fines.”413 He also reported that in Malegaon the only reported case of criminal
intimidation had been prosecuted in court. Yeola’s agitators initially “employed
wrestlers to intimidate the customers, but as soon as evidence could be obtained, two of
these men were prosecuted, and since their conviction the agitators have confined
themselves to lecturing, and the temperance agitation in Yeola is now dead.”414 Jackson
maintained that picketing itself was only dangerous insofar as it could lead to criminality.
If that criminality was prosecuted, then it would be infrequent. He defended his position
thusly:
The temperance agitation appeared and still appears to me to have been organized, so far
as it has a political origin, for the purpose of driving government into such a position and
411
A.M.T. Jackson, Collector of Nasik, "Circular," in Revenue, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State
Archive, 1908).
412
Ibid.
413
"Letter to the Secretary to Government, Revenue Department, Bombay," in Revenue, Bombay (Mumbai:
Maharashtra State Archives, 1908).
414
Ibid.
145
such notion, that the agitators might be able to say that government was forcing liquor on
the people. From all I have heard, they did attain their object in some districts; but they
did not do so in Nasik.415
That is to say, if the temperance movement was truly political as its critics maintained,
government was playing right into their hands.
If official opinion was divided on the issue of picketing, nationalists and
temperance advocates were decidedly less so. G.K. Gokhale, a Congress moderate and
mentor to Gandhi, averred that “it was impossible to dissociate the Temperance cause
from politics.”416 He argued further that arrest of picketers in Poona proved that
temperance “would become more of a political question than it was a financial, moral, or
a social question.”417 Tilak, Gokhale’s political adversary in the 1907 Congress split,
prophesied that “the history of the temperance movement will serve as a nice objectlesson in the present relations between the rulers and the ruled.”418 Nationalists enjoyed a
great deal of support on the matter from temperance activists. Abkari reported that “the
young men who watched the liquor shops refrained from all acts of violence, and
confined themselves to persuasive methods [but were] nevertheless…arrested and
fined.”419 Reprinted in Abkari, Madras’ The Hindu saw the criminalization of picketing
as a “manifest perversion of the law, and if permitted, would allow of a dangerous
extension of official repression and a deprivation of the elementary rights of free
415
Ibid.
416
C.K. Gokhale, "Mr. R.C. Dutt, C.I.E., and the Hon. G.K. Gokhale, C.I.E., on Temperance Reform,"
Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 73 (1908): 91.
417
Ibid.
418
Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay."
419
Frederick Grubb, "Temperance Movement in Poona," 102.
146
citizens.”420 Despite its criminalization, many nationalists considered the Poona
picketing a great success. After all, “the Poona temperance volunteers accomplished in
one week by peaceful persuasion what hundreds of letters and leaflets failed to achieve in
the course of years.”421 Thus, seven years before Gandhi returned to India from South
Africa in 1915, the picketing of liquor shops by high-caste activists was proving an
effective method to protest the colonial government and promote temperance.
Indian newspapers expressed the same outrage found in temperance journals.
Poona’s Marathi-language Kesari, edited by none other than Tilak, made the ambitious
claim that but for the fact that the temperance workers were “clapped up in prison the
active workers in the cause on some pretext or another,” India might already be dry.422
Tilak’s English language newspaper, The Mahratta, lamented that “the Poona Police
seem to have taken the temperance crusade ill.”423 This, the paper argued, stemmed from
the fact that picketing, “was against the interests of the dealers in liquor and especially
Government who get the lion's share of the profits of this traffic.”424 A week later,
Kesari called out Anderson personally, tying his high-handedness in dealing with the
pickets to the fate of the British Empire more broadly; “given a few more Magistrates of
the type of Mr. Anderson, and the fabric of the British Empire is sure to collapse in no
time.”425 Poona’s Marathi language newspaper, Kal, noted that “only under British
420
Grubb, "The Poona Episode," 109.
421
Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay."
422
"Native Newspaper Reports."
423
Ibid.
424
Ibid.
425
Ibid.
147
Government can drinking be called a right and moral persuasion to abstain from drink
stigmatised as an offence,” implying that the contrary could be realized only without
British rule.426 Another local Marathi language paper went so far as to express the view
that “British Government is as much to be condemned for its Abkari policy as the father
who induced his daughter to become a prostitute in order to increase his income."427
Condemnation of the outlawing of picketing was swift and severe within the
temperance community as well. Macnicol gave a spirited defense of the Poona picketing
that was reprinted for Abkari. Macnicol believed that the government’s intransigence on
the matter boiled down to the fact that for many in colonial government, “the presence of
Mr. Tilak in any movement at once condemns it, apart altogether from its merits.”428
Macnicol further highlighted the hypocrisy of anti-picketing legislation, noting the
“recent raids on public houses by the Bishop of London himself as part of a great ‘roundup’ of drunkards, organized by the Church Army.”429
Poona temperance activists protested the criminalization of picketing vehemently.
At the request of R.G. Bhandarkar, Sir George Clarke, the Governor of Bombay agreed to
receive a temperance deputation on the subject. Bhandarkar was joined on the deputation
by MacNicol, L.R. Gokhale, and Tilak ally, N.C. Kelkar.430 The deputation urged the
Governor to rescind his support for picketing criminalization. Clarke responded by
426
Ibid.
427
Ibid.
428
Macnicol, "The Temperance Movement in Poona."
429
Ibid.
430
Grubb, "The Poona Episode."
148
explaining that although picketing itself was not strictly illegal, due to “human nature” it
would inevitably lead to illegalities. Thus local magistrates still had the right to outlaw
picketing based on local circumstances.
If Clarke proved unmovable on the subject of picketing, he was careful to provide
encouraging words to the deputation endorsing their efforts. He averred that the protests
were not reducible to mere “politics” but rather reflected the noble intentions of social
reformers.431 Finally, he granted that there were too many liquor shops in Poona,
promising to convene a local committee to determine which liquor shops that would not
be relicensed for the following year. Recourse to “local option” seemed a good way to
placate both western missionaries and high-caste Indians agitating for decreased access to
drink.
Clarke’s resolve on picketing was deeply unpopular with temperance activists,
though they appreciated his concessions on the closing of local shops based on local
option. Clarke’s statement gave fillip to extant local option committees which were now
encouraged by official sanction to close more, though certainly far from all, liquor shops.
Little protest is recorded of this move save from one colonial official, the recalcitrant
A.M.T. Jackson, collector for Nasik. He did not favor greater use of local option
committees because of “the fact that the native members will not belong to the drinking
class.”432 For Jackson, local option committees acted as a method for imposing the
values of high castes on the lives of the low. Jackson was an enigmatic bureaucrat;
431
432
Ibid., 130.
A.C. Commissioner of Customs Logan, Salt, Opium and Abkari, Bombay, "Accompaniments to
Government Resolution, Revenue Department, No. 10439, Dated October 1908," in Judicial, Bombay
(Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1908).
149
unlike his colleagues, he opposed the criminalization of picketing and, also unlike his
colleagues, had the gall to argue against the governor of Bombay on the merits of local
option committees. In any event, Jackson’s approach to local administration proved
short-lived. On the 21st of December, 1909, Jackson was gunned down by a young
Brahmin student, much to the consternation of Indian nationalists and government
officialdom alike.433
The moment picketing was outlawed, liquor sales in Poona began to recover.434
While impossible to prove conclusively, this rebound in sales supports the idea that
intimidation, implicit or explicit was at least partly to blame for the dramatic reduction in
sales during picketing. Secretary for the Bombay department of Finance, R.A. Lamb
reported that with picketing outlawed, “the traffic of the liquor shops returned to its
ordinary conditions. The movement therefore cannot be regarded as having effectually
promoted the cause of temperance.”435
Reflecting on the effects of the movement two years later, the Government of
Bombay reported to the Government of India that there was some reduction in the sale of
country liquor, due to the temperance movement, picketing, and sinhast [a marriageless
year].436 Nevertheless, the same report noted that “the consumption of toddy rose by over
113,000 gallons, and there appears to have been some tendency for the cheaper drink,
433
Shabnum Tejani, Indian secularism : a social and intellectual history, 1890-1950 (Bloomington, Ind.
Chesham: Indiana University Press, 2008). 100-02.
434
Doderet, "Report of a disturbance which took place in Poona on the 5th April 1908 in consequence of
certain boys attempting to dissuade customers from going to liquor shops."
435
R.A. Lamb, "Letter from Chief Secretary to Government, Bombay to Secretary to the Government of
India, Financial Department," ed. Fincancial (Bombay: unpublished, 1908).
436
Government of India, "Reports on the Administration of the Excise Department in the Bombay
Presidency, Sind and Aden for the year 1908-09," ed. Deparate Revenue A Finance Department (Calcutta:
Government of India, 1910).
150
toddy, to replace the more costly country spirit.”437 Moreover, it appeared that drinking
among the upper classes continued to rise as evidenced by increased sales of foreign
liquor.
[It] is consumed more by the well-to-do and educated classes than by the mass of the
population, are in striking contrast with the fall in the consumption of country spirit
which is the drink of the common people. It seems probable that the tendency of the
former classes to indulge in European liquors increased, while the drinking propensities
of the latter were checked by the observance of the religious traditions of Sinhast last
year.438
With some exceptions, it appeared that the lower castes continued to drink as usual, while
educated, high-caste students and bureaucrats drank yet more—perhaps explaining both
the vehemence and inefficacy of the movement in terms of reducing drinking.
On April 30th, 1908, less than two weeks after picketing was outlawed in Poona,
two Bengali youths attempted to kill a district judge with a bomb, killing several
bystanders, including two British women. The colonial government responded on the
other side of the subcontinent on the 24th of June, by arresting Tilak on the charge of
sedition.439 According to “an Anglo-Indian correspondent,” likely Macnicol,
the city of Poona represented a city of the dead. Every shop was closed out of sympathy
for Mr. Tilak and the streets were for the most part deserted. It was a scene of desolation
to which the worst days of the plague in the city bore but a faint resemblance. The
schools in the city and the Ferusson College were practically closed. The feeling in the
city had a bye-product in the shape of two prosecutions which resulted in the conviction
of two Brahmin gentlemen who were summarily sentenced by the City Magistrate [for
picketing] to a fine of Rs. 35 each.440
437
Ibid.
438
Ibid. Sinhast, a marriageless year, implied fewer celebrations involving liquor.
439
N.C. Kelkar, ed. Full and Authentic Report of the Tilak Trial, Being the Only Authorized Verbatim
Account of the Whole Proceedings with Introduction and Biographical Sketch of Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Together with Press Opinion (Bombay: Indu-Prakash Steam Press, 1908), 11.
440
Kadri, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay."
151
With Tilak’s arrest, temperance, as a movement with a claim towards being apolitical
died. The worst fears of the late A.M.T. Jackson were realized; temperance had truly
become a “political” movement. It had become clear as well that the moral force, or
perhaps intimidation, of temperance activists would not be tolerated by the colonial state.
Yet this was not hardly the end of the Indian temperance movement in Poona or
elsewhere. It would continue to live on beneath the umbrella of Indian nationalism.
From the very beginning, the AITA had recruited nationalists to join their organization.
The AITA’s powerful friends in the British Parliament provided some measure of
protection from the caprice of local magistrates and police. This made temperance
organizations more resilient in the face of government attack but not entirely so.
Individual temperance activists could be and were arrested, jailed, and given fines. A
“patriotic gentleman” of Poona offered to pay the fines for all nine temperance
volunteers; however, all but one declined, resolving instead to “suffer imprisonment
instead of paying the penalty.”441
The Indian temperance movement, particularly those organizations associated
with the AITA, had been nationalistic since the 1890’s. Congress members and those of
similar educated, high-caste backgrounds were the backbone of the movement. The 1908
Poona disturbances represented the first test for what might have appeared at first glance
to have been a very unstable coalition—a union of missionaries, Hindu conservatives,
British philanthropists, Members of Parliament, and Indian nationalists. Although
temperance advocates failed to win all they had hoped from a reluctant colonial
government, they did win an acknowledgment of the justice of their cause. From this
441
Ibid.
152
point it could no longer be argued that nationalism was solely a political issue devoid of
moral content any more than it could be argued that temperance was solely a moral issue
devoid of political content. The moral content of nationalism made it more difficult for
colonial administrators to dismiss nationalist agitation as merely seditious. It served a
higher purpose, imbuing temperance with patriotism and nationalism with rectitude—
particularly valuable for high-caste nationalists who had interests in both defending their
Indian-ness and advancing moral and political reform. The stage was set for a significant
escalation in the radicalism of temperance and nationalist rhetoric in the 1920’s.
153
CHAPTER IV:
EMPIRE OF DRINK: THE NATIONALIZATION OF
TEMPERANCE IN THE 1920’S
Introduction
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, temperance activists sought out
nationalists to enlist their support in the fight against alcohol. As shown in the previous
chapter, there were signs of change as Lokamanya Tilak and others began to use the
rhetoric and tools of the temperance movement to further the nationalist cause as early as
1908, foreshadowing a new turn in Indian temperance. By 1920, Indian nationalists were
larger in number and highly organized. The political landscape of India was shifting,
particularly during the non-cooperation movement of 1920-1922. The scale of Indian
nationalism surpassed temperance in energy and numerical involvement.
No longer did temperance activists seek out the support of nationalists;
nationalists now sought the support of temperance organizations and called on
temperance activists to make a choice between siding with the political moderates or the
radicals. European or American led parent organizations like the AITA and the WCTU
tried to remain above the fray with limited success, as even the attempt to avoid
commentary on “political matters” was itself a political statement. Indians were now
firmly in the driver’s seat, leaving western temperance workers with the stark choice of
bailing out or coming along for a ride that would eventually culminate in Indian freedom.
The growing popularity and political strength of Indian nationalism either imbued
temperance activists with anticolonial sentiment or made them irrelevant. Organizations
like the AITA, which tried to remain above the political fray, lost popular support. At the
same time, Indian nationalism came to mean temperance as well. The American
154
Temperance crusader, William “Pussyfoot” Johnson toured India in 1921. Chronicles of
his visit demonstrate the impossibility of “non-political” temperance work. The
anticolonial struggles of the 1920’s effectively fused the nationalist and temperance
movements. Temperance workers in India had to address the problem of nationalism.
When giving lectures in the United States, temperance workers from India could not but
refer to the colonial rule slowing progress towards prohibition there. When it came to
Indians and drink, the question of Indian self-rule was inescapable.
Chapter Overview and Organization
This chapter argues that nationalism had gained so much traction that the
discourse surrounding temperance became completely suffused with it, rendering it all
but impossible to do “non-political” temperance work. Some western temperance
workers found this disconcerting, either arguing against more radical nationalists and
their tactics, or trying to avoid them altogether. Others did not shy away from them.
Some were ardent nationalists themselves while others found their temperance message
hitched to the wagon of nationalism regardless of their own wishes. The time when a
single person like W.S. Caine could tour India as a large-scale organizer had come to a
close. Temperance workers of the 1920’s found themselves adrift as different factions of
nationalists struggled to include them in their camps. Complete neutrality on the question
of colonial rule was no longer an option.
I begin the chapter with a brief look at the successes of western-organized
temperance organizations at the beginning of the 1920’s, particularly the Anglo Indian
Temperance Association (AITA). I will show that the very success of the organization in
terms of winning the cooperation and support of nationalists from an early stage would
155
prove to be its undoing. I will then move on to the political situation in the early 1920’s,
paying particular attention to the non-cooperation and khilafat movements, as well as the
implementation of the 1919 Government of India Act. I will argue that the faith the
AITA placed in dyarchy in the context of growing radicalism rendered the organization
all but irrelevant. Then I will discuss some early examples of caste-based violence
related to alcohol use, showing how radical nationalists began to impose an emerging
Indian national identity on recalcitrant drinkers.
The second half of the chapter will examine the 1921 trip of the American
temperance leader, William E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson, to India at the height of the noncooperation movement. Johnson’s visit was riddled with conflict. As an anxious
colonial administration looked on, competing groups of Indians fought for Johnson as a
totem—a visual endorsement of their ideas from a world-famous firebrand temperance
man with an agenda of his own. Johnson’s India tour unequivocally demonstrated the
impossibility of doing temperance work in India without engaging with the future of
colonialism. I will then move on to show how this questioning of imperial rule
reverberated as far as the Americas, where Indian colleagues of Johnson made tours of
their own, posing the inextricably linked questions of liquor and empire to new
audiences.
Changing of the Guard in Indian Temperance
For western temperance workers the hard work of organizing temperance
societies and defending them against attacks from colonial government paid large
dividends in India. One Indian-born British Methodist missionary appraised the results
of this work, averring that
156
probably nowhere in the Orient is the temperance movement larger or better organized
than in India. The Anglo-Indian Temperance Association has two hundred temperance
societies affiliated with it. In addition there are various caste and village organizations in
the land. There are seven city temperance federations that exercise great influence in the
chief cities of the Empire. It supports several temperance lecturers, who give their whole
time to the work.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union has done a notable work through
public meetings, medal contests, suitable literature and efforts to bring about better
legislation. The Union is fully organized with national, provincial, and local bodies,
guided mostly by capable and enthusiastic American women who are not afraid to take a
long look ahead and stand for conditions that cannot be expected except by winning great
victories against tremendous odds. They have set themselves to do a work through
education that will make great transformations in due time. The Union has recently
secured the appointment of Miss Mary J. Campbell, of Pathankot fame, to work under its
auspices throughout India.
The All-India Temperance Conference at its annual meetings brings together on a
common platform some of the strongest representatives of all three religions-Hindu,
Moslem, and Christian-which makes not only for the best possible interests of the cause
of temperance, but also for the wider influence of Christian leaders throughout the great
non-Christian communities.442
There was much to praise. Christian missionaries had united with both Hindu and
Muslim religious groups in common cause. Indian excise policies were increasingly
under the surveillance of temperance activists in India, Britain, and in the larger world.
Moreover, the 1919 Government of India Act formally established dyarchy (discussed in
greater detail below) which would transfer excise policy to nominally Indian-run
provincial governments. Arguably it was the very success of the Indian temperance
movement and the promise of dyarchy that made the radicalism of 1920’s Indian
temperance all but inevitable.
As discussed in chapter two, temperance organizations like the AITA had from
their inception tailored their message to India’s unique political and cultural
442
Brenton Thoburn Badley, "Total Abstinence: India's Goal," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the AngloIndian Temperance Association I, no. 118 (1919): 7.
157
circumstances. Temperance propaganda was originally merely translated from EnglishEnglish
language propaganda. By tthe
he 1920’s temperance propaganda was increasingly translated
not only into Indic language but also into local idioms. Lantern slides, long a favorite of
missionaries working in India, featured images that would resonate with an Indian
audience. The slides below follow the standard progression seen in English-language
English
lantern slides to demonstrate the gradual degradation of men in response to alcohol, but
with some important changes.443 The story begins with a healthy husband and wife well
and happy. The husband
sband is prosperous and dignified with servants and other trappings of
wealth and respectability. He is kind to his family and respectful to his elders.
Figure 5
Source: Various, "Lantern Slides," ed. Women's Christian Temperance Union
(Delhi1925). The date is approximate.
443
Various, "Lantern Slides," ed. Women's Christian Temperance Union (Delhi1925). The Women’s
Christian Temperance Union of Delhi was kind enough to loan me the above slides for scanning and copy.
The date is approximate.
158
Figure 6
Source: Various, "Lantern Slides," ed. Women's Christian Temperance Union
(Delhi1925). The date is approximate.
Figure 7
Source: Various, "Lantern Slides," ed. Women's Christian Temperance Union
(Delhi1925). The date is approximate.
As the slides below demonstrate, the man’s prosperity and happiness is doomed when he
makes the fateful decision to take alcohol. He becomes increasingly violent, abusing his
children, threatening to his servants, rude to his elders and to respectable men who
attempt to point out the errors of his ways. Soon his health fails and he lies dead.
Figure 8
159
Source: Various, "Lantern Slides," ed. Women's Christian Temperance Union
(Delhi1925). The date is approximate.
Figure 9
Source: Various, “Lantern Slides,” ed. Women’s Christian Temperance Union
(Delhi1925). The date is approximate.
Figure 10
Source: Various, "Lantern Slides," ed. Women's Christian Temperance Union
(Delhi1925). The date is approximate.
160
Figure 11
Source: Various, "Lantern Slides," ed. Women's Christian Temperance Union
(Delhi1925). The date is approximate.
Although the above images share the general theme of alcohol’s dangers, they are
distinctly Indian. The models are Indian, as are the symbols such as the white clothes of
the grieving widow. Much like these slides, by 1920 the temperance propaganda was
distinctly Indian. Once “temperance” became naturalized in Indian culture it drifted
away predilections of European temperance activists. One effect of this dynamic was
that, more than ever before, the temperance movement was influenced by the overarching concerns of Indians in the 1920’s—especially the desire to win greater
concessions, if not outright freedom, from Britain.
The 1920’s witnessed a dramatic shift in both the tone of temperance reform and
in the organizations dedicated to fighting against drink. As discussed in the previous
chapter, the AITA had enjoyed a great deal of success, raising the profile of Indian
temperance activism in Britain and in founding associated organizations in India. But
events like the 1908 Poona temperance riot and increasing radicalization of Indian
nationalists changed the social and political context for temperance activism in India. As
the prominent Indians promoting temperance became more nationalist, so too did
161
temperance discourse itself. As a result, it became increasingly problematic for
temperance organizations to remain nominally neutral on the question of colonial rule.
No organization suffered from this radicalization more than the AITA. From the
time of its founding in 1889 through the early years of the 1900’s, the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association could boast of having nearly 300 affiliates across India. By
1916, the number of affiliated organizations had dropped by one third.444 On the eve of
the non-cooperation movement, although the AITA remained the preeminent temperance
organization working at an all-India level, trouble was brewing. As we will see below,
the AITA was woefully ill-equipped to act as an organ for the coordination of activism.
With the rise of the noncooperation movement, Kilafat movement, and the
growing strength of kisan sabhas, purity, and social reform organizations, the 1920’s was
marked by a significant increase in activism of all stripes. The AITA had been founded
with two goals in mind—firstly to impress on the Government of Britain the importance
of excise policies promoting temperance and, secondly, to organize and vitalize
temperance organizations in India. In terms of alcohol policy, the early success of the
AITA in Parliament proved short-lived as the center of gravity for policy changes shifted
to India. The Government of India (GOI) had successfully stonewalled parliament
regarding the latter’s resolution ordering the promotion of temperance.445 And in India,
ham-fisted efforts by the GOI to crush the nationalist movement made it much harder to
advocate for temperance in India while defending empire.
444
Frederick Grubb, "A Fishermen's Temperance Society," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the AngloIndian Temperance Association I, no. 105 (1916): 57. See also Fifty Years Work in India: My Temperance
Jubilee, 1st ed. (London: H.J. Rowling and Sons, 1942). 6.
445
See chapter three for a more detailed discussion of the 1889 Parliamentary resolution on excise policy in
India.
162
As the political climate in India shifted towards activism, the AITA looked
increasingly unfit to rise to the occasion. Temperance crusader Tarini Prasad Sinha
described the organization as “entirely out of touch with India and at least five or six
years behind in information. The fact that the Government of India is in Simla, not in
Delhi, in the month of September, did not seem to have arrived in the London Office of
the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association.”446 Despite Sinha’s stated gratitude for the
AITA’s work, he said of its journal, Abkari, “coming once in every three months, as the
Abkari does, it is more like an excellent attempt to record ancient history than to record
current news."447 In India, the AITA largely ceased to be a prime mover, shifting
towards reporting extant temperance activism rather than helping to initiate it.
The worst flaw of the AITA in the 1920’s was a fundamental one. Although it
courted nationalists and students in India, it also attracted a far more conservative, proempire membership in Britain.448 For these British members of the AITA, many of
whom were retired Indian Civil Service officers and missionaries from an era before the
rise of the more radical 1920’s brand of nationalism, the anti-imperial shift in temperance
rhetoric was disconcerting. While Indian temperance organizations, some still nominally
affiliated with the AITA, moved towards political radicalism, the AITA itself called for
restraint and respect for the rule of law. Frederick Grubb, Honorary Secretary of the
AITA acknowledged that the growing prominence of temperance in the national
discourse of India could be credited to Gandhi but insisted in Abkari that “with the
446
Tarini Prasad Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan (Madras: Ganesh, 1922). 87.
447
Ibid., 88.
448
See chapter two for more information on the founding of the AITA and the populations from which its
leader, W.S. Caine drew on for its membership.
163
political aspects of his propaganda we have nothing to do.”449 “The Empire of Christ and
the Empire of Britain” did not always share the same imperatives.450 This put British
temperance organizations in a difficult position. Particularly after the noncooperation
movement (discussed in further detail below) the AITA attempted to follow a middle,
apolitical course, brushing aside “acute political differences” and asserting that
“temperance has held its place as an issue of common interest to all sections. It remains
as true today as ever it was that the one platform on which all parties in India are united is
that of Temperance reform.”451
The AITA Wager on Dyarchy
The AITA, particularly its members in London, saw in the 1919 Government of
India Act good reason to hope for positive change in the near future. This act, intended
to placate nationalists, transferred control of some aspects of governance in the provinces
to Indians. However, key aspects of administration like defense and foreign affairs
remained firmly in the grasp of Britons. Grubb hailed the coming of dyarchy, noting that
“India…is moving in the right direction, and we are convinced that her enfranchised
people will take full advantage of their new opportunities.”452 Dyarchy represented the
fruition of years of political agitation in Britain to see control over liquor policy passed
over to temperate, Indian hands. Yet this perceived success of the AITA’s activism
449
Frederick Grubb, "The Anglo Indian Temperance Association Annual Report, 1920-1921," Abkari: The
Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 125 (1921): 340.
450
Jeffrey Cox, Imperial fault lines : Christianity and colonial power in India, 1818-1940 (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002). 27.
451
Frederick Grubb, "Annual Report, 1922-1923 of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association," Abkari:
The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association, no. 133 (1923): 41-48.
452
"New India," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 119
(1920): 3.
164
carried an existential threat to the organization’s existence. Lord Clwyd, lifelong
temperance activist and president of the AITA, reported being asked this question: Now
that “powers and responsibilities in regard to Excise have been transferred to the people
of India, what is the use for such an organization as this working in England for
India?”453 Clwyd answered emphatically in the negative that he was “absolutely opposed
to this notion,” and that through continued activism the AITA could serve as an
instrument for cementing “a bond between England and India.”454 Unfortunately for the
AITA, this was not to be.
Unlike their British counterparts, Indian AITA members saw little to celebrate.
The 1919 Government of India Act dramatically weakened the influence of the AITA on
excise policy from London. Colonial officials would never again suffer the humiliation
of parliamentary resolutions condemning Indian excise policies.455 With excise a
“transferred” department and excise policy in India effectively divorced from
Westminster, the AITA was now a largely irrelevant organization from the perspective of
activism. As later events would prove, dyarchy did not so much transfer questions of
excise to Indians as much as it transferred all related questions from Parliament to British
colonial administrators and their Indian allies.
The AITA also found its political effectiveness in India impaired. True, the AITA
had been responsible for the founding of its hundreds of affiliates in India which were
now agitating for both temperance and nationalism as a single cause. However, the
453
Lord Clwyd, "President's Address," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 125 (1921): 41.
454
Ibid.
455
See chapter two.
165
activities of these organizations had always been locally organized. Indian temperance
organizations had full use of a nationally distributed network of cooperating likeminded
organizations. More importantly, they also had the benefit of nationalist organizations,
most notably the INC, which had officially included temperance as one of its key tenets.
The AITA’s stated support for the 1919 Act as an opportunity for Indians to affect
alcohol policy, while withholding support for non-cooperation and “politics” more
generally proved damning. As non-cooperation began its sweep across North India, the
AITA hailed the establishment of dyarchy as a step towards a temperate India. The
AITA reminded Indian temperance activists concerned with India’s “national status and
political liberties” that “under the Constitutional changes recently inaugurated the
responsibility for the solution of this problem has been substantially transferred to Indian
control.”456
In the AITA’s report to its London-based members, Grubb emphasized that “as a
Temperance organization we are not concerned with the adequacy, or inadequacy, of the
Government of India Act from a political standpoint, but it does undoubtedly afford to
the Indian people an opportunity to work out their own salvation from the growing evils
of the drink traffic.”457 Almost as an aside, Frederick Grubb reluctantly added that this
new power for self-determination with regard to drink policy was, “subject to certain
admitted limitations.”458 Yet in this, as in so many cases, the devil is in the details.
The AITA’s view on the 1919 Government of India Act was at odds with the
opinion of much of its Indian membership, many of whom were also members of the
456
Grubb, "The Anglo Indian Temperance Association Annual Report, 1920-1921," 34.
457
Ibid.
458
Ibid.
166
INC, an organization whose views on the 1919 act were decidedly less sanguine.
Dyarchy indeed promised that some seats on legislative councils would be granted to
Indians elected by a narrow franchise. However, measures approved in the provincial
legislatures could be, and would be, swept aside with vetoes at the whim of provincial
governors. If some nationalists were prepared to place faith in dyarchy, the Government
of India soon proved them wrong, rejecting measure after measure relating to
temperance. By 1928, even voluntary organizations not focusing solely on temperance
noted that despite the excise department’s status as “a transferred subject…here also we
find a similar negligence to the popular agitation for launching a campaign for total
prohibition.”459
The failure of dyarchy to achieve prohibition was an important part of the process
by which, as Rajni Kothari described, “the urge for social and political reform was
transformed into a desire for independence.”460 Dyarchy made manifest the hollow
promises of colonial rulers to extend political power to nationalists in their quest for
moral reform. The moral issue of temperance was now inextricably linked to politics.
The failure of substantive temperance reform under dyarchy proved colonial governance
to be systematically unable or unwilling to act for the moral betterment of the Indian
people. That is to say, what was once a moral question, particularly for western
temperance organizations, had clearly become a political question.
Local option, theoretically strengthened with dyarchy, was another official avenue
through which temperance activists hoped to reduce access to drink. Local option
459
J.F. Edwards, Rev., "A Non-Brahman Leader on Peasants' Drinking Habits," The India Temperance
Record and the White Ribbon XXII, no. 5 & 6 (1928): 2.
460
Rajni Kothari, Politics in India (Boston,: Little, 1970). 47-48.
167
committees, or excise advisory committees, had been in operation in some localities since
the early 1900’s. However, their composition was determined by local collectors, who
for the most part were Britons. These collectors appointed official members to the
committee, usually those who supported the collector’s position on liquor sales. Non
official members of the committees were drawn from prominent local temperance
associations. While some collectors appear to have taken the advice of its non-official
members into consideration, it was far more common for the excise advisory committees
to be prohibited from substantive changes by influencing committee votes or by ignoring
their votes altogether. By 1929 the Bombay Temperance Conference condemned these
committees as a “farce,” that did not “serve the purpose for which they were intended,
viz: the determination of the number and location of liquor shops in accordance with the
wishes of the residents of the locality.”461
Non-Cooperation and the Khilafat Movement
While the AITA attempted to remain above the fray on the matter of Indian
nationalism, the noncooperation movement of 1920-1922 made this all but impossible.
The noncooperation movement is held in most nationalist histories to be the product of
several causes. First and foremost was the violence of the colonial state as it struggled to
quash dissent. The Jallianwalla Bagh massacre in Amritsar and martial law in the Punjab
that followed turned many towards radicalism.462 Adding insult to injury was that the
461
Eighth Bombay Temperance Conference, "Resolutions passed at the Eighth Bombay Temperance
Conference," (Bombay: Eighth Bombay Temperance Conference, 1929).
462
During the period of martial law immediately following the massacre, humiliation ensued. Indians were
forced to crawl on all fours on a street where a British woman had been assaulted. See Vithal Rajan, "The
Natives Continue to Be Restless," Economic and Political Weekly 44, no. 2 (2009).
168
perpetrator of the mass murder in Amritsar, General Dyer enjoyed widespread support in
England, with £30,000 raised in his support.463
A second reason for the movement lies the treatment of Turkey in the wake of the
First World War. Prominent Indian Muslims expressed concerns to the GOI regarding its
postwar treatment of the Khalif of Turkey, for many Muslims a figurehead of global
Islam. Despite GOI assurances to the contrary, the dismemberment of the Turkish
Empire led many Indian Muslims to launch the Khilafat movement in protest. Gandhi
saw in this discontent an opportunity to widen the nationalist movement by making an
appeal to already-motivated Indian Muslims along communalist lines.464 Gandhi’s own
anger over the betrayal of British promises to keep Turkey intact won over many
Muslims, particularly on the Khilafat committee which appointed him to lead a nonviolent, non-cooperation movement on their behalf.465 Gandhi thus began the noncooperation movement under the auspices of the Khilafat committee. The Indian
National Conference’s working committee followed two months later in August of 1920,
launching its own non-cooperation movement, also placed under the leadership of
Gandhi.466
Reasons for the appearance of liquor shop picketing in the non-cooperation
movement are obscure. Congress’ plan for non-cooperation included from the outset the
boycott of foreign goods, particularly cloth, the picketing of stores selling foreign goods,
463
464
465
466
Bipan Chandra, India's struggle for independence, 1857-1947 ([New Delhi, India]: Viking, 1988). 184.
Irfan Habib, "Gandhi and the National Movement," Social Scientist 23, no. 4/6 (1995): 12.
Chandra, India's struggle for independence, 1857-1947: 185.
This occurred on the same day of Lokamanya Tilak’s death. Tilak had played a large role in the
controversial Poona temperance riots of 1908, proving for many British officials the “political” nature of
temperance activism in India more generally. See chapter 3 for more information regarding Tilak and the
Poona temperance riot.
169
refusal to participate in government, the law courts, and government schools. Curiously,
the original plan did not include the picketing of toddy shops.467 Gandhi himself opposed
the drinking of alcohol long before his involvement in the nationalist movement. His
parents, both Banias of Vaishnava sects that forswore the use of alcohol and the Jains, an
influential minority in his natal Gujarat, influenced Gandhi in this regard.468 Yet despite
Gandhi’s passion for temperance, one shared by influential nationalists like Gokhale and
Tilak, the picketing of toddy shops emerged “spontaneously,” and was only retroactively
included in Congress’ non-cooperation program. Yet the picketing of liquor shops by
temperance and purity organizations that had been going on intermittently since 1908
persisted.
Perhaps because to the fact that organizations affiliated with the AITA had been
peopled by nationalists—a stated goal of W.S. Caine, founder of the AITA—
Congresswallas merely continued their anti-alcohol agitation now under the aegis of noncooperation. This transformed the diffuse and loosely-organized picketing of liquor
shops, long suspected by some British administrators as a thinly veiled political
movement, into explicitly political movement. As the British resident for Tonk explained
to his superior, “the non-co-operators are booming temperance with the idea of depriving
Government of its excise revenue,” a move obviously more “political” than “genuine.”469
Non-Cooperation and Anti-Liquor Violence
467
Chandra, India's struggle for independence, 1857-1947: 188.
468
David Fahey & Padma Manian, "Poverty and Purification: The Politics of Gandhi's Campaign for
Prohibition," Historian 67, no. 3 (2005): 492.
469
Unknown, "Letter to H.R. Lawrence, Political Agent, Haraoti and Tonk," in Central Provinces (Delhi:
National Archives, 1921).
170
In the temperance-related aspect of non-cooperation, there was much to cause
alarm among colonial administrators. Alcohol-related picketing during non-cooperation
occurred in two contexts. The first was the routine picketing of liquor shops. After
having visited “about 75 shops,” J. Talyarkhan, Chief Excise Inspector for Bombay,
described how the pickets were conducted:
Picketing at all these shops generally begins from 7 p.m. and goes on till the closing
hours. In a very few shops only, generally toddy, pickets are found during the day. The
way in which picketing is carried on at present is such as to give one an idea that we are
not at present living under the protection of British Government, but in a place where
vagabondage had full sway without the least fear of law or order. The number of pickets
at each shop varies from one to even seven or eight. Whatever be the object of the
persons who have started this movement, the way in which the picketing is carried out by
those so called volunteers (most of whom are mere paid hirelings) is enough to make the
blood boil of any respectable man and I only wonder how most serious breaches of the
peace have not as yet taken place by the highly objectionable methods employed. This I
attribute to the natural timidity of the Indian population who visit these shops. The men
or even small boys of 10 and 12 who picket these shops have either a round paper badge
with a number hung on their chests or have a cloth cross belt over their shoulders.
Sometimes I have observed a picket coming to a shop only for a few minutes and making
as much noise as he possibly can by constantly repeating the same advice, in the course
of which he sometimes makes use of very filthy language. These pickets are relieved by
one another when the relieved man hands over his badge or belt and clears away either to
some other shop or anywhere else. I have given below a few samples of the actual words
used by these men and noted down by me there on the spot. It is however not these
pickets with badge or belt of whom the consumers are so afraid but they fear more, the
other loafers and bad characters in Bombay, who generally accompany the pickets and
who have no distinguishing badge on their persons but who quietly lurk near the shops
and come out only to assist the volunteers when a more daring customer than the others
defies a picket and has his drink. It is when he comes out of the shop that the pickets
surround him and greet him in such choice language such as whether he had been into the
shop to drink his mother's or wife's urine or if the customer is a Hindoo whether he had
been there to drink cow's blood or in case of a Mahomadan pig's blood. Naturally when
such a scene is going on in front of the shop, a crowd collects. It is then that the innocent
looking badmashes, helpers of the volunteers referred to above, also surround him, abuse
him in most filthy language and some of them follow him a little distance from the shop,
171
assault him and clear away. I have personally seen half a dozen instances of this kind
during the few days that I have been moving about in different localities.470
As much a part of the uniform as the badges and belts Talyarkhan mentions, is the
male gender. Although it is clear that some women participated in the picketing of liquor
shops, conservative picket organizers believed it, “not advisable to allow any burden of
the picketing movement to fall upon them.”471 Participation of women in liquor shop
picketing during the Noncooperation movement was uneven. In Lahore from 1920-1921
women participated in processions and the burning of foreign cloth but did not picket
liquor shops.472 Gandhi, leader of the noncooperation movement, did not agree did not
approve of women picketers and did not reverse his position until the late 1920’s.473
Despite the reservations of key nationalist leaders, enough women participated against
the wishes of conservative Indian men that one pamphlet warned liquor dealers to take
note of “the daily growing awakening of the nation and especially of the women.”474
The notion that Indian women represented and were responsible for the purity of
domestic space, justified public activism in defense of that space. Female participation in
liquor picketing placed different patriarchal ideas in conflict with each other. For Indian
470
J. Chief Excise Inspector Talyarkhan, Bombay, "Letter to Superintendent of Salt and Excise, Bombay,"
in Home Department, Special, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1921).
471
Sheikh Yakub Vazir Mohamed, "Native Newspaper Reports, Bombay," (Bombay: Government of
Bombay, 1922).
472
Radha Kumar, A History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and
Feminism in India, 1800-1990 (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993). 64.
473
Ibid., 85. This situation changed in the early 1930’s during the Civil Disobedience movement when
nationalist leaders began to officially encourage female participation in liquor picketing.
474
Vallabbhai Jhaverbhai Patel, "Leaflet issued by the President of the Gujarat Prantic Samiti," in Home
Department, Special, Bombay (Bombay: Maharashtra State Archive, 1922).
172
women operating as protectors of domestic space, the polluting nature of alcohol in the
home provided impetus and justification for public action like picketing.475 Yet this
public action belied the very notion of separate spheres. Female drink activism in India
reveals how the separate “spheres” of socially sanctioned activities did not always
conform to separate “spaces.”476
It should be noted here that Talyarkhan was hardly a disinterested observer. As a
chief excise inspector for Bombay, he was professionally invested in the continued
authority of the Government of India and its abkari policy. That said, his views find
support from other observers of picketing, including those by nationalists who were no
strangers to anxiety regarding the conduct of picketers. The collector for Byculla
similarly reported that “at the beginning picketing was done, either by intimidating
customers from entering a toddy or a country liquor shop, or by persuasion or by foul
abuse.”477 Another collector reported his descriptions of the pickets, noting that “a picket
was on duty near each shop, the captain of the band on duty very quickly put in an
appearance, and was followed shortly by a crowd of some 15 apparent sympathisers.”478
He reported individual breaches of the law as follows:
a) A purchaser pursued by a man on horseback and threatened.
b) A picket pulled the licensee's driver forcibly off his carriage.
475
Western temperance workers reinforced praise of Indian femininity and its inevitable conflict with
alcohol. “Women are natural teachers… [of] the lessons of purity and abstinence.” See Emma Price,
Women in the Temperance Movement in India (Lucknow: Women's Christian Temperance Union, 1925).
3.
476
Sara Mills, "Gender and colonial space," Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography
3, no. 2 (1996).
477
V.E. Xavier, Inspector of Salt and Excise, Byculla, "Letter," in Home Department, Special, Bombay
(Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1921).
478
H.L. Fox, "Letter to Commissioner, Northern Division, Ahmedabad on Picketing of liquor-shops," in
Home Department, Special, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1921).
173
c) The clothes of a Baroda Police Patel burnt, his face blackened, he himself paraded
round the town in a ghari-he having absolutely refused to be taken on a donkey
d) A bottle of liquor snatched from a Bhil.
e) A Talavia woman searched for liquor by another man at the instigation of the pickets.
f) A Parsi threatened by a known bad character (not a picket) that if he bought liquor, the
Parsi would be set on fire.
g) A Dakshini woman had her face blackened for drinking liquor.
h) A Darzi customer was abused and forcibly turned out of the street by the local
Congress Committee Chairman.
i) A Parsi gin-owner's Hindu employee was forcibly prevented from approaching the
liquor shop by a picket.479
Fox’s list of infractions above reveals another side to the picketing of liquor shops
marked less by benign paternalism than it was by the reinforcement of extant social
hierarchies and the enforcement of religious orthodoxy. The men pulled from their
carriages and pursued on horseback were most likely of low social status, otherwise the
violence against them would have been answered in kind. The Bhil from whom a bottle
of liquor was snatched was most certainly of low social status. The theft and destruction
of his bottle would have fit in with other indignities he had to suffer as a consequence of
his status as a Bhil. The only new aspect of his treatment was that it could now be
claimed by his assailants that they were acting for his benefit rather than in the interest of
reinforcing extant social hierarchies.
The “search” or assault of the Talavia woman is particularly telling. The Talavia
caste was of extremely low social status, considered by British administrators in Baroda
as a “criminal caste.”480 Being searched by a strange man was a gross insult, revealing
some of the less-noble motivations underlying this new concern for the habits of the
drinking classes. Searching her for liquor was tantamount to a right to determine the
479
Ibid.
480
Jamshedi Ardeshir Dalal, Census of India, 1901 (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1902). 580.
174
consumption habits of a woman of low social stature. Where once the private behavior of
low-status Indian woman was a concern for low-status men in her family and caste, it was
now also a concern for the upper castes as well. Now the policing of public behavior
extended even to those whose status was very low. This was the case with the blackening
of a Dakshini woman for drinking. Once merely drinking in public would have been
sufficient evidence of extant social degradation—something frowned upon but that
merely reinforced standard hierarchies of purity. Now it required the further public
humiliation associated with having one’s face blackened and paraded around the
neighborhood.
Another interesting underlying factor comes to the fore in the case of the
treatment of Parsis. Parsis, an influential and fairly wealthy minority in Bombay suffered
much at the hands of those protesting the liquor trade. The Bombay riots of late
November in 1921 began as a response to the warm welcome they gave the Prince of
Wales during his tour, a welcome pointedly denied by Indian nationalists. While the
prince was greeted with hartals and deserted bazaars in many places, he was greeted
enthusiastically by the Parsis of Bombay, precipitating a riot. Yet this explanation for the
beginning of the violence against Parsis leaves unaddressed the relationship between
Parsis and the sale of liquor.
The Parsis of Bombay had long been associated with the production and sale of
liquor. As Zoroastrians, their religion had no strict injunctions against the use of liquor.
Indeed, one reason for their considerable commercial success was their willingness to
engage in the trade. They had benefited from the decisions of colonial administrators in
175
the 1880’s that drove Hindu Bhandaris from trading in liquor in favor of larger-scale
operations, often run by Parsis. This provoked the drink strikes of the early 1880’s.481
Anti-liquor violence was particularly widespread in Bombay, culminating with
the anti-Parsi riots of 1921. The Collector for Bombay reported to the Secretary of the
Home Department that “The picketers had gone beyond all bounds in their intimidation
and systematic violence to innocent customers...the Bombay riots have fully proved this.
From 50 to 70 liquor shops have been destroyed, clearly out of plan and set purpose.”482
Many remaining Parsi-owned liquor shops closed the next day as rioters continued to
damage and destroy them.483 The collector of Bombay warned of the consequence of
inaction; “the general popular impression is that Government have abdicated their powers
out of fear of the non-cooperators. This is clearly a most humiliating position for any
government to be in.”484
Parsis in particular suffered the brunt of these attacks against liquor shops. From
November 18th through November 20th of 1921, the city of Bombay found itself beset by
riots. On the first day of the riots, “the main feature…was the persistent attack on liquor
shops.”485 Of the approximately 600 licensed liquor-vendors in the city of Bombay, 139
were attacked.486 In seeking out causes for the riots, it is unsurprising that the colonial
481
See chapter two for more on Parsis and the drink strikes of the 1880’s.
482
J.P. Brander, Collector of Bombay, "Letter to Secretary to Government, Home Department, Bombay," in
Home Department, Special, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1921).
483
Uknown, "The Writing on the Wall," The Leader, 21st November 1921, 6.
484
Brander, "Letter to Secretary to Government, Home Department, Bombay."
485
Government of Bombay, "The Bombay Disturbances. Govt. Press Note, Effect of Immoderate
Propaganda, Govt.'s Determination," Leader, 17th December 1921.
486
Ibid.
176
government noted the non-cooperation and khilafat movements. Interestingly,
temperance organizations escaped any blame for precipitating the riots. Little remains to
indicate whether colonial administrators wanted to avoid criticism for condemning
temperance workers or if the connection between anti-liquor violence and nationalism
was so widely acknowledged that it required no further comment.
The Bombay riots in late November 1921, marked by violence against AngloIndians and Parsis, has been a woefully unexamined topic. The violence perpetrated
against Anglo-Indians is easily reducible to their actual or perceived connection to
colonial rule. More problematic is the reason why Parsis were targeted by the rioters as
well. It is important to bear in mind that with large numbers of Bhandaris driven from
the liquor trade in the 1880’s, the selling of alcohol in 1920’s Bombay had never been
more dominated by Parsis.487
A second issue to bear in mind is the effectiveness of temperance propaganda.
Temperance organizations, increasingly radical in nature, had long been proclaiming the
“foreign-ness” of alcohol to India. Since the late 1890’s, these organizations reminded
would-be drinkers and the “pure” alike that alcohol was forbidden by both Islam and
Hinduism.488 Parsis were different in this regard. As the Parsi Panchayat wrote to the
Government of India in 1939 in protest of prohibition, “apart from the use of wine or
liquor in religious ceremonies, the Parsis have been accustomed to take wine and liquor
487
The replacement of small-scale liquor dealers with larger scale brewers and dealers was coincident with
an increase in the price and decrease in availability, and perhaps quality, of alcohol. Although it is
impossible to say with certainty, some of the anger directed at Parsis in the 1921 riots could be attributable
to these changes. See chapter two.
488
While the prohibition of alcohol in the Quran is fairly specific and direct, such injunctions within
Hinduism are much more narrow. See chapter two for a brief discussion of the religious tenets of
Hinduism and Islam with regard to alcohol use.
177
for centuries past and it has come to be regarded as an innocuous social habit by
them.”489 As temperance organizations entreated Indians towards abstention, the INC
continued to use abkari revenue as evidence that the colonial government sought only to
extract wealth from India, even at the cost of the welfare of Indians themselves. The
1920’s was a heyday for voluntary organizations in North India—Christian missions,
social reform organizations, temperance organizations, kisan sabhas, and purity
organizations. Selling alcohol during this period placed Parsis in the sights of nearly all
of them.
For its part, the AITA reported on both the peaceful picketing upon which it
heaped its blessings and on cases of clear violence and intimidation they hoped to
forestall. Abkari reported on the “novel” techniques of picketers who “caught hold” of
their co-religionists exiting drink shops and “blackened the faces of those under the
influence of liquor and took them round through the streets crying shame on them.”490
The AITA had long used caste organizations to further the temperance cause, finding that
“whatever general objections may be urged against the caste system, it can undoubtedly
be utilized, and has been utilized.”491 Explicitly caste-based temperance violence
occurred in Gujarat as well. A “man belonging to the sweeper caste was caught drunk.
His caste fellows, numbering about 200, seized him, garlanded him with old shoes and
marched him in procession through bazaars with beating of empty oil tins.”492 Even
489
Sapur Feredun Desai, History of the Bombay Parsi Punchayet, 1860-1960 (Bombay: Trustees of the
Parsi Punchayet Funds and Properties, 1977). 308.
490
Frederick Grubb, "Press Comment," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 124 (1921): 24-25.
491
"The Anglo Indian Temperance Association Annual Report, 1920-1921," 37.
492
"Press Comment."
178
fervent supporters of non-cooperation and temperance noted caste-related violence.
Tarini Prasad Sinha, traveling companion to Pussyfoot Johnson on his India tour,
observed that “violators of the caste rules against drink were handled roughly, their heads
half shaven, and some were escorted through the streets with old boots hung about their
necks--the most deadly humiliation possible to imagine.”493 As early as 1921 violence,
intimidation, and public humiliation were key methods for imposing abstention on
otherwise unrepentant drinkers.
Taken in aggregate, some themes occur with regard to these incidents of violence
associated with the picketing of liquor shops. One of these concerns the wearing of
uniforms. Most colonial officials noted differences in the behavior of those wearing
official uniforms as opposed to those who did not. Although there were some exceptions,
those people who wore uniforms were unlikely to engage in physical violence.
Interventions by uniformed volunteers were typically verbal in nature, running the gamut
from polite entreaty and recitation of religious injunctions to foul and abusive language.
The official badges, caps, ribbons, and sashes of uniforms played an important
role. First, uniforms represented a form of officialdom that lent itself to easy
juxtaposition with the uniformed agents of the colonial government. Liquor pickets in
this sense could be viewed as a battle of uniforms with police fighting for the sale of
alcohol and uniformed volunteers fighting against it. In a culture where the upper castes
had long associated drink with debasement, volunteer uniforms represented purity, while
police uniforms represented debauchery. The Indian public had a choice between two
uniforms or symbols of authority—one of the nationalists and one of the colonists.
493
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 203.
179
Secondly, when acts of violence occurred, they were typically perpetrated by nonuniformed observers sympathetic to the volunteers. Thus the uniform of the volunteers
provided a small degree of distance from acts of violence perpetrated by un-uniformed
civilians. Incidents of violence could then be attributed, not to picketers, but to the public
gathering outside the liquor shop. Despite the fact that perpetrators of violence were
acting in clear sympathy with picketers, their acts could be (and were) blamed on the
rabble rather than on any cohesive stratagem of the picketers themselves. Uniforms and
the observance of picketing rules by those who wore them afforded non-cooperators a
small measure of protection against police harassment in a way that reinforced the
authority of the Congress.
A small subset of the population—drinkers who demanded access to liquor—
made manifest their dislike of those wearing either uniform. Caste-related violence
against abkari officials and temperance workers were far less frequently reported.
Temperance journals had little to gain from reporting the collective action by low status
Indians to maintain access to alcohol. One such incident was reported in the Bombay
presidency in a village near Poona in 1926. A group of excise officers on the trail of
suspected illicit still-operators was “chased to the river by a crowd of men and
women.”494 The situation became deadly as “the Excise Inspector…fired one shot (12
bore buckshot) to frighten the crowd; two girls thereupon seized his gun but failed to get
it away.”495 The excise officers made a narrow escape shortly thereafter. In the future,
excise officers had to visit the villages of “Mauchis and Kathodis” in force.
494
H.F. Knight, District Magistrate, West Khandesh, "Letter to Commissioner, Central Division, Poona," in
Home Department, Special, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1926).
495
Ibid.
180
The non-cooperation movement was strikingly effective, particularly with regard
to the picketing of liquor shops. One collector informed Minister of Excise for the
Central Provinces in 1921 that “auctions failed in about a dozen districts- partly because
of non-cooperation.”496 Not all districts and areas could match this success. The princely
state of Jodhpur reported that “the wave of non-co-operation now passing over the
country regarding the use of liquor has…made little impression on Mewar.”497 Similarly,
excise revenue in the United Provinces remained strong.
Violence associated with the anti-alcohol agitation as a component of noncooperation eventually proved the movement’s undoing. Gandhi was troubled that
despite his injunctions to the contrary, violence persisted. Gandhi himself was witness to
the aftermath of one violent attack on a liquor shop during the aforementioned Bombay
riots of 1921 writing,
As I reached the Two Tanks I found a liquor shop smashed, two policemen badly
wounded and lying unconscious on cots without anyone caring for them. I rebuked them
[the rioters] and they were silent. We went further on and on retracing our steps found to
our horror a liquor shop on fire. Even the fire brigade was obstructed in its work.
Thanks to the efforts of Pandit Nekiram Sharma and others, the inmates of the shop were
able to come out.498
The intermittent violence against liquor shops culminated with an attack that left 23
policemen from Chauri Chaura, a small town in Uttar Pradesh, burned to death, locked
inside their police station by an angry mob that set fire to the building. Less frequently
reported was that although the incident ended with a violent conflict at a police station, it
496
Unknown, "Letter to J.H. Cox, Excise Commissioner for Central India," in Central Provinces, Revenue
(Delhi: National Archives, 1921).
497
Zalim Singh, "Letter to J.H. Cox, Commissioner of Excise, Central Provinces," in Central Provinces,
Revenue (Delhi: National Archives, 1921).
498
M.K. Gandhi, "A Deep Stain," in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, ed. GandhiServ Foundation
(Berlin: GandhiServ Foundation, 1921), 126.
181
began with an organized protest at the local bazaar against liquor sales and high food
prices.499
“English-Minded” and “Vernacular-Minded” Temperance
Temperance activism had long provided westerners with an outlet for their
philanthropy in a context within which they could use their race, prestige, and
occasionally their colonial connections, to great benefit. This was particularly true of
western women who found that their work in India provided them with more social
capital that would have been possible at home due to gender. Mary Campbell, discussed
in chapter two, became a very influential woman in Indian politics and on the global
temperance scene. Annie Besant explained to another temperance reformer that she
never donned the veil or hesitated to speak to all-male audiences, because Indians
considered her “above her sex.”500
Agnes Slack, a prominent WCTU member who travelled to India and other
distant lands, earned the praise of WCTU members. One American woman in Topeka,
Kansas who had just won the right to vote was inspired by Slack’s travels to pen the
following verse referring to the white ribbon, a symbol of the WCTU,
Wear it in the work-shop
Wear it in the street,
Wear it in the parlour
When your friends you greet.
Wear it when you're going out,
When you're coming back-Here and there and everywhere,
Just like Agnes Slack."
499
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India : 1885-1947, 2nd ed., Cambridge commonwealth series (Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989), 224-225.
500
Aelfrida Tillyard, Agnes E. Slack: Two Hundred Thousand Miles Travel for Temperance in Four
Continents (Cambridge, England: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1926), Biography. 92.
182
This admiration of Slack was hardly surprising. Slack liked to share titillating
stories of her travels abroad, emphasizing her brushes with danger in defense of a higher
cause. Slack’s biography recounts a brush with danger when, after making a pilgrimage
to the memorial for the Indian “mutiny, a swarthy Indian man dressed in a dirty white
robe” began following her.501 Slack’s life was saved at the last minute by an
“Englishman” arriving on the scene. The biography features another tale of oriental
danger as Slack, invited to stay in the palace of a local maharaja, heard the voices of
Indian men from outside her room—men who never opened her door. After relating the
incident to “a clergyman at Agra,” he responded that “'I would not have occupied that
room, even with a revolver under my pillow!'"502
Slack’s harrowing adventures in the exotic East resonated with temperance
activists living in the United States and England, who admired her intrepid crusading.
They would have been less warmly received in India itself, where the sound of Indian
voices behind closed doors was hardly panic-inducing. Slack’s orienatialist conceptions
of India fit well with her generally pro-empire perspective.503 The changing political
landscape of 1920’s India rendered Slack somewhat anachronistic. Western temperance
activists in the 1920’s increasingly found India a difficult place to fight for both
prohibition of alcohol and colonial rule.
The timbre of nationalist politics in the 1920’s favored a new kind of western
temperance activist, much more in the mold of Nicol Macnicol and Mary Campbell than
501
Ibid., 86.
502
Ibid., 88.
503
See chapter 3.
183
that of Slack. Another exemplar of the former, C.F. Andrews, described the division
among temperance activists in India thusly:
There was one English gentleman, who knew far more about the subject than anyone else
in the room. He spoke English fluently, but it happened to be what I might call, for want
of a better name, ‘vernacular-minded.’ That is to say, he thought with his own Indian
mind, in the original manner, and not always with an English tendency. There were
there, on the committee, also two or three Indians, who were ‘English minded.’ I mean,
they had dropped to a great extent their Indian mode of life and Indian way of thinking,
and had become so cut off from their own people as to think on these Indian questions in
an English manner.504
The 1920’s represented the last burst of activism from western temperance workers who
were “English”—that is to say—colonially minded.
Particularly in the early 1920’s western temperance activists who favored
colonialism argued against nationalism more broadly and against non-cooperation in
particular. Although many AITA members my privately have felt otherwise, the
organization was careful to officially state its opposition to the noncooperation
movement. Grubb wrote that the AITA, “may not be able to approve of Mr. Gandhi’s
economic and political programme, but in recommending ‘non-cooperation’ with the
drink traffic his words will command the assent of the great majority of the Indian
people.”505 The AITA walked a narrow tightrope, reporting the successes of noncooperation with regard to temperance but, “without, of course, condoning any methods
of propaganda which are not strictly peaceful and constitutional.”506 Despite Grubb’s
efforts, there remained in the pages of the AITA’s Abkari a palpable tension between the
504
C.F. Andrews, "The India Problem," in British Library, ed. Christian Literature Society for India
(Madras: G.A. Natesan, 1923), 89.
505
Frederick Grubb, "Mr. W.E. Johnson's Tour in India," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the AngloIndian Temperance Association I, no. 125 (1921): 46.
506
"Press Comment," 24-25.
184
organization’s stated opposition to non-cooperation and the praise it heaped on its antialcohol elements. Even while insisting on “peaceful and constitutional” activism alone,
Grubb filled the pages of Abkari with accounts of illegal and occasionally violent
temperance work. Grubb recounted the picketing of liquor shops, the blackening of
drinkers’ faces, drinkers forced to wear “garlands of shoes” and marched through the
city.507 Grubb prefaced this list with a reminder of the importance of the rule of
[colonial] law, but the mere act of listing these events in a journal dedicated to the cause
of temperance reveals the ambivalence of British AITA leaders. At the AITA’s annual
meeting in 1923, after the Congress had called off the movement, Grubb saw the end of
non-cooperation as a vindication of the less “political” methods by “constitutional
means” such as through “education and…the promotion of legislation,” methods that the
AITA had long employed.508
Grubb was not alone among western temperance workers attempting to draw a
distinction between anti-alcohol agitation practiced by non-cooperators and the larger
political aims of the movement. Slack wrote of what she hoped to accomplish in her
travels on the subcontinent, learning “not only Indian life, but British rule” in a way that
allowed her to “keep both ends in view.”509 Slack’s organization, the WCTU’s India
journal, The India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon’s first edition of 1922
greeted its readers with the following poem:
If you would boost the game along
cooperate!
Even though your plans go wrong,
507
Ibid.
508
"Annual Report, 1922-1923 of the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association," 41-48.
509
Tillyard, Agnes E. Slack: Two Hundred Thousand Miles Travel for Temperance in Four Continents: 82.
185
cooperate!
If perchance another man wants to work his plan
work his way, surely you can,
cooperate!
There's just one way to advertise;
cooperate!
Don't take time to criticize;
cooperate!
When things go the other way
After you have had your say,
If you are in the game to stay,
cooperate!
Let's make success our common plan!
Cooperate!
Let's be sports and play the game
Cooperate!
If someone gives you a slap,
Laugh it off--don't give a rap-Boost the game all over the map!
Cooperate!510
The intent of these verses, published at the height of the non-cooperation movement, is
unambiguous. Although the WCTU supported, in theory, the temperance-related aspects
of the freedom movement, non-cooperation with the colonial state was a bridge too far.
As the May, 1922 cover of The India Temperance Record would remind its readers,
“remember that he who violates the laws of the land tramples in the blood of the fathers,
and tears in sunder the charter of his own and his children's liberties.”511
The Battle for “Pussyfoot”
510
Frances K. Willard, The India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon XVI, no. 3 (1922).
511
Mabel E. Archibald, The India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon XVI, no. 5 (1922).
186
Despite the efforts of temperance organizations to remain neutral on “political”
matters, Indians did not allow them to do so successfully. Nothing makes this clearer
than the 1921 tour of William Eugene “Pussyfoot” Johnson. Johnson would become the
epitome of a “vernacular-minded” temperance man.
Johnson was born to a family with a long history of social activism from working
as missionaries to Arkansas Cherokees to participation in the Underground Railroad and
the abolitionist movement.512 Johnson himself continued in the progressive traditions of
his family, beginning his own temperance work as a newspaperman in Nebraska in
1889.513 By 1900 his prominence within the American temperance movement had grown
so much that he became a truly international figure, drawing the attention of concerned
American progressives to prostitution in the Philippines, then a territory of the United
States.514 He also travelled to Sweden, where he found much to criticize. In the interest
of temperance, Sweden had enacted the “Gothenburg System” which attempted to
weaken private interests in the liquor trade by assigning municipal licensing
companies.515 Johnson found that despite the good intentions of its authors, the
Gothenburg System failed to make a sufficient dent in the drinking problem.516
In 1906, after Johnson gained notoriety for his shrewd work for temperance both
publically and behind the scenes, President Roosevelt offered him a government position
512
Fred Arthur McKenzie, "Pussyfoot Johnson, Crusader--Reformer--A Man Among Men (London:
Fleming H. Revell Company, 1920). 18-19.
513
Ibid., 34.
514
Ian R. Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America's Moral Empire (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2010). 138-39.
515
Ian R. Tyrrell, David M. Fahey, and Jack S. Blocker, Alcohol and temperance in modern history : an
international encyclopedia, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003). 340.
516
McKenzie, "Pussyfoot Johnson, Crusader--Reformer--A Man Among Men: 55-56.
187
as special officer to work against the illicit liquor trade in Indian Territory.517 It was his
work against illegal liquor sales in Indian Territory that won Johnson his fame and his
name. Cracking down on illegal saloons, a highly dangerous proposition in the late 19th
century American west, required scores of lawmen willing to use deadly force. Johnson
changed all this. Eschewing armed escorts in favor of moxie and guile, Johnson
developed the habit of sauntering into saloons alone at night and asking for a drink. Once
the drink was poured he drew his revolver on the seller and on any other drinking patrons
and single-handedly marched them outside for arrest. His ability to carry off these arrests
alone earned him a $3,000 bounty on his head from illegal liquor traders and the
nickname “Pussyfoot” for his ability and willingness to use any means necessary to stop
illegal liquor sales.518
Although Johnson was known for his zeal in engaging highly dangerous liquor
vendors alone, he also worked in concert with trusted lieutenants. Juan Cruz, one of
these trusted lieutenants, was a Pueblo Native American. Cruz was quite a political actor
in his own right and quickly drew the ire of the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) for his
vociferous protests against the illegal use of Indian land by Anglo cattle barons for
grazing. Despite warnings from Washington to the contrary, Johnson persisted in his
dogged support of Cruz in his case against the cattlemen. Johnson humanized Cruz,
lauding him in print as “a young Indian Sir Galahad...Cruz had the spirit of a crusader.
517
In his early days as a temperance newspaper man, Johnson famously sent a letter to brewing associations
on the East coast to find out how best to defend the liquor trade against attacks from prohibitionists. Some
of his correspondents were quite happy to send back advice to the man whose letterhead identified him as a
representative of “Johnson’s Pale Ale.” Johnson’s Pale Ale proved to be a bitter draft; Johnson printed the
text of this advice letters from anti-prohibitionists on how to sustain the liquor trade, creating quite a public
stir over the calculating defense of “demon drink.” See ibid., 36. See also Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and
his campaign in Hindustan.
518
McKenzie, "Pussyfoot Johnson, Crusader--Reformer--A Man Among Men: 88.
188
He was devoted to his church, to his young wife, Dolorita, and to their baby, Jose.”519
This image of a Native American crusading for temperance, the law, and his own
property rights was at odds with what the OIA wanted to see—the image of Native
Americans typified by criminality and alcoholism.520
Tensions between Johnson and his OIA employers came to a head in dramatic
fashion when Cruz attempted to make a routine arrest of a group of four Native
Americans in possession of illegal whiskey. The group responded by beating Cruz
severely, but Cruz managed to grab his pistol and shoot one of his assailants, killing him.
Cruz was arrested for his murder and there was every reason to believe that he would be
promptly punished after the briefest of trials. Johnson quickly rose to the defense of his
friend and lieutenant, despite orders from “authorities in Washington” to desist.521
Finding the government unwilling to help Cruz, Johnson shrugged off Washington’s
warnings and sought out the WCTU to help organize Cruz’s legal defense. The WCTU’s
intervention created such a public stir that the government reversed its position, ordering
Johnson to do all he could to help Cruz.522 Cruz was subsequently exonerated and
released, but the U.S. government did not forget Johnson’s earlier intransigence or his
continued protest against the expropriation of Native American lands, resulting in “a
condition of almost open war between Johnson and the Washington Department.”523 By
519
Ibid., 122.
520
Jeffrey Ian Ross and Larry Allen Gould, "Native Americans and the criminal justice system," (Boulder,
Colo.: Paradigm Publishers, 2006), 87-101.
521
McKenzie, "Pussyfoot Johnson, Crusader--Reformer--A Man Among Men: 123.
522
Ibid., 124.
523
Ibid.
189
1913 it became clear that Johnson’s days of working with Native Americans on behalf of
the government were numbered. Johnson, charged with insubordination, resigned his
post to become a full-time crusader for national prohibition.524
After leaving government service Johnson went to work for the Anti-Saloon
League (ASL), the most politically powerful temperance organization in the United
States at that time. He put his journalistic experience to good use, editing the ASL’s
official newsletter, New Republic.525 The ASL was revolutionary in its methods and
success, acting as one of the first “’modern’ pressure groups.”526 A constitutional
amendment enacting prohibition was no easy feat, and it was the ASL, more than any
other single organization, that was responsible for the political wrangling necessary to
move the Volstead Act through Congress with enough support to survive President
Woodrow Wilson’s veto.527
In addition to his work on behalf of American prohibitionists at the ASL, Johnson
also travelled widely from 1912-1918. He visited England, Norway, Sweden, Finland,
and Russia during this period, writing a book on the vodka industry that received high
acclaim in temperance circles.528 In 1919 he returned to “invade England and Scotland
524
Ibid., 127.
525
Tyrrell, Fahey, and Blocker, Alcohol and temperance in modern history : an international encyclopedia:
340.
526
K. Austin Kerr, "Organizing for Reform: The Anti-Saloon League and Innovation in Politics,"
American Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1980): 37-53.
527
Daniel Okrent, Last call : the rise and fall of Prohibition, First Scribner hardcover ed. (New York:
Scribner, 2010). 109.
528
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 53.
190
and brought the British and European [liquor] trade interests their first vivid realization of
what an American dry organizer, supplied with American expense money, could do.”529
The involvement of Americans in the domestic affairs of other states provoked a
good deal of outrage. Johnson himself ended up lending his name to a newly-coined
word to describe the “meddling” of American citizens globally, “pussyfootism.”530
Closely related to anti-American sentiment, the charge of pussyfootism amounted to
foreign participation in domestic political discourse. The fact that pussyfootism was not
entirely free of imperialist impulses was not lost on those who themselves benefited from
colonial rule. One Briton captured this anti-pussyfootism feeling with the following
verses,
“How are you, who are you,
Pussyfoot?
Don't you know we hear your meow,
Why don't you stay in the U.S.A.
And wail in your own backyard?
Through you've got the public puzzled
The Bull-Dog isn't muzzled,
Keep away, keep away, Pussyfoot!”531
One enterprising company, Haig & Haig Five Stars Scots Whiskey, went so far as
print the below advertisement in the conservative Times of India to use anti-Pussyfootism
rhetoric to increase sales.532 Ironically, individuals who benefited from colonialism, the
ultimate foreign involvement in domestic affairs, proved some of the harshest critics of
the much more benign yet still intrusive pussyfootism, as we will see below.
529
Frazier Hunt, "The World War on Booze," XLII, no. 4 (1922).
530
Tyrrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America's Moral Empire: 234.
531
Unknown, "How London has Viewed Pussyfoot Johnson," New York Times, 23rd November 1919.
532
"India Beware," The Times of India, 19th October 1921, 2.
191
Figure 12
Source: "India Beware," The Times of India, 19th October 1921, 2.
During Johnson’s 1919 visit to Britain, students were particularly critical of
Johnson’s commentary on British alcohol policies. At one of Johnson’s speaking
engagements, one student shouted over the chants of his peers inviting Johnson to “take a
drink” that “if Britain wants to be wet or dry…that is a thing for Britishers to decide. We
don’t want Americans coming over here with elaborate and ornate speeches telling us
192
what we want to do.”533 In a foreshadowing of events to come, the students physically
seized Johnson and paraded him involuntarily through the West End of London. One of
the students told a reporter of Johnson that “he’s got a horrible accent, so we told him to
shut up.”534 As his student tormentor would soon discover, Johnson was not a man who
was easily cowed.
The above violence against Johnson during his November, 1919 tour of Britain
had one very important casualty. Struck with a bag of flour during the “ragging,”
Johnson suffered a significant injury to his right eye. Despite the injury, Johnson lived
up to his reputation for American-west toughness, lighting a cigarette “and smiling
amiably” while his captors debated whether or not to dunk him in one of the fountains of
Trafalgar Square.”535
Johnson was nothing if not a man who knew how to use the press to the advantage
of his cause. Eventually, Johnson met a co-captive of the students, F.A. McKenzie, who
would become an ally and wrote a flattering biographical treatment of Johnson’s many
adventures in the cause of temperance. Both were released when police arrived to break
up the riot.536 Despite the efforts of British doctors, “the optic lens of Mr. Johnson's eye
had been broken, and…there was little hope of saving it. And so, in view of the great
pain that Mr. Johnson was suffering, and which could not be relieved, the surgeon
533
"Mr. Pussyfoot Johnson 'Ragged': Platform Stormed by Students, Carried by his Captors Through West
End," The Manchester Guardian, 14th November, 1919 1919.
534
Ibid.
535
Ibid.
536
Ibid. The students who initiated the riot and attacked Johnson “insisted on shaking hands with the
police, who, they said, ‘behaved splendidly.”
193
removed the eye."537 Despite Johnson’s minimizing of his injury, there was no doubt that
the eye had been lost for the cause of prohibition in Imperial Britain, far from Nebraska,
where he had initially won acclaim.
The next morning after his eye was removed, an anxious housemaid awoke
Johnson, telling him that a band of reporters had gathered outside, demanding to
interview him. Johnson was an affable man according to those who knew him, and he
was certainly no stranger to the world of propaganda, so he agreed. The reporters “found
him smiling despite the pain of his bandaged eye.”538 He had a message for his attackers,
“tell the boys there is no ill will on my side, not a grain."539 After posing for a
photograph with a wide grin and bandaged eye, he told the reporters that he was only
interested in one form of reparation, that the press “tell the truth about him and give him
fair play in his columns.”540 Britons outraged at Johnson’s treatment clamored to raise
money by subscription for Johnson. When he learned that some money had been raised
for him by subscription without his knowledge he “requested the editor to send whatever
money was collected to Sir Arthur Pearson's great work for blinded soldiers at St.
Dunstan's House in London.”541 Johnson proved himself as skilled in the world of the
British press as he was in his days as newspaperman and representative of the Johnson
Pale Ale Company in Lincoln, Nebraska.
537
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 71.
538
Ibid., 69.
539
Ibid.
540
Unknown, "'Pussyfoot' on the Eyes Drinking Puts Out: Eager to Resume Fight, Financial Testimonial
not Desired," Manchester Guardian, 2nd December 1919.
541
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 72.
194
With his reputation in Britain greatly improved after the loss of his eye, Johnson
began getting much more favorable press and cooled the once hostile disposition of great
numbers of Britons against his work. He insisted publically, as he always had, that
neither the Anti-Saloon League “[n]or any other American organization sought to impose
either its agents or its methods on any other country.”542 While some Britons might have
let out a sigh of relief at this point, others had reason to wince at how Johnson saw the
future of the liquor trade and his role in the fight against it. Asked how he saw the world
through his glass eye, Johnson responded that he envisioned a dry universe. Moreover,
he saw a role for himself in this transition; “we want to arouse interest in prohibition and
then those in their countries who would banish the drink evil will organize and they will
fight with their own weapons in their own way, and we will help them fight.”543
Johnson’s view of the future was a prescient one with regard to India, a colonial context
in which helping people fight “with their own weapons in their own way” was fraught
with multiple meanings.
In 1920, Pussyfoot Johnson had earned a reputation for his courage, his guile and
willingness to challenge any person or organization offending his moral sensibilities. He
had a proven track record as a reporter, bureaucrat, agitator, and organizer with close ties
to both the ALS and the World League against Alcoholism, (WLAA). Representatives of
ASL, flushed with success after the passage of the Volstead Act, found themselves in
great demand for speaking tours abroad. In the winter of 1920, some “organizations”
542
Unknown, "Sees Dry Universe through Glass Eye: 'Pussyfoot' Johnson Returns to America--Considers
Trip to Europe Successful," The New York Times, 23rd April 1920.
543
Ibid.
195
from India approached Johnson, inviting him to take a tour of India.544 These
organizations also petitioned the aid of the AITA to help them convince Johnson to tour
India. The AITA, with their typical caution, advised him to postpone his visit until the
following September owing to “the political situation in India.”545 Johnson obliged,
saying “my business is to create trouble for the liquor interest. If not this year, well next
year I am quite game.”546 The AITA was pleased as well, agreeing to make all the
necessary arrangements for Johnson’s tour and doubtless hoping that the political
situation would cool in the next year.
In 1920 Johnson prepared for his impending India trip, stopping first in England.
Although his reception was warmer than the previous one in which he had lost his eye,
Johnson was still treated to harsh newspaper articles and editorial cartoons wary of his
purpose in London. Newspapers carried editorial cartoons with such titles as “Pussyfoot
Nosey Parker from across the sea,” “Dollars for dirty work in England, — Shall he proboss us?"547 Even observers enamored of his record in the “Wild West,” dealing with
“gangs of ruffians, card-sharpers, and incorrigible swindlers…who could only be dealt
with by forcible means” were quick to note a key difference between Britons and
544
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 87. The organizations that approached
W.E. Johnson are left frustratingly unidentified in the sources used for this dissertation thus far. Knowing
the political platforms of these organizations would shed a great deal of light on the reasons why Indians
were particularly interested in being visited by Johnson. I suspect that the organizations inviting Johnson to
India were somewhat radical in nature. Anyone familiar with Johnson would know his somewhat radical
past. Johnson would be a poor fit for constitutionalists and incrementalists.
545
Ibid.
546
Ibid.
547
Ibid., 62.
196
Americans”—Britons were a “mature race and the whip has gone out of fashion among
us.”548
W.E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson in India
Johnson arrived in Bombay in August of 1921. Despite the hopes of the AITA
which organized his trip, the political landscape of India was heating up; the noncooperation movement was in full swing. A keen political observer, Johnson was well
aware of non-cooperation in India and praised the inclusion of the liquor traffic in its
program. Johnson said of this inclusion that
Mr. Gandhi has done a shrewd thing. Non-co-operation in the manufacture, sale, and use
of alcoholic beverages is for India's unconditional good. Missionaries, philanthropists,
educators, and even business men can all join gladly in this type of non-co-operation.
Without respect of race, class, or creed, residents of India can wholeheartedly support any
effort on the part of India's leaders to get rid of the drink traffic. No amount of financial
embarrassment should stand in the way of this land freeing itself from the bondage of
strong drink.549
In no less than Abkari, the key journal of the Indian temperance movement, Johnson had
praised Gandhi, the face of the nationalist movement in the 1920’s. Johnson wisely
confined his comments to the temperance aspects of non-cooperation rather than praising
the movement more broadly, but his message was clear. Johnson was unprepared to
condemn the political aims of the nationalist movement provided they worked in the
service of temperance. The AITA, with its divided loyalty in terms of India’s future, had
reason to worry.
548
549
F. Heath, "Pussyfoot," The Bookman 59, no. 349 (1920): 38.
Brenton Badley, T., "Pussyfoot," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 125 (1921).
197
The AITA was a progressive organization working for positive change in India,
but was only able to do so by virtue of a colonial context in which organizations operated
by white British subjects could operate with freer rein. The growth and increasing
radicalization of the Indian nationalist movement revealed schisms within the AITA.
Under the influence of its founder, W.S. Caine, the AITA had drawn its Indian
membership from nationalist Indians. In the age of constitutionalist nationalists who
were content with incremental change this was not a problem.550 But in the 1920’s
balancing the tone of temperance discourse to please both more radical nationalists and
their paternalist well-wishers in Britain became much more precarious. British AITA
members made a habit of distancing themselves from the “sedulous” methods of Gandhi,
urging other temperance workers to “dissociate themselves from all methods of agitation
which are not strictly peaceful and constitutional.”551 While admonishing colonial
administrators for their failure to acknowledge that “what is morally wrong [alcohol
sales] cannot be politically right,” the AITA maintained “all loyalty to the
Government.”552
Johnson’s visit to India threatened to upset this delicate balance. By agreeing to
facilitate Johnson’s visit, the AITA had the tiger by the tail. Known as a smooth political
operator with the courage to take on both the outlaws of the American West and his own
550
See chapter three for more information on the founding of the AITA and Caine’s efforts to build an
Indian membership.
551
552
Grubb, "The Anglo Indian Temperance Association Annual Report, 1920-1921," 34.
Ibid., 40. Here Grubb echoes the sentiment of Hugh Price Hughes, the Methodist minister outraged at
Liberal cooperation with Irish home rule advocate, Charles Stewart Parnell, a convicted adulterer and
perjurer. He said of working with Parnell, “what is morally wrong can never be politically right.” See
John F. Glaser, "English Nonconformity and the Decline of Liberalism," The American Historical Review
63, no. 2 (1958).
198
government when it collaborated in theft of lands from indigenous peoples, Pussyfoot
Johnson could not be allowed to shatter what remained of the wall between temperance
work and Indian nationalism. Johnson, who had agreed to delay his trip by one year
already, would not be put off from his work yet again. Under the circumstances,
mitigating the damage of Johnson’s Indian tour was the best the AITA could hope for.
Speaking at the AITA’s annual conference in London, Lord Clwyd made note of the
“dark clouds which had risen” between Indians and Britons but only “just referred” to the
coming visit of Johnson to India.553 The applause greeting this announcement were likely
more anxious than ecstatic.
The great irony of Johnson’s trip to India was that it was formally arranged by an
organization that did not want him there and was chaperoned by Indian temperance
workers, many of whom also opposed the trip. The GOI was no more enthusiastic.
Sinha wrote, “certain high circles in Bombay had tried their best to prevent Mr. Johnson's
coming to India, but they were overruled in London.”554 Yet Johnson was not a man to
be put off forever, and so the AITA arranged for him to be guided by the staid hands of
the Bombay Temperance Federation (BTF). As a further precaution, the AITA attempted
to curtail Johnson’s access to its own affiliates by writing “directly to the various
553
554
Clwyd, "President's Address," 41.
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 91. Sinha’s writing reveals the author as a
sardonic wit. This accusation against “certain high circles” could have applied to conservative Indian
temperance workers or to colonial administrators. The ambiguity of this statement regarding opposition to
Johnson’s trip suggests that, perhaps, Sinha himself did not discriminate between these two camps. Sinha
stood clearly on the side of Indian independence and appeared to have little patience for those who did not,
whatever the reason.
199
temperance organisations in other towns of the Bombay Presidency, and that virtually
restricted Mr. Gilder's activities [Johnson’s tour] to the city of Bombay alone.”555
Accompanying Johnson on his tour of India was Tarini Prasad Sinha. A personal
friend of C.F. Andrews associated with the World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA),
Sinha was unconstrained by the AITA’s timidity and was thus in a unique position to
help guide Johnson through the minefield of colonial politics in India.556 Sinha was an
ideal travelling companion for Johnson, a former newspaper man who had studied at
Benares’ Hindu University, the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of
London, and the Graduate Institute for International Studies at Geneva.557 Like Johnson,
Sinha was no stranger to violence, having “served with distinction” in the British army.558
As will become clear below, although Sinha never explicitly endorsed any political
faction in India, he had a great deal of sympathy for more radical nationalists and little
patience for incrementalists. In short, Sinha and Johnson had a great deal in common.
Both were educated, brave men with experience working in a variety of cultural contexts
and unafraid to confront injustice, whether perpetrated by criminals or government.
Sinha was a very well-connected person, both in India and internationally. Sinha
counted among his friends several luminaries of the nationalist movement: Rabindranath
Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi, C.F. Andrews, and Annie Besant. He was no stranger to the
INC, and would later serve as its secretary for its London post. Sinha had his finger on
the pulse of international politics and, “made several tours through England, France,
555
Ibid., 163.
556
Frederick Fisher, B., "Tarini Prasad Sinha," ed. University of Iowa (1950).
557
Ibid.
558
Frederick Grubb, "India and America," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 130 (1922): 70.
200
Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria” on the behalf of the INC and various temperance
organizations 559 He had a track record of working internationally for social reform and
was appointed Secretariat to the League of Nations’ committee on “Social Questions and
Opium Trafficking.”560 Sinha was likely one of the few people with more hard-won
political experience than Johnson himself. He would prove adept at steering Johnson
through the maze of Indian politics.
In the 1920’s there was a great deal of temperance activity in and around the city
of Bombay, but not all of it was equally laudable in Sinha’s view. He described the lay
of the land there, describing “quite a good few” organizations whose members
“sometimes meet.”561 Yet there was another kind of organization “inaugurated some
years ago” whose elected office bearers merely “continued” the organization rather than
do much actual temperance work.562 “Many of these [latter] organizations joined
together in 1896 under the name of the Bombay Temperance Federation,” chaired by Sir
Bhalchandra Krishna with Dhanjibhai Dorabji Gilder as General Secretary. Sinha, who
held the AITA’s current work in low regard, noted of the BTF that it was “of course”
affiliated with the AITA.563
The techniques of Indian temperance organizations increasingly mirrored those
employed by nationalists of the 1920’s. In the late 19th century when the AITA was
559
Fisher, "Tarini Prasad Sinha."
560
Ibid.
561
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 91.
562
Ibid. See also John Granville & William Eugene Johnson Woolley, Temperance Progress in the
Century (London: Linscott Publishing Company, 1903). 440.
563
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 163.
201
founded, activism typically took the form of collecting information on alcohol
consumption rates and then sending petitions to colonial officials or to metropolitan
government officials.564 Indian nationalists of that period employed these same methods
in their efforts towards constitutional reform. But by the 1920’s, nationalists began to
move from these techniques to more direct action, typified by the non-cooperation
movement. Many temperance organizations mirrored this change, but not so the BTF.
Summing up his assessment of the BTF, Sinha wrote in his inimitably wry style:
The Bombay Temperance Federation is a very dignified reform body. This reform body
never had a programme, nor did it ever do any popular propaganda work. For it has
always believed in using its power to influence the Government to the best possible
advantage to the people, and so it presents petitions and offers suggestions to the
Government whenever opportunities present themselves. And indeed whenever
something unforeseen has happened that has bestirred the Federation into unusual
activity, the General Secretary has sat down and written a petition. Thus it has presented
a good few petitions during the years of its existence…565
With this rather low opinion of the “dignified” BTF, it likely came as no surprise to Sinha
to find the BTF entrusted with the care and, arguably, the isolation of Johnson in India.
Johnson’s handlers tried desperately to steer him away from political controversy,
“solemnly advis[ing him] not to have anything to do with 'these Gandhi people' and never
to address any of their meetings for that would encourage them in their wrong thought,
wrong aspirations and wrong actions.”566 These efforts brought mixed results. At
Johnson’s second address in Bombay “Non-co-operators had shaken off their proposed
564
See chapter two for a more detailed discussion of the early techniques of the AITA and similar
organizations.
565
566
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 164.
Ibid., 171.
202
indifference and were present in big numbers.”567 Sinha wrote that Johnson managed to
win over initially-suspicious non-cooperators with his “frank and straightforward”
oratory. After the meeting several non-cooperators approached Johnson, asking him to
address a meeting “under their auspices.”568 Sinha described the ensuing exchange in
vivid detail:
Before Mr. Johnson could reply, the General Secretary of the Bombay Temperance
Federation [D.D. Gilder] stepped up to say that Mr. Johnson was leaving for Poona early
next morning. They therefore requested Mr. Johnson to address their meeting on the
following Sunday on his return from Poona. Mr. Johnson said he would certainly like to
address their meeting, but that they must arrange for the time with the General Secretary
of the Federation, who was in charge of all arrangements for Mr. Johnson's meetings. The
General Secretary, it seems, informed the Non-co-operators that there would be no time
on Mr. Johnson's return from Poona, and that it would, therefore, not be possible for him
to arrange any meeting for them. But the Non-co-operators would not be Non-cooperators if they merely took such denials from such General Secretaries. They kept quiet
and were sharp on the watch.569
Sinha reported that the above incident did not sit well with Johnson. He was
“worried and thoughtful” that night until he came to a “defiant decision,” rousing Sinha
from sleep to inform him.570 Johnson wrote to ASL headquarters expressing his
determination to avoid being “run by any one particular [political] section as opposed to
another.”571 He met with the Governor of Bombay, George Lloyd, informing him of his
plans to meet with political groups and attempted to allay Lloyd’s fears “over the
567
Ibid.
568
Ibid.
569
Ibid., 171-72.
570
Ibid., 172.
571
Ibid., 173.
203
possibility of my starting an insurrection on this side of the world.”572 Despite the plans
of the AITA and the BTF, Johnson had already decided to engage with non-cooperators.
All that remained to be determined was how to break away from his staid hosts.
Johnson’s AITA-made schedule left the 4th of September open for a day of rest in
Poona. Sinha accused Gilder of the BTF of arranging a meeting with some Poona
students, “wishing to give Mr. Johnson sufficient reason not to go down to Bombay and
get mixed up with ‘those Gandhi people.’”573 Although it is difficult to know for sure,
Sinha might have been too hard on Gilder because the students he would meet with in
Poona attended Fergusson College—the site of the 1908 temperance riot. Thirteen years
later the student body was no less enamored of temperance work nor of nationalism.
Johnson soon found himself guided by the students on a tour of picketing activities in
Poona. On leaving the city he was treated to cry of “Johnson Maharaja ki Jai!”574
Tensions escalated on Johnson’s visit to Ahmedabad, future home of one of the
earliest prohibition zones in 1930.575 Approaching the venue, Johnson was greeted with
shouts of “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai” and “Vande Mataram” and it became immediately
clear that the small hall could not accommodate the swelling crowd outside.576 Throngs
of non-cooperationists had come to hear the American temperance man speak. Keeping
Johnson isolated from radicals was a tall order in 1921 Ahmedabad. His handlers “had
572
Ibid.
573
Ibid., 184.
574
Ibid., 190. This means “Victory to King Johnson.”
575
See chapter 5 for more information on the Ahmedabad prohibition zone.
576
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 193. The first phrase translates as “Victory
to Mahatma Gandhi.” “Vande Mataram” is a nationalist song composed in 1896 that would later become
Independent India’s national anthem.
204
taken special care to keep Mr. Johnson a close prisoner in their camp and…tried to keep
the Non-co-operationist leaders off their programme, were kept constantly being moved
about by some Parsee and European and Missionary ladies coming late and going up to
the front seats.”577 A politically moderate Indian temperance advocate who spoke after
Johnson was jeered by the audience. The fight for Johnson between competing groups of
temperance workers was becoming explicit.
Matters came to a head with Johnson’s visit to Bankipore, Bihar. A large crowd
of white-capped volunteers greeted Johnson and his retainers as he left the train station.
The noise of the crowd was “deafening” after Johnson took his seat in a horse-driven
carriage and he was again literally captured by the crowd; but this time events would
unfold very differently from his unfortunate experience in London. “The crowd of Nonco-operation volunteers, with surprising quickness, unharnessed the horses, and before
anybody was aware of it, began dragging the carriage. The huge procession gaily
displaying bunting and flags, and shouting 'Mahatma Gandhi-ki-jai' and 'Pussyfoot
Johnson-ki-jai,' passed through the town…”578 The scene captured below pictures a
bemused Johnson, doubtless surprised to find himself the grand marshal of a nationalist
parade.
577
Ibid.
578
Ibid., 300.
205
Figure 13
Source: Tarini Sinha, “Arrival at Bankipore,” “Pussyfoot” Johnson and his Campaign in
Hindustan, Madras: Ganesh, 1922, 300.
By virtue of his interactions with the non-cooperationists and through his public
praise of Gandhi, the American temperance worker was becoming an important symbol
for Indian nationalists. As one Delhi social service organization wrote to Johnson, “we
quite appreciate your desire not to meddle in any way with the present political situation
in India. But still we feel that you are, even if unconsciously, rendering us a great
political service.”579 Since temperance was a fundamental aspect of nationalism in India,
Johnson’s work in India implied endorsement of nationalism; as a result his utility as a
579
Ibid., 225.
206
symbol was not entirely unlike that of Gandhi himself. The two propaganda posters of
the period, reproduced in Sinha’s book below, bear out this similarity.580
Figure X
Source: Tarini Sinha, “Mahatma Gandhi Driving Liquor from India,” “Pussyfoot”
Johnson and his Campaign in Hindustan, Madras: Ganesh, 1922, 225-226
580
Ibid.
207
Sinha also used his commemoration of Johnson’s visit to make subtle criticism of
imperial rule. Sinha was struck by the effect that viewing the site of the Jallainwalla
Bagh massacre in Amritsar had on Johnson.
After passing through the gruesome doorway into the baugh proper, the ever-lingering
famous smile of Mr. Johnson completely deserted him. So did his general cheerfulness.
Suddenly this great American seemed to be transfigured into a solemn personality.
Indeed he looked so solemn and thoughtful as to make very one present feel the presence
of Death that through the muzzles of British guns played havoc on the lives of innocent
men, women and children in April, 1919.581
It is noteworthy that Sinha’s book chronicling Johnson’s temperance work in India
contains 25 plates, three of which are haunting scenes at the site of Jallainwalla Bagh, an
event that ostensibly had little to do with temperance. In 1920’s India, the distinction
between temperance work and nationalist criticism of despotic imperial rule was a blurry
one indeed.
This growing lack of distinction between temperance work and Indian nationalism
made some British temperance workers quite uncomfortable. One response was to insist
that the distinction was still a clear one despite all evidence to the contrary. The AITA
summarized Johnson’s tour of India under a heading titled, “politics avoided.”582 The
AITA’s Abkari credited Johnson’s “aloofness from political controversies” as key to his
success in avoiding the alienation of “more advanced reformers or sympathetic
administrators.”583 This report of the completely apolitical nature of Johnson’s trip is
very much at odds with the much more detailed recounting of Sinha, but of course, the
581
Ibid., 242.
582
Frederick Grubb, "Mr. Pussyfoot's Tour: A Remarkable Campaign," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of
the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association I, no. 127 (1922): 2.
583
Ibid.
208
AITA had much to lose from “political” involvement. If politics could not be avoided in
the context of Indian temperance work, then what role could there be for men like Grubb
who had made their paternalist struggle to improve India their life’s work? To report the
heavily political nature, either as a product of Johnson’s volition or as a product of his
being used by competing factions of nationalists, would undermine the increasingly
tenuous position of the AITA.
Other temperance workers proved far less reluctant to publicize and condemn
what they saw as interloping in the domestic affairs of the empire. On being invited to a
garden party at which Johnson was to be present, one of these men responded that he
would come wearing “thick, heavy ammunition boots, so that he could kick Mr. Johnson
across the waters back to his own country, where he could do all the mischief that he was
capable of doing.”584 Reverend Cape, the “vernacular-minded” missionary who sent the
invitation, wrote back told to him he could wear what he liked, provided he would “take
it cheerfully if the Indians used the same method and the same language towards him, and
send the Englishman back to his own country.”585
Matters became particularly heated with the Canadian Baptist missionary, I.C.
Archibald, who urged Johnson to avoid Gandhi’s “nefarious” activities before leading an
unenthusiastic temperance audience in a chorus of “God Save the King” so that the
meeting would not “appear seditious.”586 Johnson agreed to meet privately with the non-
584
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 185-86.
585
Ibid., 186.
586
Ibid., 344. Sinha lists the religious denomination of the Archibalds as Methodist but this appears
erroneous. They were Canadian Baptists. See Anne Innis Dagg, The Feminine Gaze: A Canadian
Compendium of Non-Fiction Women Authors and Their Books, 1836-1945 (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 2001).
209
cooperators in attendance after the meeting and before a dinner with Archibald and his
daughter, none other than Mabel E. Archibald, editor of the WCTU’s India journal, The
Indian Temperance Record and the White Ribbon. Johnson would later receive a
message from Mabel Archibald asking him if it was true, as she had heard, that he had
met with non-cooperationists who were “doing much harm and leading to destruction and
loss of life.”587 She had some additional advice for a fellow western temperance worker
in India: “Until they [non-cooperationists] give up their senseless campaign against the
Government I do not see how we can publicly join them in the campaign against drink
and honour those who are stirring up the ignorant masses to such outrageous deeds.”588
Johnson responded to Archibald’s letter, saying that he had “steadfastly avoided
becoming the tool of either Mr. Gandhi or the Government.”589 Yet after averring his
commitment to remaining above the political fray, Johnson underlined the reason why
apolitical temperance work in 1920’s India had become all but impossible.
It should be remembered that all the drink shops in India are established by the
Government, and as long as the Government follows this policy of using its power to
shield the traffic, it must expect attacks at its weakest spot, at the hands of its enemies. If
the Government would withdraw its protection from the drink business, it would
automatically remove the best weapon that that Gandhi people have.
For Johnson and the new generation of western temperance workers in India, the colonial
government of India had allied itself so closely with the sale of liquor that temperance
work necessarily implied government criticism. Mabel Archibald had lived in India for
35 years, working primarily with Telugu-speakers in the south, but her views on the
Indian freedom movement were increasingly putting her out of touch with other
587
Sinha, "Pussyfoot" Johnson and his campaign in Hindustan: 347.
588
Ibid.
589
Ibid., 350.
210
temperance activists in India. It likely comes as no surprise that within a mere ten years
the head of India’s WCTU, Ruth Robinson, would all but publically endorse Indian
nationalism.590
Indian Nationalism on the Global Temperance Stage
Indian nationalists and temperance activists, increasingly one and the same, also
took their message outside of India, appealing to a global audience of temperance
workers. In the 1920’s India’s temperance movement was increasingly represented at
international conferences by Indians themselves. The first congress of the WLAA met in
Toronto in 1922. Three Indian men represented the Indian temperance movement at the
congress. Their opinions regarding the state of Indian temperance and institutional
resistance to it would lead to pointed criticism of the colonial state on the global
temperance stage.
Indians at the conference were careful to note India’s history of aversion to
intoxicating drinks, casting India’s alcohol problem as a direct result of British rule. J.H.
Hussein noted that temperance advocates were routinely imprisoned and otherwise
persecuted because, “they have to contend with the state.”591 Indian temperance
advocates repeatedly drew the attention of global temperance activists to the relationship
between alcohol distribution and the colonial state. Tarini Prasad Sinha informed the
congress that, “the man who is engaged either in brewing or distillery work… is a
government servant, he gets his salary paid from the revenue of the people and when he
590
See chapter five for more information on Ruth Robinson, particularly with regard to her temporary
leadership of the Prohibition League of India in 1931.
591
Ben H. Spence, World League Against Alcoholism: 1st Congress, Toronto (Westerville, Ohio:
American Issue Press, 1922). 335.
211
retires from business he gets a pension from the state.”592 The effects of these statesponsored alcohol sales were far-reaching. Sinha noted that, “there are also now many
million people who are receding from the old traditions and becoming victims of the
liquors and the drugs which under the state law are being sold everywhere.”593 Because
of the link between alcohol and the state, “temperance activities are regarded as activities
directed against the state.”594
Having established the link between the imperial regime and the drink menace,
the Indian representatives at the WLAA congress were able to launch an argument
against colonialism. One of these representatives was Jnananjan Niyogi. Born in 1891to
Brahmo Samajist parents, Niyogi formed his first temperance organization, “Band of
Hope,” in 1916. He was famous for his magic lantern lectures on temperance and
morality one of which was described by the popular Bengali writer, Bimal Mitra,
described Niyogi’s lectures in the novel, Kori Diye Kinlam:
It was not just an ordinary lecture; it was a lantern lecture. The pictures started appearing
on a white screen. It seemed that movie pictures had come to a stand still. The images
were not moving but once the lecture started everything could be understood. How
English soldiers came and occupied India, how the Englishmen cut off the fingers of the
weavers…Pictures were being shown on the screen and Jnananjan Niyogi was delivering
the lecture. What a lecture! Everybody was listening in silence. The British occupied
India with one tyranny after the other. Picture after picture there were displays about
how bad the English were, how tyrannous they were.595
592
Tarini Prasad Sinha, "The New Movement for Prohibition in India," in World League Against
Alcoholism: 1st Congress, Toronto, ed. Ben H. Spence (Westerville, Ohio: American Issue Press, 1922),
171.
593
Sinha, 171.
594
595
Ibid.
Subodh Chandra & Anjali Bose Sengupta, ed. Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan (Bengali Biographical
Dictionary), vol. I (Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad, 1998), 114-16.
212
Niyogi averred that, “India has determined to follow dry America.”596 What
remained unspoken yet painfully obvious was that India could not of her own accord
follow “dry America.” The Government of India stood firmly in this path. Niyogi would
later assure his audience that Indians would, “fight with you with all our strength and
resources to make India free.”597 The exact nature of this “freedom” was left open to the
imagination. It seems probable that this freedom entailed freedom from both alcohol and
Britain. Indeed, having won deliverance from the drink menace, Niyogi promises that
India will, “fling high the flag of Prohibition and [that] it will flutter in the breeze till
victory comes to our land.”598
Indian speakers at the congress delicately crafted their speeches to appeal to
Christian sentiments while maintaining a great deal of pride in indigenous Indian
religion. Tugging at the heartstrings of the largely Christian audience of the congress,
Sinha warned that, “my people find it extremely difficult to distinguish between one
activity of yours which teaches [Indians] the religion of Jesus Christ, and the other
activity which is monopolizing the entire sale of liquor and opium and forcing it down
the throats of my people.”599 Sinha further advised his listeners that Indians, “have had
total abstinence taught us through our religion.”600 For Sinha’s listeners there could be
596
J Niyogi, "Report on Asian Temperance," in World League Against Alcoholism: 1st Congress, Toronto,
ed. Ben H. Spence (Westerville, Ohio: American Issue Press, 1922), 60.
597
Ibid, 61.
598
Ibid, 237.
599
Ibid, 171.
600
Sinha 171.
213
no mistaking that Britons were singularly responsible for placing abstemious India adrift
in a sea of booze.
After speaking at the 1922 Toronto conference of the WLAA, the organization
sponsored Sinha and Niyogi on a six month tour of the United States. Abkari continued
to insist on the entirely apolitical nature of their work. Indeed, despite the caveat that
“detailed reports of their lectures have not yet come to hand,” the AITA reported that
“many influential audiences have been addressed.”601 Most frequently, Sinha and Niyogi
were hosted by American protestant churches which advertised their talks as “community
mass meeting[s] in the interests of world temperance.”602 As an added draw,
advertisements also appealed to exoticism of American audiences, promising that Niyogi
“speaks English fluently and always appears in native costume.”603
Newspaper reports suggest that the lectures Niyogi gave in the United States were
similar, if not identical to, the speech he gave at the WLAA’s Toronto conference earlier
that year. With his addresses billed as concerned with temperance, his audience was
doubtless self-selecting to a degree. That is to say, he did not have to sell his listeners on
the idea that far-away Indians needed to eschew alcohol. He had another message,
however, regarding the justice of British rule in India. He told his “large and interested”
audiences of “sufferings the people in that far away land have endured since liquor was
introduced.”604
601
Grubb, "India and America," 70.
602
Unknown, "Bellwood," The Altoona Mirror, 6th December, 1922 1922.
603
Ibid.
604
"Evils of Drink in Far-Off India: Native Missionary Describes them to a Media Audience," Chester
Times, 16th December, 1922 1922.
214
Eight years after Niyogi’s return to India, he found himself charged with the
crime of “vilifying the British by contrast.”605 Niyogi responded,
We do not still believe that the whole world has really admitted that the English are
carrying on the administration of our country against our consent. We want to convince
the world that the English carry us along against our consent. We want to convince it that
we do not accept their unfair administration and ordinance.606
During his travels abroad on the behalf of the World League against Alcoholism in 1922,
Niyogi had been doing just that; convincing the world that English rule was against the
consent of the Indian people, one temperance audience at a time.
The “abstemious Indian,” a trope invented and promoted by missionaries and
high-caste Indians in a colonial context had now come full-circle. Niyogi and Sinha
themselves became living, breathing evidence of a timeless, abstemious East suffering
under the besotted hand of imperial rule before the wide eyes of American temperance
audiences. Niyogi praised “Great constructive America” as a “land of wonders,”
imploring its citizens to “assist his country in “getting rid of the curse” and help his
country, “poor and weak and the hearts of its people bleeding.”607 American audiences
were praised for their modernity, strength and moral courage for achieving prohibition.
Appealing to their paternalism and their concern for India’s downtrodden in the language
of temperance, it was not inconceivable that Niyogi’s work might bring hundreds more
“Pussyfooted” Americans to turn the tide in India.
Any doubts regarding Niyogi’s nationalist bona fides were dispelled with his
1925 book entitled, India. With India, Niyogi earned the distinction of having written a
605
Criminal Appeal, Jnananjan Niyogi- Accused- Appellant v. Emperor, Criminal Appeal No. 909 of 1929,
Decided on 6th February, 1930, 6-2-1930 1930.
606
Ibid.
607
"Evils of Drink in Far-Off India: Native Missionary Describes them to a Media Audience."
215
book that would be banned by the Government of India for its “anti-English sentiment.”
This was a curious charge in light of the fact that Niyogi did not write a word in the book
himself. Rather, he constructed it entirely from the quotes of European, primarily British,
people, including Government of India administrators and thinkers as divergent as Karl
Marx and J.S. Burke. Despite its being banned, Niyogi doubtless relished in one small
victory; the Government of India was forced to deem a book of quotes from British
officials and thinkers as “anti-English.”
Conclusion
The methods contributing to the early success of the AITA and its sister
organization, the WCTU, became increasingly untenable after the beginning of the noncooperation movement in 1920. Although the WCTU managed to change course by the
early 1930’s, the AITA did not. The AITA continued to limp along through the 1920’s,
but it had become all but irrelevant. The time when western activists could singlehandedly influence temperance discourse in India had long passed. It was now far more
likely that western activists would be influenced by Indians. This effect on temperance
discourse was not limited to India alone. Individuals like Sinha and Niyogi took their
message to the global temperance community, placing Indian nationalism on the radar of
concerned activists.
The 1920’s saw temperance now firmly wedded to nationalism, a trend that would
persist and accelerate through the 1930’s, culminating in INC-initiated prohibition zones.
Another trend first established in the 1920’s began to accelerate as well. Systematic
violence against drinkers that began to treble during non-cooperation would spike in the
1930’s. The question of the Indian-ness of drinking, once confined largely to temperance
216
discourse, erupted into nationalist discourse. Over the 1920’s, drinking alcohol in India
became a political statement—whether voluntarily made or not. The stage was set for the
realization of an idealized past in a new era. With temperance now a fundamental aspect
of Indian nationalism, dealing with recalcitrant drinkers was all that remained.
217
CHAPTER V
‘DRUNKARDS BEWARE!: TEMPERANCE AND NATIONALIST POLITICS
IN THE 1930’S
Introduction
There was evidence everywhere of universal rejoicings in the city. The city's
roads, bazaars, shops, markets and houses were decorated with buntings and floral arches.
Two motor cars equipped with loud speakers moved from place to place announcing the
programme of the Prohibition Day. Accompanied by music, a procession of motor
lorries decorated with pictures, posters and placards moved through all parts of the city
and suburbs. An effigy measuring 20' by 5' symbolizing the Monster of Drink was
specially prepared for the occasion. [It] was mounted on a motor lorry and paraded
through the city.608
On the morning of July 20th, 1938, the people of Ahmedabad, an urban city in the
Bombay Presidency, awoke to a radically altered world. Prohibition Day marked the first
day of a temperate future. Minister of Health for the Bombay Presidency, David Gilder,
and Indian National Congress (INC) leader, Sardar Patel, both dedicated temperance
advocates, prepared their speeches calling for a celebration of Prohibition and the
requisite vigilance to ensure its success.
Ahmedabad’s dry future represented the fruition of nearly 50 years of temperance
activism by a wide array of social reformers including temperance workers from India
and abroad, and nationalists of all classes, jatis, religions, and political ideologies. One
might be forgiven for proclaiming, as did Kailas Nath Katju, United Provinces Excise
Minister, that “no one [in India] is against the promotion of temperance.”609 Temperance
journals in India, Britain, and the United States breathlessly praised the actions of the
608
Prohibition Department, Bombay. "Report of the Prohibition Department." In A.I.C.C. Bombay: JN
Library & Archive, 1938. It is noteworthy that the burning of the drink effigy is almost identical to the
Dashara festival during which the rakshasa, Ravana, is burned, symbolizing the triumph of good over evil.
609
Katju, Kailas Nath. "The Hon'ble Minister of Excise on Prohibition." Public Information, United
Provinces, Lucknow II, no. 9 (1938): 7.
218
Congress Ministries for setting new a standard for moral governance, in the fight against
demon drink. Yet beneath this veneer of unanimity, a much more complicated picture
threatened to undermine not only victory against alcohol, but the very future of the Indian
nation.
Chapter Overview
This chapter examines alcohol and the discourse surrounding it from the
beginning of the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930 to the end of Congress-led
provincial governments in 1939. It argues that the tensions between nationalists devoted
to the prohibition of drink and the liquor men and their clients increased dramatically
during this period. The growing anger between the nationalists and a colonial
government who fought tooth and nail against them manifested itself in debates regarding
access to drink. These tensions led to watershed that forced drinkers to decide whether to
support the nation or continue in their habit. Those who persisted in drinking and selling
drink found themselves, to their surprise, on the side of an increasingly violent
government while temperance advocates found themselves at once fighting both colonial
rule and drinkers. When Congress joined government in the provincial assemblies in
1938 it used the power of the state to begin the long fight of eradicating the drink menace
from India. In the process of doing so, drinkers found themselves subject to the moral
criticism of nationalist leaders and to the full might of Congress-led provincial
governments. Impending Indian freedom held out a promise but also a threat to the
drinking classes. An Independent India appeared poised to destroy the existing drinkproducing industry and to force drinkers to conform to the social mores of the upper
castes.
219
I will begin by describing the continued widespread culture of drinking that
persisted even through the end of the nationalist movement. I will then move on to
discuss the centrality of temperance propaganda and picketing campaigns to the Civil
Disobedience movement, showing how class influenced the prohibition campaign. The
energy with which Congress prosecuted these campaigns provoked occasionally violent
hostility from drink sellers and their patrons. The colonial government’s crackdown on
nationalists during the Civil Disobedience movement compelled leaders to entrust the
stewardship of temperance organizations to non-Indians. I will then discuss the role of
race, nationality, and gender in the choice of leaders for the marquee temperance
organization of the 1930’s. With the 1931 Gandhi-Irwin Pact, the technical distinction
between legal anti-alcohol agitation and illegal nationalist demonstrations grew in
importance and Congress leaders exercised control over the actions of their workers and
other temperance organizations to emphasize that distinction. Finally, I will examine the
brief period during which the Congress used its power in Provincial Assemblies to enact
prohibition. The form of prohibition, the style of its implementation, and the rhetoric of
its propaganda reveal elite nationalist attitudes regarding class, social status, nationality,
and the use of state power to effect social change.
The Drinking Classes
Alcohol use in South Asia was much more widespread than commonly
recognized. Drinkers were legion and sometimes vocal. In the 1890’s, many of the
“drinking classes” in Western India united to protest increased taxes levied on alcohol,
forcing both the Colonial Government and befuddled European temperance advocates to
220
acknowledge the high rates of alcohol use associated with some communities.610 The
revenue needs of the colonial government and of some later independent Indian state
governments, depended on large-scale alcohol production and consumption.611 So
widespread was the use of alcohol that its taxation provided as much as 38 percent of
total revenue for Madras Presidency in the south.612 Though many Indians conceived of
their nation as abstemious, great numbers of their fellows were drinking quite a bit of
alcohol.
Prohibition was as much a matter of social status as it was about drink. Despite
the close relationship between temperance and the nationalist movement, many Indian
drinkers persisted in their habit despite its condemnation and eventual criminalization in
some areas by the Congress Provincial Governments of 1937-1939. Indian social
reformers and European activists operating in India noted the traditional association of
alcohol use with low social status. Middle class drinkers occasionally alarmed of
nationalists and temperance activists on occasion but they were not mentioned with
anything approaching the frequency of lower class drinkers. Elite Indians associated
with both nationalism and the temperance cause increasingly saw the drinking habits of
the poor as a threat to the nation at large.
Civil Disobedience and Drink
610
See Chapter 2.
611
Rajaji described the drinking classes as “Almost all the castes comprising the three groups of Backward
classes and more than one-fifth of the total population.” See Rajagopalachari, C. "Dr. Ambedkar and Drink
Evil." In C. Rajagopalachari, 2. Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931.
612
Grubb, Frederick. Fifty Years Work in India: My Temperance Jubilee. 1st ed. London: H.J. Rowling
and Sons, 1942.
221
With the increasing violence and scale of the freedom movement, tempers flared
against liquor-men and their patrons. Drinkers found themselves on the wrong side of the
growing dichotomy between those who favored British rule and those who did not.
Drink increasingly represented, not just degradation, but political apathy in a struggle that
called for unity and sacrifice. The tone of moral suasion, essential to temperance work
through the 1920’s, changed by the 1930’s. The stubborn resistance of drinkers was met
with gradually ebbing patience on the part of nationalists and their volunteers. The
colonial government had a stake in the revenue-flow from those drinkers but also found
them as potential allies, a low-status complement to generally pro-British rulers of the
princely states. As a result, nationalist discourse and imperial reactions to it were marked
by a struggle to determine who had the right to speak in the interests of India’s subaltern,
largely drinking, population.
In 1930, imperial administrators again frustrated the hopes of nationalists
associated with the Congress Party, by allowing a December, 1929 deadline to pass
without pledging to award India “dominion status,” and thus effective autonomy. In
response to this decision, the Congress launched the Civil Disobedience Movement,
lasting from 1930-1931. A key aspect of Civil Disobedience was the picketing of liquor
shops.613 Although the picketing of liquor shops was technically legal under tightly
controlled circumstances, district collectors and magistrates routinely arrested picketers
for violating the strict rules for picketing.614 Thousands of Congress volunteers spoke in
613
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947 (Delhi: Macmillan India, 1983), 294.
614
More on the rules for picketing can be found below.
222
the bazaars, picketed, and visited the homes of drinkers in a concerted effort to rid India
of drink.
In the early weeks of the Civil Disobedience campaign, picketers gathered around
liquor shops in great numbers, ensuring the confrontation of all customers with their
“sinful” and putatively pro-empire/anti-Indian behavior. After Congress ratcheted up
liquor shop picketing in 1930, some of these interactions could become heated, even
violent. Adding to the frustration of picketers, British-administered government
increasingly overlooked abkari violations. Sales occurred outside of licensed shops and
after legal hours of operation. Some liquor sellers hired men to attack picketers who
dared to disrupt illegal sales or giveaways. In July of 1931 The Hindu reported that a
liquor contractor “announced a free distribution of toddy and hired rowdys [sic] from a
neighbouring village and created a disturbance in front of the liquor shop.”615 Although
the wishes of Congress in 1931 were not the law of the land, the effect of Congress’
widespread influence and enormous volunteer corps provoked liquor sellers to continue
alcohol sales by hook or by crook.
The problem of illegal sales was ubiquitous. Tamil Nadu’s famous nationalist,
Rajagopalachari, or Rajaji, complained that “toddy pots are carried about on the head and
sold like curds and buttermilk in the streets.”616 Where illegal sales might once have cost
Government revenue, the dramatic reduction in legal alcohol sales associated with
picketing changed the dynamic. Markedly lower sales left abkari contractors without the
615
C. Rajagopalachari, "Picketing in Madras Presidency, a Few Experiences," in C. Rajagopalachari
(Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
616
Rajagopalachari, C. "Picketing: Our Experiences." In C. Rajagopalachari, 6. Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931.
223
means to pay their annual fees to the district collectors. Illegal sales were now a lifeline
for liquor dealers, one that colonial bureaucrats were only too happy to provide. One
worker described to Rajaji one of these instances of illegality as follows:
Two of the people who bought toddy were known to me and I went with them to
the Sub Inspector’s house and told him about the shop being opened beyond lawful
hours. The Sub Inspector himself came with me to the shop to verify. The shop was
open. But the vendor had concealed himself somewhere. Then a car came belonging to a
big Abkari contractor. There were some gentlemen in it. One of them got out and
inspected the shop. From his behaviour and from the evasive answers he gave me, I think
he was a high officer of the Abkari department. The Sub Inspector told me that he will
enquire into the sales outside lawful hours. I have not yet heard anything about it...617
The same reporter complained of one particular Sub-Inspector who, at a shop distributing
free toddy, not only allowed the illegal activity to continue but, “marched into the shop”
and “ordered” the men “in a loud voice to get in and drink.” From that day “a police
constable and two salt peons are posted in front of the shop who are directly inviting
people to drink and threaten the [picketing] volunteers.”618 Rajaji explained the
misguided actions of the police, writing that, “the Indian policeman feels it is his duty to
help the business of the drink shops and looks upon the place as holding the sacred
Majesty of the British Sircar [Government] in spite of vulgar surroundings.”619 Failure
on the part of police to crack down on illegal sales could not be attributed to a lack of
personnel. Indeed, with global economic depression in tandem with increased political
617
C. Rajagopalachari, "Picketing: Our Experiences," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931).
618
619
Ibid.
C. Rajagopalachari, "Anti Drink Movement, a Report from South India," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi:
Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
224
agitation in India, recruitment into the Indian police force was even more effective than it
had been historically.620
Occasionally the relationship between Government and liquor-men was more than
mere political sympathy. Volunteers in one South Indian village complained that an
Indian official in the employ of the collector’s office was the maternal uncle of a local
liquor dealer.621 The actions, or myriad inactions, of Government confirmed Rajaji’s
position that state-enforced legal prohibition was a necessary prerequisite for national
temperance, “because social and unofficial prohibition cannot last more than a limited
period of time.”622
There were no easy solutions for the colonial government. There was truth in the
observation that when abkari taxes were too high, illicit manufacture burgeoned.
Prohibition seemed likely to provoke the same response. Reducing taxes on drink
produced yet another set of problems. For example, in 1935, the Excise Department of
Madras cut taxes on arrack because “the drinking public cannot in the prevailing
economic condition afford to pay the high price for licit arrack charged by the licensed
vendor,” leading to illicit distillation.623 Temperance activists saw this reduction as yet
more evidence that Government was more concerned with increasing sales of licit alcohol
than in checking consumption—the stated goal of the Abkari Department.
620
D. A. Low, Congress and the Raj : Facets of the Indian Struggle, 1917-47 (London, Eng.: ArnoldHeinemann, 1977).
621
D. Mirpurkhas, Secretary Congress Committee, "Press Telegram," in All India Congress Committee
Papers (JN Memorial Library, 1931).
622
Rajagopalachari, C. "Letter to Mary Campbell." In C. Rajagopalachari, 2. Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931.
623
Government of Madras, "Excise--Arrack--Administration--Proposals for 1935-36--Orders Passed," ed.
Revenue (Madras1935).
225
Colonial administrators eagerly investigated all instances of alleged violence
during picketing to discredit the nationalist and temperance movements more generally.
Congress leaders worried particularly that administrators would arrest their volunteers on
trumped up charges. Rajaji wrote of a case in September of 1931 in which volunteers
compelled an illegal liquor seller to report to the magistrate along with her pot of illegal
toddy. She did so, but Rajaji considered this a “narrow miss,” with the volunteers
fortunate that “the pot was not broken and a charge brought against them under sections
143, 147 and all other sections, on the allegation that they waylaid and assaulted the
renter’s servants lawfully carrying a pot of toddy.”624
Picket organizers foresaw inevitable conflicts with drinkers. As Ambedkar put it,
“Naturally, when people are denied the luxury of a vice to which they are used to
indulge...they will rebel for a time.”625 To protect the viability of picketing, the Congress
issued detailed rules for volunteers. These picketing rules included an explicit disavowal
of “coercion, direct or indirect,” a limit of five picketers at any one location, proscription
of the physical blocking of customers or goods going in or out of the shops, and the
admonishment that interventions with drinkers should be based on nothing more than
“courteous entreaty.”626 Gandhi added to these guidelines the suggestion that picketers
“penetrate into the home[s] of the drinkers.”627
624
C. Rajagopalachari, "Illegal Sales- a Narrow Escape," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931).
625
Rajagopalachari, C. "Dr. Ambedkar and Drink Evil." In C. Rajagopalachari, 2. Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931. Ambedkar generally urged Dalits to, “abandon customs and practices associated with the
stereotype of the untouchable.” Drinking alcohol was one of these practices. See H.C. Sadangi,
Emancipation of Dalits and the Freedom Struggle (Delhi: Isha Books, 2008), 274.
626
Rajagopalachari, C. "Instructions for Picketing." In C. Rajagopalachari, 2. Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931. These rules were published in key newspapers and periodicals like The Hindu and Gandhi’s
Young India. They were also sent to state and local Congress Committees.
226
Drinkers’ Agency
Despite Congress’ anti-drink campaign, many Indians continued to imbibe during
Civil Disobedience. Ambedkar estimated that “almost all the castes comprising the three
groups of Backward classes and more than one-fifth of the total population” continued to
populate the drinking classes.”628 This estimation contrasts starkly with that of Rajaji,
who averred that “all shades of public opinion in India (except those actually interested in
drink) are agreed to the desirability of Prohibition at the earliest possible date.”629 The
Indians dismissed as “those actually interested in drink” comprised a large portion of the
population. Ambedkar’s estimation was more accurate than Rajaji’s: a large segment of
the Indian population necessarily opposed a key aspect of the Congress’ platform.
Congress sidestepped the deliberate agency of drinkers in favor of recasting them as put
upon “victims” who needed to be “kept away” from liquor shops.630 At best, drinkers
needed to be protected from danger as a child is by her parent. At worst, drinkers were
“aping the conqueror,” rendering India “a nation of drunks and brutes.”631
Indian temperance reformers, most of them ardent nationalists, found themselves
simultaneously arguing against the colonial state on the basis that their own agency was
denied even as they sought to ensure by force of law that the wishes of drinkers would be
627
Rajagopalachari, C. "Instructions for Picketing. Gandhiji's Instructions." In R. Rajagopalachari, 2.
Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931.
628
C. Rajagopalachari, "Dr. Ambedkar and Drink Evil," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931).
629
———, "On Prohibition," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, C. 1931).
630
Rajagopalachari, "Anti Drink Movement, a Report from South India."
631
———, "On Prohibition." The worst of these offenders were from the “higher classes,” who tended to
“ape the manners of the rulers.”
227
checked. This discrepancy was mitigated by the assertion made again and again that
drinkers fundamentally could not be agents. Drinkers were “victims.” When they
persisted in their stubborn opposition to righteous picketers, activists referred to them as
“hardened victims.”632 These “hardened victims” lacked true volition, “lending
themselves to be used as tools” by “interested” parties.633 Reformers characterized the
continued resistance of drinkers as an expression of the agency of anthropomorphized
drink itself or of British rule and the liquor interests. Temperance reformers and
nationalists pitied drinkers, hoping that through social pressure and physical removal of
the temptation, they might be freed of their “slavery” to alcohol. This was a “difficult
situation” requiring the Congress to “start quietly and to get the other side habituated
gradually to the interference on [their] part.”634 Gandhi argued that “drinking was like a
disease and the sufferer must be protected against himself. It is not coercion to give him
treatment for his own good nor is it coercion for the State to save its people from the
disease of drink by driving it out.”635
The right of individuals to make and sell toddy, a position common among early
nationalists like D.E. Wacha (see chapter two) was completely abandoned by 1931.
Where in the late 19th century and the very early 20th century nationalists praised the
nutritive properties of toddy and its low alcohol content, Congress leaders of the 1930’s
disavowed any benefit associated with it. A report in the Manchester Guardian
632
C. Rajagopalachari, "Advice to Picketers," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library,
1931).
633
———, "Letter To "Mr. Raja," Local Congressman," in C. Rajagopalacharia (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931).
634
Rajagopalachari, C. "Letter to Vaidyanathier." In C. Rajagopalachari, 3. Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Libarary, 1931.
635
Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition."
228
forwarded to Rajaji provoked the unequivocal response that “toddy contains more evil
than vitamin B.”636 The evil of alcohol in all its forms outweighed any good it could
possibly work on the bodies of drinkers. The truth of the above statements is debatable.
As explained in chapter two, toddy was considered a food by many and doubtlessly
contained some nutritional benefit, particularly for the poor whose caloric intake was so
low that virtually any food source was an improvement. This was immaterial to Rajaji,
however, as the “evil” that toddy inflicted on the nation at large outweighed any
nutritional content it might have provided for drinkers. The drinking classes could not be
allowed the right to poison the Indian nation.
Liquor Men
Dealers in the liquor trade did not fare as well as their customers in the eyes of
temperance activists and nationalists in the early 1930’s. Dealers were traitors, not
victims. Sensitive to these condemnations, one repentant liquor dealer begged Rajaji to
intervene and stop the picketing of his liquor shop until he could divest himself of interest
in it at the close of his annual contract. He acknowledged that “drink was among the five
deadly sins” and that continuing in the trade would render him “a traitor to the
country.”637 This link between drinking and treason was no accident. Teams of
volunteers picketing liquor shops found that “standing [near the shop] with the National
Flag in hand is enough to stop all the business.”638 In August of 1931 the Bangalore
636
C. Rajagopalachari, "Untitled," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
Rajagopalachari, C. "An Arrack Shop-Keeper's Penitence in Nagapatam." In C. Rajagopalachari, 1.
Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931.
637
638
Government of India, "Report of Native Newspapers, Bombay," (Bombay: Bombay Presidency, 1878).
229
district magistrate prohibited the hoisting of the national flag within 100 yards of a liquor
shop, in a clear attempt to drive a wedge between nationalism and temperance.639
Colonial administrators complained of the “increasing tendency on the part of
local [temperance] bodies to indulge in activities designed to support or show sympathy
with the disloyal movement promoted by the advocates of civil disobedience.”640
Temperance activists and nationalists consistently made the link between their two causes
evident by working within both camps for the realization of both ideals. This association
was cemented by the use of powerful symbols such as the hoisting of the national flag to
emphasize temperance as a goal of the coming sovereign state. Despite the efforts of
administrators to cleave the issue of Indian freedom from that of alcohol policy, it
remained clear to leading nationalists that the liquor dealer worked “on behalf of the
Government,” and was “an agent of the British Sircar.”641 Rajaji argued that ostensibly
well-intended arguments in favor of access to alcohol were necessarily disingenuous, as
he “has not found a single place where there has been really agitation against prohibition
except when it is manufactured and financed” by outside forces.642
In the face of such harsh criticism for moral dissolution and treason, it is not
surprising that interactions between liquor dealers and temperance men carried the threat
of violence. At the commencement of Civil Disobedience in 1930, Chauri Chaura (see
chapter four) was only eight years gone, and violence, even if isolated at this point,
639
Unknown, "Ban on Picketing in Mysore from the Hindu," in C. Rajagopalacharia (Madras: Nehru
Memorial Library, 1931).
640
Charles Henderson, "Flag Hoisting on Dt. Board Office- E. Godavari Collector's Letter to President," in
C. Rajagopalacharia (Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
641
642
Rajagopalachari, "Anti Drink Movement, a Report from South India."
———, "On Prohibition."
230
threatened to forestall picketing across India.643 The Government of India’s Home
Department Secretary, H.W. Emerson, solicited reports documenting “instances of
violence, coercion, destruction of property,” and other “objectionable methods” in the
picketing of shops.644 Picketers also accused liquor dealers of violence. Reports that
picketers had been assaulted with lathis, kicks and “foul abusive language” were
common.645 One volunteer in Hyderabad, Sindh reported in a telegram to Vallabbhai
Patel that “one picketer at liquor shop Mirpurkhas followed Muslim servant Guteval
carrying liquor bottle. Picketer very severely beaten with lathi by servant at lonely place
outside the town. Picketers beaten six times before also. Policy of beating seems
determined upon.”646 The secretary of the local Congress Committee described the
escalating violence surrounding the pickets in 1931:
Since a month Ghuhermal Gutewal country liquor shops of Mirpurkhas has [sic]
been regularly assaulting with lathis kicks and using foul abusive language volunteers
picketing his shop. 15 days back kept two hired Mussalman Gondas Osman and
Dostmohomed and through them has been trying to dispose of liquor by various illegal
and unfustified ways. Being unsuccessful got a Basarmal volunteer beat with iron
mounted lathi in the outskirt disabling him by Osman Gonda 10 days back. 3 days back
he sent for Gulo butcher and two other Mussalmans Gondas from Hyderabad. It is
reported that Gulo butcher has recently been challenged under section 109 or 110 I.P.C.
Trouble was forecasted and it came out true yesterday evening when Gutewal in his
frenzy assaulted brutally and mercilessly six chief workers Messrs Santdas President Haji
Mohamed Assandas Vice President Hardawas Secretary and Bhai Jethanand citizen
Treasurer Congress Committee with handle of the hunter with its metal nob in front.
Each injured has several contusions all over the body measuring the longest four inches
and the smallest two inches by half inch specially on the back front of the eyebrow, near
643
See Chapter 2.
644
Emerson, H.W., Secretary to the Government of India (Home). "Letter to Home Secretary to the
Government of Bombay." In Home Department, Special, Bombay, 2. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives,
1931.
645
Mirpurkhas, D., Secretary Congress Committee. "Press Telegram." In All India Congress Committee
Papers, 2: JN Memorial Library, 1931.
646
Ghanashyam, 1931.
231
temple, neck and cheeks. Contusions and echimosis appear on head. While assaulting
used freely foul abusive language kicked shouldered volunteers through away their
chairs. Hired Gondas rendered services required of them. Immediately public gathered
to witness the scene.647
Yet, unlike the behavior of temperance workers, the violence of liquor-shop men was, in
all but the most egregious cases, ignored by police. It was due to these hostile
circumstances that the Congress conducted liquor shop picketing under tightly controlled
circumstances.
As growing number of liquor men migrated from (or were forced out) of the trade, those
who remained became a focal point for the disapproval of nationalists. The era of
politely entreating liquor men to give up the trade had ended back in the 1920’s. Having
been fully warned of the social ramifications of dealing in liquor, licensees in the next
decade would be spared no quarter within legal means. Rajaji admitted that despite the
“hectic activities during the auction sales,” “hardened dealers” could not be swayed from
the low-hanging fruit of cut-rate licenses.648 Even in the 1930’s, the zenith of the antialcohol movement in India, liquor dealers continued to do a brisk trade. One particularly
lucrative but illegal practice was to disguise “Indian-made foreign liquor” as being of
European origin. Coloring agents and additives disguised the liquor that was then poured
into bottles indicating European origin.649
647
Mirpurkhas, "Press Telegram."
648
C. Rajagopalachari, "Encouraging Results," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library,
1931).
649
Government of India, "Illicit Traffic-Liquor (Cheap Spirit)-Shipment of, Alleged as Scotch Whisky,
from Calcutta to Dairen-Excise Conspiracy Case, Gariahat-Apportionment of Cost of Prosecution," ed.
Excise and Opium Central Board of Revenue (Delhi1934).
232
Nevertheless, many liquor sellers ceased or significantly scaled back their
enterprises in response to losses incurred during Civil Disobedience. One liquor shop
owner in the Madras Presidency petitioned Congress to stop picketing his shop until 1st
January, 1932 on the grounds that by that time, his license would expire. He needed to
continue selling liquor because he still owed Government money on the existing license,
money he could only earn through sales. The seller pleaded, “I support the Congress
movement sincerely. I do not like to carry on the liquor traffic. It is due to my ignorance
that I have got myself involved in this business.”650
The liquor man added that he
would not “again take lease of any Arrack shop.”651 Rajaji frustrated the hopes of his
petitioner, releasing a press statement that said picketing would not be stopped, because
“no reform is possible without this kind of suffering on the part of some people.”652 The
message was a public warning: those who placed themselves in alliance with the colonial
state and the liquor upon which it depended could expect no quarter from the Congress.
The firm link between the liquor trade and British government, pitting them
against the temperance-crusading nationalists, nearly led to a crisis as far back as 1908, as
discussed in chapter three. In 1931 there was a similar clash between officialdom and
protesting temperance advocates. Yet, unlike the events in Poona, this new clash
revealed divisions between highly-respected Congress leaders and Congress volunteers at
the local level. In the event, the All-India Congress Working Committee tried to exert
more control over local events than was possible with such a widespread phenomenon as
650
C. Rajagopalachari, "An Arrack Shop-Keeper's Penitence in Nagapatam," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi:
Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
651
Ibid.
652
Ibid.
233
liquor store picketing. The time had come for a comprehensive plan and strict hierarchy
of leadership right down to the village level.
Controlling Picketers
The Congress Working Committee, in conjunction with Congress’s Prohibition
Committee, chaired by Rajaji, established a tightly regimented system to control
picketers along several fronts. One of these fronts involved the coordination of picketing
organizations, be they nationalist organizations or nominal temperance organizations.
Picketing that involved any Congress-wallas required the supervision of the local
Congress Committee. These local Congress Committees were supervised by Provincial
Congress Committees which were, in turn, supervised by Congress’ Prohibition and
Working Committees. Recognizing that with regard to the pickets, “the stricter we are,
the greater will be our prestige and strength,” Congress issued the following rules
applicable to all picketers:
1. There should be no coercion, direct or indirect
2. There should be no show of intimidation, hence not more than any five pickets
should work at one and the same place at a time.
3. There should be no more than courteous entreaty and distribution of literature.
4. There should be no fine levied by Congress Committee for breach of promise.
5. There should be no hooting of purchasers.
6. There should be no cordon formed to surround the purchasers.
7. There should be no lying down to block the passage of customers or goods.653
Congress anticipated continued government accusations that picketers strove to
initiate violence. In response to this, Rajaji argued that athletic men be precluded from
picketing liquor shops. Volunteers were to be “mere lads.” “The people that gather to
drink or the men in the employ of the venders could easily give a thorough beating to
them. We have limited the lads to such small numbers that they could be attacked and
653
———, "Instructions for Picketing," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
234
badly assaulted by the liquor-shop men even if they had been big sturdy soldiers instead
of being boys.”654 During periods of exceptional violence, local Congress leaders made
public speeches, the texts of which often appeared in the press, calling for calm and
exhorting volunteers to “follow Mahatma’s principle of non-violence and sufferance.”655
Hoping to mitigate further violence, “ladies and girls” volunteered to picket as well.656
Other Methods: Pickets, Plays, and Pressure Tactics
Since British administrators continued to sell toddy and arrack shop licenses by
auction of “tenders,” these auctions became an important target for Congress picketers.
Auctions were particularly contentious, bringing high-ranking liquor men and
government officials together but once per year. Tenders were the one time annually
during which temperance volunteers could confront the very heart of the liquor menace in
India. Since selling tenders was a major revenue source for government, even ordinarily
complacent magistrates and officials were at their most severe. The Excise
Commissioner of Madras made a failed attempt at outlawing auction pickets
altogether.657 Congress issued strict rules for the picketing the auction of tenders to
prevent violence:
1. Picketing should be absolutely peaceful. There should be no coercion direct or
indirect.
2. The most influential persons should form the picketing party.
3. Leaders may enter the compound of the offices where auctions take place. But the
volunteer party shall do the picketing from outside the compound only.
654
———, "Mr. Cox's Durbar Speech, C.R.'S Indictment," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931).
655
Mirpurkhas, "Press Telegram."
656
Ibid.
657
Secretary to the Government of Madras, "Letter Exchange with C. Rajagopalachari," in C.
Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
235
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Volunteers should be limited in number—not more than six for each entrance.
Picketers should not touch or obstruct or fall across the passage.
They will accost could-be-renters and entreat them not to participate in the auctions.
They will distribute hand-bills to the intending bidders.
As far as possible, it should be seen that crowds do not gather at the places of
picketing.658
To this the Congress added that “processions with suitable Anti-drink placards and
Bhajana [hymn-singing] may be organized.659 Tenders could continue with little internal
disturbance, but six picketers per entrance guaranteed that bidders would fall under the
gaze of Congressmen and that the bidding might have been scored by the distant notes of
devotional music.660
The campaign against license tenders was moderately effective. By September of
1931, thirty percent of existing liquor shops in Madras Presidency had not been relicensed for the following year.661 Administrators were forced to hold secret tenders to
avoid protesters and to accept far lower bids for the ensuing years.662 In an ironic turn,
the relative success of tender picketers meant that those who stubbornly persisted in the
liquor trade despite social pressure to desist could earn more profit due to lower cost
licenses. As successful bidders made yet more income, they increasingly depended on
658
C. Rajagopalachari, "Peaceful Picketing of Toddy and Arrack Shop Auctions," in C. Rajagopalachari
(Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
659
Ibid.
660
A hint of what these activities may have involved can be found in the text of a ban on picketing in
Bangalore. The Magistrate explicitly forbade “the public utterance of cries, singing of songs, playing
music, delivery of harangues and use of gestures or mimetic representations, and the preparation, exhibition
or dissemination of pictures, symbols and placards.” See Unknown, "Ban on Picketing in Mysore from the
Hindu."
661
Rajagopalachari, "Encouraging Results."
662
Ibid.
236
the support of administrators and police to enforce picketing rules—more money, more
lathis, more social pressure, and more anger.
Temperance workers under the direction of Congress used pledges to further
isolate those who chose the liquor trade over independent India. Volunteers entreated
Indians to sign pledges to the effect that they supported complete and immediate
prohibition of alcohol.663 Pledge books functioned as yet another form of social coercion,
compelling literate Indians to firmly commit themselves on the side of prohibition.
Anyone who was approached with the pledge, whether they signed it or not, was subject
to personal surveillance by temperance workers and nationalists. Pledges thus facilitated
the creation of a dichotomy characterized by a strict division between those who favored
drink and those who favored empire. Pledges had long been a key technique for
American and British temperance advocates at home. In India temperance pledges took
on new meanings due to the colonial context within which they were signed. Those who
signed the pledges allied themselves not only with temperance, but also with the
nationalist movement more generally and with the elite social mores that eschewed drink.
Picketing and pledging were a tried and true forms of protest in Britain that also
found great success on the subcontinent, but India’s unique culture offered other means to
further the goal of prohibition. For instance, caste proscriptions against the use of alcohol
first enacted in the late 19th century (for an entirely different end) continued, and some
local authorities continued to closely monitor caste organizations in the 1930’s. Most
local administrators wisely refrained from attacking organizations that enacted
prohibitions against alcohol use. The South Indian cities of Chittoor and Salem were
663
———, "On Prohibition."
237
exceptions to this restraint. Local administrators launched prosecutions against caste
leaders who proscribed the use of alcohol in Chittoor and they suspended a village munsif
for supporting caste-based prohibition.664 The latter case was particularly disturbing to
administrators, because it tied the social authority of the caste leaders to the nominal legal
authority of the village munsif. The Indian revenue divisional officer reported that the
“munsif proclaimed in the village by the beat of tom tom to the effect that the villagers
should stop drinking toddy, etc. with effect from 17-8-31 failing which they would render
themselves liable to be fined Rs. 10 each by the caste Panchayat besides being deprived
of the services of dobhi, barber, exc.”665 British administrators suspended the munsif and
rescinded the legal imprimatur given to the caste proscriptions.
The Congress-led prohibition campaign aimed at the control of both public and
private spaces. In the public space, local congress committees organized public
processions on the second Sunday of every month on thoroughfares with drink-shops. 666
These processions marked an assertion of elite ideal regarding drink on the greater
population of India. Drink stalls on and near public thoroughfares had long drawn the ire
of temperance workers. Counter-attractions were also established “at such places and
hours...suitable in order to divert people from the drink-habit. This meant that counterattractions specifically targeted the spaces within which drinking took place. Processions
and counter-attractions represented an overt attempt to reclaim the public space of drink
shops. The chants and bhajans of those marching in processions were at once appeals
664
C. Rajagopalachari, "Letter to Un-Named Member of the Press," in C. Rajagopalacharia (Delhi: Nehru
Memorial Library, 1931).
665
———, "Revenue Divisional Officer Namakkal Order," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931).
666
Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition."
238
and warnings. Just beneath the horizon a free India was emerging—one that would not
brook drink sellers and their patrons.
The social pressure directed at liquor men changed the economic world within
which they operated. Rajaji boasted that “tree owners in many areas have pledged
themselves not to give their trees for toddy tapping.”667 This pledge did not happen
spontaneously but was the product of a concerted effort by Congress to induce anti-drink
sabhas [societies] to “exercise their influence to prevent landholders and lessees [from]
letting out their trees for tapping.”668 Elites who facilitated the drink trade by leasing out
their toddy trees had long enjoyed a degree of separation from the socially degrading
manufacture and trade. Congress and anti-drink sabhas worked to remove that degree of
separation, painting toddy tree owners with the brush of social degradation and treason
against the nation. Many owners of toddy trees who had long leased out their toddy trees
to tappers simply cut them down, as Periyar famously did. Nationalist histories continue
to treat the cutting of toddy trees as a “popular” movement.669 That may be so, but it
certainly was not popular with those who depended on toddy trees for their livelihood.
Temples similarly changed their practice of letting out toddy trees on templeowned land. Thus, for toddy tappers, the moral epiphany earnestly desired by activists
became less important.670 After all, without toddy trees how could there be toddy
667
———, "Anti Drink Movement, a Report from South India."
668
———, "On Prohibition."
669
Bipan Chandra, India's Struggle for Independence, 1857-1947 ([New Delhi, India]: Viking, 1988).
670
This conclusion is at odds with popular interpretations of toddy-tree cutting. Chandra et al describe it as
“obviously connected with the popular tradition of regarding abstinence as a virtue and symbol of
respectability.” See Ibid.
239
tapping?671 Despite the legality of alcohol production during this period, the Congress
pressure succeeded in making it an impossibility for many would-be brewers. Finding
space for the opening of liquor shops also grew increasingly problematic. “Many
licensees in the rural area are unable to start their business because people refuse to let
premises for the purpose [of selling liquor.]”672 When moral suasion failed to dissuade
drinkers, elites simply denied access to the means to make or sell liquor.
Nationalist leaders occasionally had to check the zeal of temperance activists,
discouraging them from such initiatives as the boycott of Adi-Dravida, or Dalit, women
vegetable carriers, “because the money is utilized for drink later on.”673 Congress had to
tread carefully here. One local congressman reported to Rajaji that “officials and renters
of shops are trying to organize Adi-Dravidas to oppose the Congress movement against
drink.”674 The nationalist movement simply could not afford to alienate the entire
population of low-caste drinkers. They certainly did not want caste-based and classbased aspects of the prohibition movement to come to the fore. If they could not manage
to get drinking classes fully behind the movement, then at least Congress could hope for
was ambivalence. The issue could not be pushed further until the creation of prohibition
zones in 1939 discussed below.
671
Some scattered evidence for resistance against this economic pressure is discernable in nationalist
celebrations of their successes. Rajaji complained that “reports are coming from many places that Excise
officials mark trees for making fermented toddy without the permission of the owners.” See
Rajagopalachari, “Anti Drink Movement, a Report from South India.”
672
Rajagopalachari, "Anti Drink Movement, a Report from South India."
673
C. Rajagopalachari, "Letter to Santhanam," in C. Rajagopalacharia (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library,
1931).
674
Rajagopalachari, "Letter To "Mr. Raja," Local Congressman."
240
Congress also had to contend with Indians within the nationalist movement who
were willing to use violence to fight demon drink. W. Devraj of the Hoorkee Tehsil
Congress Committee implored the All-India Working committee to endorse his idea of
raiding a local distillery. After reminding his Congress superiors of the violence used by
liquor men and their police allies against the volunteers, he argued that his hoped-for raid
…to me it seems on par with raids on salt depot. Salt is national property. It must
be made available for all on account of its utility. Hence a raid in a non-violent spirit,
including cutting of barbed wires was advised and encouraged by Mahatmaji. Liquor is a
source of utter dis-utility hence stopping its use means, in other words, increasing
tremendously the utility of the nation. In both there is an increase of utility. It is nothing
but the two aspects of the same problem, one positive, the other negative. If raid is not
violence, there is no plausible reason that preventing the shop from being opened is an act
of violence, taking it for granted that it will be done in a non-violent spirit.675
Some volunteers, many of whom had been subjected to violence were keen to respond in
kind. Endorsing Devraj’s plan, Madhavji Thaker went so far as to begin planning the
attack. He wrote,
On behalf of our party (the first batch of volunteers who accompanied Bapuji to Dandi) I
had been to Nasik for investigation as to the possibilities of the raid. I was there about a
fortnight. I have been inside the distillery itself and had the opportunities to have several
meetings and personal talks with the labourers (including the prisoners, who are supplied
for labour in the distillery from the Central Prison and also had an occasion to have an
hour's discussion with the Superintendent of the distillery, Mr. Dalal, and also with the
Superintendent of the Prison, Major Bhandare, in the matter.
Based on the information thus and otherwise gained I have reason to believe that a
properly organized raid would compel the Government to stop the distillery with obvious
help and advantage to the prohibition movement, thus relieving large number of sister
and brother volunteers and avoid the daily sufferings of these picketters (lathi charge by
male and the female police in Gujarat on the picketters at the liquor shops is a daily
occurrence nowadays). That the Government would take strong measures against such a
raid, including shooting and the willing sacrifice that might thus be involved in the action
and the force of international public opinion created thereby is bound to bring Swaraj
here quickly.676
675
W. Devraj, Secretary, Hoorkee Tehsil Congress Committee, Hardwar, "Letter," in All India Congress
Committee I (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1930).
676
Madhavji V. Thacker, "Letter to Govind Malaviya, Secretary All India Congress Committee,
Allahabad," in Home Department, Special, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1930).
241
The All-India Congress Committee never committed to the idea. In any case, the letters
were intercepted by the colonial government which increased security around the
distillery and enough barbed wire to function as a “wire apron round the Nasik Road
Government Distillery.”677
Although the Congress used extant power structures to further the goal of
prohibition, the message of temperance was occasionally couched in class terms that
resonated with the lower strata of society. Temperance dramas performed in public
spaces had long been propaganda method dating back to the nineteenth century. Initially
these plays were direct translations of temperance plays beloved in Britain like “Just a
Peg.” Like the use of lurid lantern slides in the 1920’s, anti-drink propagandists made
only small changes to European propaganda tools. By the 1930’s, however, Indians were
writing their own prohibition dramas to appeal to the drinking classes, most of whom
were poor.
One of these plays entitled, “Excise Revenue,” was circulated by Indian
Congressmen and is exemplary of Indian temperance “counter-attractions.” Those
viewing the play could enjoy a drama at no charge, luring some drinkers away from the
shops. The message of the play itself encouraged abstinence but did so in strikingly
caste-based terms. The play begins with the entrance of a representative of the Central
Provinces’ government, a Baniya. It is noteworthy that the script specifically states that
the government official is a Baniya. As a mercantile varna associated with banking,
money-lending, and trade, Baniyas were often hated by the poor who nonetheless
677
———, "Letter to Pt. Govind Kanth Malaviya Regarding Nasik Raid," in Home Department, Special,
Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1930).
242
depended on them for many services, including interactions with the state.678 Many of
those in leadership roles within the Indian temperance movement were themselves
Baniyas. In this case, the Baniya and the government are embodied by one actor. This
juxtaposes Baniyas with government and alcohol, forming an unholy trinity of
exploitation.
In the final lines of “Excise Revenue,” the Bania tells the liquor man holding a
sack of money “Oh, give me a good share of the booty…I know you are my friend. I am
afraid you will be soon driven out of this country, neck and crop.”679 The liquor man
responds by giving the Baniya some money from the bag. These two villains, the Baniya
government official and the liquor-man, then pledge mutual support. For an upper class
viewer, the liquor seller (wearing a placard with a black liquor bottle on it) might have
appeared the greater evil. For a lower-class audience, Government might be as sullied by
its association with the Baniya as it was with liquor.
Added to this substantial social pressure in public spaces was the entry of
temperance activists into the homes of Indians. “House visits” placed activists on the
doorsteps of drinkers with the expressed purpose of suasion, but it was also necessarily a
form of surveillance and identification of drinkers who were in opposition to the good
intentions of their fellows. On one such home visit in September of 1931, volunteers
discovered a woman “in her own hut who was handed over with toddy pot to the Abkari
inspector.”680 The volunteers recounted the woman’s explanation,
678
David Hardiman, Feeding the Baniya : Peasants and Usurers in Western India (Delhi ; New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996).
679
Uknown, "Excise Revenue," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931 C. nd).
“Neck and crop” implies that this might entail violence.
680
Rajagopalachari, "Illegal Sales- a Narrow Escape."
243
At about 4 p.m. this evening at _____’s toddy shop, south of the village well, I went to
redeem my jewel that I had pledged. The renter’s servants told me they would give me a
big pot of toddy and that I might keep it in my hut and sell it, and drink up what was left
unsold. I agreed. So I was asked to stop at the well, and so-and-so and so-and-so
brought and gave me a pot of toddy. They said they would give back the jewel only if I
carried out these directions. I took the pot to my hut. I sold up till now 1 ½ measures.681
Since the words of the liquor-selling woman were mediated both by the volunteer
witnessing her statements and the translations he made, the perspective of the toddy seller
is obscured. That said, one can see her story as the basis for a counter-narrative. Women
engaged in the public sale of alcohol were of extremely low social status. As this was an
activity almost entirely associated with men, it is a reasonable assumption that she was
either widowed or otherwise unattached to a male. With few resources to meet her basic
needs, she pawned her jewelry, a recourse of the unfortunate wherever these shops are
found. Operating in a social space where money was hard to come by, she agreed to sell
toddy. This allowed her to use her socially degraded status to economic advantage,
making money by breaking both the law and social custom to regain her jewelry. The
intervention of the volunteers barred the woman from benefiting, however nominally,
from her low social status.
The woman’s social status was not the concern of the volunteers who forcibly
took her and her toddy pot to the abkari inspector. She was subjected to the humiliation
of her trade being made public, particularly among those classes who did not engage in
public drinking. Of greater import, no mention is made of her being renumerated for the
loss of the toddy pot. As the trade was illegal, she would have lost the value of the
remaining toddy. She certainly would not have expected to be aided by Congress
volunteers since Rajaji had made it clear time and again that little sympathy would be
681
Ibid.
244
spared for those who engaged in the iniquitous trade. At minimum it is a safe assumption
that the jewelry she wanted to reclaim from the pawn shop was lost for the near future if
not forever. No mention is made in the documents regarding whether she was punished
by the police, although it is a distinct possibility. Excluded from the protection of both
the colonial state and the freedom movement allied against it, she simply had to suffer the
consequences of subalterity predicated upon her class and gender.
Volunteers applied pressure not only through focused interactions in homes and
drinking dens, but also through a systematic propaganda campaign applying social
pressure in public spaces. On behalf of Congress, Rajaji implored volunteers to “hold,
not only large meetings in central places, but also and more particularly small meetings in
street corners and nearer the dwellings of the people concerned so that the message my
go to every corner.”682 It could more darkly be stated that a drinker could scarcely find a
corner without substantial social pressure to reform his habits.
Bureaucratization of Nationalist Volunteerism
A corps of volunteers—variously called satyagrahis, sevaks, etc.—was pivotal in
Congress’ attempts to win Indian freedom, and this was certainly the case when Congress
took up the issue of temperance. India’s colonial regime had a long track-record of
antipathy towards the formation of Indian-run voluntary organizations, repeatedly
denying the right of many such organizations to form.683 Voluntary organizations with
Westerners in their ranks, such as temperance organizations, tended to fare better, with
682
683
———, "Instructions for Picketing."
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity : The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate Bengali' in the
Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press; Distributed exclusively in the USA
and Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1995).
245
administrators more likely to approve their formation. In the course of the Civil
Disobedience movement, in August 1931, the Congress Working Committee reached an
agreement with the Hindustani Seva Dal (HSD), an organization that began as a
nationalist scouting club for boys. Under this agreement, the HSD functioned as the
central volunteer corps for the Congress. Furthermore, “no Volunteer Boards or Corps
not previously recognized by the [Congress] Working Committee shall work in any
Congress Province in the name or on behalf of the Congress.”684 Congress administrators
divided the membership of HSD into grades. Local volunteers were trained by
supervisors who themselves had been trained at the HSD school in Karnataka. At a time
when colonial administrators were tamping back their enforcement of existing abkari
laws, the Congress was nurturing an internal organization of increasing complexity with a
distinct hierarchy and sites for the social reproduction of its institutional rules and culture.
Congress particularly worked to establish a tightly controlled volunteer corps for
the purpose of working towards prohibition. Under plans developed by Motilal Nehru
shortly before his death in 1931, each Provincial Congress Committee appointed a
prohibition committee or, “put a single person in charge, in order to prosecute the antidrink and drug campaign in the province.”685 The rules developed by Congress’ All India
Working Committee invested prohibition committee secretaries with a great deal of
discretion at the local level, but the Congress subcommittee kept for itself the power to
“change the secretary if it is deemed necessary.”686 Nehru’s plan of organization for the
684
Hardikar, N.S. "The Cenral Volunteer Organisation of the Congress Hindustani Seva Dal: Rules,
Grades & Ranks." edited by Madras Provincial Congress Committee, 1-18. Madras: N.S. Hardiker, 1931.
685
Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition."
686
Ibid.
246
“anti-drink sabhas” allowed non-Congress volunteers to become “honorary” workers, but
they could be jettisoned at any time at the discretion of local Congress leaders. Although
Congress-organized prohibition campaigns allowed room for the participation of nonCongress volunteers, Congress leaders ensured that the latter remained subject to the
control of the former.
Congress kept close supervision over local temperance volunteers. Taluka [subdistrict] secretaries gathered information on local activities, sending reports on meetings
and other work to Congress’ provincial sub-committees. In turn, provincial subcommittees sent reports to the Central Prohibition Committee peopled by key nationalists
like Mukhtar Ansari, Vallabbhai “Sardar” Patel, Rajendra Prasad and Rajaji.687 The
inclusion of such luminaries of the freedom movement on the Central Prohibition
Committee sent a message about the importance of prohibition in the freedom struggle.
Prohibition was an integral part of Indian freedom. The Central Prohibition Committee
could change picketing rules as needed, negotiating between the demands of local
circumstances and the needs of the larger nationalist movement.688
As producer of officials, central authority and coordinator of the actions of myriad
local organizations, Congress was behaving like a government long before
independence.689 In response to a letter from the Government of Madras complaining of
687
Ibid.
688
Congress’ decision to allow only five people to visit any one shop at a time referred to above is an
example of this negotiation and its limitations. Some local government officials were inclined to give a
freer hand to picketers while many of their colleagues were inclined to stop picketing altogether. Although
more than five picketers might have been allowed in many localities, Congress limited the number across
the board. A local event provoked the limitation. Congress responded by changing the policy nationally.
689
This is no accident. As D.A. Low observed, “…in response to the way the Raj itself operated, Congress,
in its institutional organization, sought to parallel the Raj rather precisely.” See D. A. Low, "Introduction:
247
“intimidation and aggressiveness in certain districts,” Rajaji requested he be informed of
the location of the districts and the nature of the complaints [to] help…take steps to find
out the accuracy of the reports and remedy the situation.”690 Similarly, when police in
North Arcot district complained of too many picketers, the Congress leadership “arranged
to submit the whole case for immediate enquiry by an un-official and impartial
Committee of competent judges.”691 The “competent” and “impartial” judges embodied
the standard of respectability favored by the Congress included a vakil [attorney], the
President of the District Board, and three well-to-do merchants.692 They found that
“nothing was objectionable” in the conduct of Congress picketers and that it was “the
high-handed and boisterous conduct of the Inspector of Police” that had precipitated the
complaints against an “irritated” crowd.693 The veracity of the committee’s findings is of
little import in this case. Rather, it was the decision of Congress to assemble in
“impartial” committee composed of men who met the Congress’ standards of
respectability, and thus exemplified fidelity to truth, the nation, and the coming sovereign
state that impresses.
Even as it created an increasingly sophisticated shadow-government, the Congress
reinforced traditional power structures. For example, the activities of the women’s
branch of the HSD were invariably supervised by men. With regard to class, the views of
The Climactic Years, 1917-1947," in Congress and the Raj: Facets of the Indian Struggle, 1917-1947, ed.
D. A. Low (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004; reprint, 2nd).
690
C. Rajagopalachari, Personal Letter, 5th August, 1931.
691
———, "Ranipet Prohibitory Order, Enquiry Commission Report," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi:
Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
692
Ibid.
693
Ibid.
248
middle-class and elite nationalists were more similar to those of British administrators
than to the masses. Bombay’s Home Department Secretary, G.F.S. Collins complained
that the alleged violence of the picketers in his presidency was attributable to the fact that
they “have been recruited from labourers out of work and from the hooligan element.”694
Sensitive to these complaints, the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee instructed that “only
the well-to-do and responsible persons should involve themselves in the picketing.”695
Acknowledgement of the superiority of elites was key to the success of the volunteer
campaign against liquor. As N.S. Hardikar, President of the 1929 HSD Conference
declared, the object of his organization was “to develop the body and make it obedient to
the behests of an intelligent will and to organize the people of India in such a manner that
by obedience to the will of recognized leaders to develop a common will and act as one
man for common purpose.”696
Nationalism, Temperance, and the PLI
Due to Government’s harsh response to Civil Disobedience, nationalists found it
increasingly important to distinguish between activism associated with the Congress’
temperance program or Prohibition League of India (PLI) from that of the Congress as a
political organization. The close links between the PLI and Congress helped both
694
Collins, G.F.S., Home Dept. (special), Bombay. "Letter to the Government of India, Home Department."
In Home Department (special) Bombay, 3. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1931. Collins reported
more instances of violence than his counterparts in other presidencies. Among these instances was the
burning of the Presidency Magistrate’s effigy, violent attacks on liquor-shop men and their property, and
the illegal cutting of toddy trees. See Collins, G.F.S., Home Dept. (special), Bombay. "Bombay City and
Bombay Suburban District- Instances of the Use of Violence in Connection with the Civil Disobedience
Movement and Consequent Clashes with the Police, or with Government Officials, or with Loyalists." In
Home Department, Special, Bombay, 28. Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1931.
695
Rajan, D.S, M. Baktaval Salam. "Strike Rules." In C. Rajagopalachari, 1. Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931.
696
Ralan, O.P., ed. Encyclopedia of Political Parties. New Delhi: Anmol Publications Pvt Ltd, 1997.
249
organizations but required PLI representatives to frequently state the divisions between
them. For example, in inviting one local temperance organization to perform a Marathilanguage adaptation of the temperance play, Just a Peg, Rajaji pointedly advised his
correspondent that “the Prohibition League of India…is a non-Congress, non-party
organization.”697 What Rajaji wrote was technically true; but it is also technically true
that the letterhead on which he often wrote was topped by information on both the
Congress and the Prohibition League of India.698 Even if the Prohibition League of India
as an institution was “non-party and non-political,” its membership was decidedly so.699
The language of the Prohibition League of India’s organ, Prohibition, was
delicately crafted by its editors lest its strictly moral mission be obscured by nationalist
politics. This is to say, although the PLI was quite nationalist in orientation, it remained
important for its leadership to maintain a façade of partition between its goal of realizing
prohibition and gaining Indian independence. Rajaji described liquor shop picketing of
the Non-cooperation Movement as “social reformation” rather than “political change.”700
This is a curious distinction, given that the Indian Nationalist movement, particularly
under Gandhi’s tutelage, fused the two. After all, how could nationalists campaign for
697
C. Rajagopalachari, "Letter to Ramanujachariar," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial
Library, 1931).
698
———, "Letter," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
699
———, "Letter to Kumaraswami Reddier," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library,
1931). Despite the nationalist aspirations of most Indian prohibition activists, Rajaji sometimes preferred
to verify the temperance credentials of nationalists such as when one Niranjan Singh was recommended for
a paid position with league. Though Rajaji knew him to have been “in the non-cooperation movement and
in gaol in 1921”, he wrote to friend asking “what sort of gentleman Mr. Niranjan Singh is from our point of
view?” See: ———, "Letter to Shri Prakash," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library,
1931).
700
Rajagopalachari, "Advice to Picketers."
250
true Swaraj while ignoring the “father of all vice?”701 Temperance activists, however
pure their motives, could not be allowed great influence over the carefully crafted
statements of the PLI.
Publishing and editing the PLI was a delicate task, straddling the fence between
political and moral reform. When Prohibition appeared set to disappear in the wake of
mass arrests and budgetary problems, N.S.R. Iyengar, a Bombay nationalist and
temperance advocate offered to take over the journal, “even if it costs my life and the life
of my family members…till the last drop of all Drinks…exists no more in my
Motherland.” In a rather sternly-worded reply, Rajaji admonished that “I have no
authority nor do I intend to ask you to continue the journal.”702 He added that his
correspondent had every right to start another temperance journal, but hoped that Iyengar
would “find a suitable name that will not confound it with the journal of the Prohibition
League.”703
Divided loyalties grew increasingly problematic in the 1930’s. Those Indians
who chose to take up government positions prior to the 1938-1939 Congress governments
were suspect. The decision to cooperate with colonial rule in a nationalist context within
which non-cooperation was the ideal placed Indian bureaucrats outside of the nation.
Rajaji went so far as to question the religious authenticity of those Indians who supported
“outrageous” Legislative Council decisions and who were present when the “local
701
———, "Mr. Cox's Durbar Speech, C.R.'S Indictment."
702
———, "Letter."
703
Ibid.
251
option” often died a quiet death.704 He noted that Indians in such meetings who judged
prohibition impractical, “sound extremely funny from the mouths of a professing Hindu
or Muslim minister.”705
Indian temperance activists during the Civil Disobedience period fought against
drink on several fronts. They pressured governments of the Presidency to reduce the
public’s access to alcohol though a variety of measures, from expanded local option to
complete prohibition. At the local level, activists fought to reduce the number of liquor
shops in urban cities and rural villages. In furtherance of this goal, activists picketed
liquor shops and confronted would-be customers, emphasizing the evils of drink, for the
individual, the family, the village, and the nation.
Temperance Alliances Old and New
Since many of India’s most vocal alcohol opponents were also prohibition
advocates, leaders such as Rajaji frequently iterated the technical division between
Congress and anti-alcohol organizations like the Prohibition League of India. Founded in
1926 by American missionary Herbert Anderson, the Prohibition League of India was
organized at an All-India conference in Delhi that “did not attract the European.”706
Despite its founding by Anderson, the PLI became the premier temperance organization
for Indians, particularly nationalists. The handful of pro-empire temperance activists
704
Local option was a system in which local boards were established, comprised of picked government
men along with a few “leading” men of a given locality. These boards technically had the power to
institute prohibition within the boundaries of their city; however, government officials and men handpicked by the local collector assured that these boards would never vote in favor of prohibition.
705
706
Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition."
Herbert Anderson, "Prohibition Convention in India," in Livesay (Preston: University of Central
Lancashire, 1926).
252
affiliated with the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association (AITA) would have been rather
more conspicuous at a PLI meeting peopled with ardent nationalists.
Congress, temperance workers, and other anti-drink activists increasingly
emphasized abstention as the key distinction between India and “the West.” They
substituted the upper caste ideals of religious practice for the much more variegated
reality of religious practice and drinking habits. Activists could praise the “fact” that all
of India’s “religions and castes have a sense of great shame and sin in regard even to the
moderate use of liquor.”707 Christianity stood outside this fold. In 1932 Rajaji reminded
his readers of the statement by a Brahman speaker at the 1893 Parliament of Religions
who saw “Christianity standing with the bible in one hand and the wizard’s wand of
civilization in the other, but there is another side…that is the Goddess of civilization with
a bottle of Rum in her hand.”708
The era of European-led temperance agitation in India decidedly came to a close
with the advent of the Civil Disobedience movement in 1930. In that year the venerable
Anglo-Indian Temperance Association (AITA), the organization that had facilitated the
formation of hundreds of temperance organizations that would later become hotbeds of
nationalism, began to wind up their operations. As Harold Mann, chairman of the
AITA’s annual meeting put it, “conditions are changing. Within a very short time India
will certainly be master of its own destinies and it seems probable that in the near future
the propaganda which [the AITA] has done will no longer be required in exactly the same
707
Rajagopalachari, "Anti Drink Movement, a Report from South India."
708
———, "On Prohibition."
253
form.”709 With the flag of temperance tied to the same mast as that of nationalism, the
role of British activists evolved from one of leadership to the more subordinate role of
“advising and helping our Indian friends.”710
A handful of European and American temperance activists like Herbert Anderson
continued to fight alongside Indian nationalists, but the politics of the period drove a
wedge between some British reformers and their Indian counterparts. At a 1935 meeting
to explore “Native Races and the Liquor Traffic” in London, the famous physician and
Mount Everest expedition veteran, Howard Somervell, argued that “it had to be
recognized that the Oriental found it extremely difficult to control himself if he once
became addicted to strong drink.”711 This kind of commentary would likely not have
found approval within the nationalist-oriented approach to temperance in India. It was
one thing to praise the “historical” purity of Indians vis-à-vis Europeans. It was quite
another to claim that Indians were constitutionally unable to “control themselves” under
the influence of alcohol in the same manner that more robust Britons could.712 Even as
Somervell celebrated “the growing spirit of nationalism in India,” he did so only because
British rule had failed to be the enlightening force he hoped it would be. All this was the
result of “one grave flaw in [British] contact with non-European races and that was our
709
Harold Mann, "Annual Meeting, Chairman's Address," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the AngloIndian Temperance Association I, no. 165 (1931).
710
Ibid.
Frederick Grubb, "Facts and Comments," The India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon XXIX,
no. 12 (1935).
711
712
Rajaji testified to the contrary, saying that his “English friends seem to think that if they drink in
moderation they would not lose their sense and would not become brutes. I have seen these friends not
only losing self-control but becoming brutes when they drink. They are first class men. But when they
drink they become asses.” See Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition."
254
encouragement of the drink traffic among them.”713 Both British and Indian temperance
workers harbored essentialist, negative stereotypes. As Indian nationalism gained
momentum, it became harder and harder to reconcile them.
Anderson was not alone in his support for Indian freedom. The AITA in the
1930’s was cautiously supportive of Indian nationalism in print. But this support was
tepid at best, with frequent laments that the controversy between colonial government
and the Congress provoked increasing radicalism on both sides. In private, however,
some AITA members were much more supportive of Congress programs. In a private
letter to Rajaji, Secretary of the AITA, Frederick Grubb praised the former’s efforts to
“secure justice for the Depressed Classes and National Unity.”714 In a frank
acknowledgement of how the political climate in India had changed since the AITA’s
founding, Grubb said of his organization that “we were all the more ready to suspend the
affiliations of our own [British] Association because we feel that the organization, under
your direction would be in a much better position to carry on the same campaign than we
would be.”715 Grubb closed his letter with the wish that “peace and Freedom may come
to your people this year.”716
Rajaji, in particular, underlined the division between British temperance
advocates and their nationalist counterparts. While acknowledging “some Englishmen
713
Somerville particularly lamented that the drinking habits of Europeans in India had “discredited
Christianity.” Grubb, "Facts and Comments."
714
Frederick Grubb, in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1933).
715
716
Ibid. Emphasis original.
Ibid. Grubb’s letter implies the writer’s dissatisfaction with the fact that although he had been willing to
hand over the reins of the AITA to Rajaji, that the latter was not inclined to reciprocate with control over
the journal, Prohibition. This seems to support some of Rajaji’s significant, if rarely stated, reservations
about British temperance workers.
255
[who are] with us [who] happen to be Missionaries or Christians,” he expressed
disappointment that “they are all for some purpose too practical. They say we should
realize the difficulties of Government” on the matter.717 Rajaji went on to complain that
“not one Englishman has yet told me that Prohibition was possible due to the increased
taxation [through other methods like income tax] that would result.”718 For his part, he
would rather “India become a pauper” than have “lakhs and lakhs of drunkards in their
[sic] midst.”719 British temperance activists, no matter how heartfelt their positions,
extended their paternal concern for the population over a variety of social issues but for
Rajaji, these other issues mattered little if the Indian nation lost its purity. The need for
purity superseded all other needs; alcohol put that purity in jeopardy.
Although the Congress welcomed any international support for prohibition in
India, they generally preferred American temperance workers over their British
counterparts, whose loyalties were subject to suspicion. The American temperance
firebrand W.E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson, a favorite of Indian temperance men, toured the
country in 1921. Rajaji lauded both his temperance work and his support for Indian
freedom, quoting Johnson’s lament on “the condition of India [in which] a relationship
between the rulers and the ruled, in which the intangible influences of foreign domination
oppose[d] all efforts by Indian leaders to carry out some social reforms.”720 Rajaji
expressed regret that British temperance workers could never be entirely trusted. He
tacitly rebuked “some of us who live nearer the heartbeats of India than do the official
717
Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition."
718
Ibid.
719
Ibid.
Ibid.
720
256
and administrative European classes wish that Pussyfoot was wrong.”721 The distinction
between those “closer to the heartbeats of India” and those in “the official and
administrative European classes” is a stark one indeed. Rajaji implied that those even
casually associated with colonial rule fundamentally cannot be true temperance
supporters, since prohibition would not be realized as long as India’s “right to freedom is
denied to her.”722
By the 1930’s, British and American women rose in prominence within Indian
temperance discourse. People like Ruth Robinson, Agnes Slack and Mary Campbell had
replaced the men like Nicol Macnicol a generation earlier.723 The rise of white women in
Indian temperance cannot be attributed to a single cause. However, it is instructive to
speculate on some likely reasons for this. Indian nationalists like Rajaji appreciated the
support of British temperance men but never entirely trusted them. American temperance
men like Herbert Anderson were preferred for prominent roles, but since independence
was now the immediate goal, Indians were the ideal and proper candidates for leadership
positions, even over American leaders.
In the wake of widespread arrests of Congress leaders in 1932, Rajaji handed
control of the Prohibition League of India and its journal, not to a fellow Indian
nationalist but to Ruth Robinson of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU).724 The choice of Ruth Robinson, an American temperance activist and
missionary, lends itself to some speculation. The AITA’s history of cooperation between
721
Ibid.
722
Ibid.
723
See chapter 3.
724
Grubb.
257
nationalists and (heartfelt, if paternalist) Britons became a liability during the height of
Indian nationalism. When Rajaji needed non-Indian, public assistance from international
temperance activists, he turned to Americans like Herbert Anderson and Ruth Robinson
rather than to their British counterparts. Although Frederick Grubb continued to
regularly correspond with Rajaji, professing his support for Indian freedom, his
contribution was limited to writing pieces for various temperance journals. At the height
of the anticolonial struggle, the close relationship between nationalism and anti-drink
rhetoric precluded leadership positions for British nationals within Indian temperance
organizations.
Ruth Robinson was also an ideal choice because of the prominent role she
assumed at the center of several reform movements in India and her close connections
with numerous institutions. She was a participant in the All-India Women’s Conference,
the Mission Conference, a member of the WCTU, a participant in numerous local
temperance boards, and a friend of Frederick Grubb of the AITA. 725 She had the
advantage of a highly organized network of individuals and organizations without the
liability of challenging extant power structures within the nationalist movement.
During the Civil Disobedience period, colonial administrators imprisoned most of
the upper echelons of the Congress leadership, leaving a leadership vacuum in the
prohibition program. Loathe to bequeath such an important (and ultimately nationalist)
task of leading prohibition to men who looked very much like colonial rulers, Rajaji
turned to white women for aid. Some of them had long been active in temperance work
and provided an ideal alternative in lieu of Indian leaders. Yet promotion of junior Indian
725
Ruth Robinson, in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1932).
258
nationalists to prominent positions threatened to upset the hierarchy of the Congress as
well. The solution lay in elevating foreign women. For example, Ruth Robinson, an
American woman, proved the ideal candidate for leadership of the Prohibition League of
India (PLI). As a non-Indian and as a woman, it was understood that she would resign
the PLI leadership upon the release of Rajaji. As a woman operating in the highly
patriarchal society of British India, her subordinate status was clear, precluding any
usurpation of power either by nationalist upstarts or white men with questionable
loyalties.
The Gandhi-Irwin Pact
So many participants were arrested in 1931among Civil Disobedience pickets that
Congress began to deploy women and children instead of men to picket the shops.
Gandhi had long disapproved of women picketers, seeing their role in the freedom
movement as spinning the charkha rather than working in public activism.726 With
Gandhi arrested, the growing involvement of women in picketing proved somewhat
effective for nationalists. For instance, with the Government of Bombay sent out a
directive that “the most satisfactory way of countering these unchivalrous tricks is to
arrest the women before beginning to use force, to remove them to a police station or
some other convenient spot at a distance, and to release them when the disturbance is at
an end. It is not desirable from any point of view that the prisons should be filled with
726
Radha Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's Rights and
Feminism in India, 1800-1990 (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1993), 82-83.
259
women.”727 If the larger Civil Disobedience movement was losing energy as a
consequence of mass arrest, female picketers presented Government with a new set of
problems that they were keen to avoid. Children who demonstrated posed an equally
vexing problem for colonial officials, some of whom recommended draconian responses
such as placing them in reform schools or publically whipping them.728 The latter course
of action was dismissed in all but the “rowdiest” of cases, implying that beating children
in public in the defense of demon drink might have a detrimental effect on already poor
public-relations. Both the Congress and Government had interests in pulling back from
the brink.
In March of 1931 Lord Irwin, then Viceroy of India, and Gandhi reached an
accord with Congress agreed to suspend Civil Disobedience movement in exchange for a
leading role in the upcoming Round Table Conference in London. Further, the
Government of India released nationalists imprisoned for non-violent offenses while
Congress agreed to curtail several forms of agitation. However, one notable exception to
this new amiability was that Congress workers continued picketing liquor shops and
carried on with the “social work” of reforming drinkers.729 The decision of Government
to allow picketing to continue under the terms of the Gandhi-Irwin pact met with some
rearguard resistance from British officials. For example, the Governor of Madras’ private
727
G.F.S. Collins, Home Dept. (special), Bombay, "Untitled, Regards Police Response to Women," in
Home Department, Special, Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1930).
728
A.S., "Secret Memo to Home Department (Political)," in Home Department, Special, Bombay (Mumbai:
Maharashtra State Archives, 1929). See also A.O. Koreishi, District Magistrate, Broach, "Letter to
Commissioner, Norther Division, Ahmedabad, Broach, J.H. Garrett," in Home Department, Special,
Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1930).
729
The continued picketing of liquor shops during the period of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact kept up the fight for
temperance. More importantly, it also provided an avenue for continued activism, for vast numbers of
nationalist reformers, many of whom were unhappy with the agreement. Picketing of liquor shops was
largely halted by the end of 1932.
260
secretary only approved picketing only under tightly-controlled conditions; it must be
“peaceful” and must not lead to “obstruction or disorder.”730 This caused some friction
within the colonial government that did not go unobserved by nationalists. The Collector
of Madras, A.R. Cox, argued against liquor-shop picketing, provoking a very public
condemnation from Rajaji, who reminded him that he was not the Viceroy of India but
“only the Collector of Madras.”731
Embarrassing exchanges such as those above notwithstanding, the colonial
government proved able to use the vague language of the Gandhi-Irwin pact to its benefit.
When Congress officials intermittently reported government crackdowns on peaceful
picketing in violation of the pact, the Government of Madras reported to Rajaji the
instructions they had issued to the police with regard to the pickets. The tone of these
instructions was initially conciliatory towards the picketers; for example, an order from
March 1931 stated that, “no notice be [should] taken of picketing unless it threatens
serious disorder or danger to the public peace.”732 But more ominous warnings appeared
in the summer of 1931, indicating that “several clear breaches of the pact had been
reported, particularly in rural areas.”733 The report concluded with the assertion that all
district magistrates had the authority to call upon local Congress committees to “suspend
picketing…if such a course is thought expedient.”734
730
Madras, "Letter Exchange with C. Rajagopalachari."
731
Rajagopalachari, "Mr. Cox's Durbar Speech, C.R.'S Indictment."
732
Government of Madras, "Letter to Rajagopalacharia," ed. C. Rajagopalacharia (Madras: Jawaharlal
Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
733
Madras, "Letter Exchange with C. Rajagopalachari."
734
Ibid.
261
This assertion—that local magistrates had the authority to call on Congress to
break up picketing when “expedient”—was inimical to Congress’ political strength.
When the Government of Madras demanded that Congress stop picketing on the rather
loose grounds of “expediency,” Rajaji responded to the threat by immediately consulting
Gandhi regarding this “wrong interpretation of the pact by local Government.”735
Government restrictions on picketing threatened to drive a wedge between the Congress’
high command and the activism of local volunteers across India.
The ability to continue anti-liquor activism despite the suspension of Civil
Disobedience provided a much-needed outlet for the energies of Congress volunteers. As
Rajaji told Congress-leader Vallabbhai “Sardar” Patel, “good work is done throughout
the country and not a little of it is due to the feeling that the Truce protects Congress
workers. If we break the spell, all work may get dislocated.”736 Congress continued a
robust anti-liquor campaign despite the arrest of much of its leadership in 1931.
Congress-led Prohibition 1938-1939
When the Gandhi-Irwin pact had failed in 1932, British authorities once again
rounded up and imprisoned much of the Congress’ leadership. Picketing continued in
isolated locations, but the movement had lost much of its energy. With many of the
“respectable community leaders” once involved in picketing incarcerated, Congress
pickets all but ceased. Although the system of dyarchy established in 1919 had been
marginally improved with the 1935 Government of India Act, the Congress maintained
735
C. Rajagopalachari, "Local Government and the Gandhi/Irwin Pact," in Rajagopalacharia Papers
(Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
736
———, "Letter to Vaidyanathier," in C. Rajagopalachari (Delhi: Nehru Memorial Library, 1931).
262
that the new Act’s limited sovereignty was insufficient cause for participation in a
colonial government.
In 1937, the Congress reversed its position, agreeing to form ministries in the five
provinces in which they had won majorities. Since abkari administration was a
“transferred” or provincial department and thus under Indian control, Congress
endeavored to make good on its pledge to work for total prohibition in the Congresscontrolled provinces—Madras, Bombay, United Provinces, Central Provinces, and Bihar.
Since 1931 Congress had already established that “if and when elections to legislative
councils and assemblies are held and congressmen participate in them, the introduction
and active promotion of total prohibition shall be made part of the election pledge of the
Congress candidates.”737 Under Rajaji’s tutelage, the Congress Government of Madras
thus instituted in 1937 a pilot prohibition program in Salem.738 Similarly, Minister of
Health and Excise for Bombay, D. Gilder, initiated a pilot program in the industrial city
of Ahmedabad. Kailas Nath Katju, United Provinces Excise Secretary, began pilot
programs in the villages of the Etah District. Much was at stake in these pilot programs.
Their success or failure would decide the ultimate fate of prohibition in India.
Reasons to proceed slowly were myriad. America’s failed experiment with
prohibition which had come to an end in 1933, suggested that the drink evil could not be
dealt with by law alone. Prohibition in the United States had failed because, as Indian
737
738
Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition."
This was against Rajaji’s wishes as stated in 1932 when he argued that “the method of experimenting in
one or two districts” did not appeal to him. He wanted total prohibition across the entirety of India
immediately. Piecemeal implementation was a compromise position for him. See Ibid.
263
temperance advocates said, “there was no social backing in America.”739 Frustrated
American temperance advocates turned their eyes to the East, praising the activism of
Indian nationalists in the cause of temperance but warning them to avoid the same
pitfalls. Hattie Menzies, a member of the WCTU, urged strong enforcement of
prohibition laws. She wrote that “to wink at and ignore an offense causes vice to grow
and thrive and encourages crime and wantonness.”740 Only if prohibition were enforced
to the same extent as laws against violent crime could prohibition be realized. She
argued further that “if the public does not back up the officials by giving truthful
testimony and needed information, if they let the Traffic buy them off, if they tie the
hands of those trying to get the best for their countrymen, then you might as well not
have the law.”741
Despite the increasing certainty in the U.S. of the failings of prohibition,
nationalists greeted reports with a great deal of suspicion until it was repealed in 1933.
Rajaji implored his readers to “not believe the interested writings in newspapers that total
Prohibition has been a failure in America. Scarcely an American who comes to India
goes away without seeing me.”742 Based on Rajaji’s interactions with Americans
sympathetic to the cause of temperance and nationalism led him to make the unfortunate
observation that “there is no public opinion in America supporting the removal of
Prohibition. The Government is their own Government and the people are satisfied with
739
India, Government of. "Bill(S)-the Orissa Prohibition Bill, 1939." edited by Excise and Opium Central
Board of Revenue. Delhi, 1939.
740
Hattie Menzies, "Prohibition in the Making," The India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon
XXXIII, no. 3 (1939).
741
Ibid.
742
Rajagopalachari, "On Prohibition."
264
the state of things there.”743 The sanguine predictions of some Indian temperance
workers for America’s dry future proved ill-founded. Even if American prohibition had
suffered setbacks, Rajaji drew a key distinction between Indian and American drinkers
based on an idealized past. In ancient India, he averred, “drink was necessarily held
disreputable” and complete prohibition had been achieved, at least in Bengal, 500 years
ago by the fiat of the Hindu saint, Chaitanya. This fiat “very soon solved the problem of
intemperance.”744
An even greater threat to prohibition in India was the fact that alcohol
consumption underlay the system of government funding. A large portion of state
revenue came from excise taxes on intoxicants, and state services such as education and
municipal drainage depended on alcohol revenue. The Government of India had given
the Congress a poison pill. They could institute prohibition only at the cost of defunding
important public programs. Financial prudence alone suggested a gradual move towards
prohibition, a tactic that seemed all the more important as news of the United States’
woes drew the anxious attention of the world temperance community.
With the formation of Congress Provincial Ministries, the Congress found itself in
fairly unique circumstances. They had access to some of the levers of state power
without sovereignty. This provided nationalists with the ability to use the powers of the
state to fight to further the independence struggle. Indian Nationalists and temperance
advocates of all stripes had long cast alcohol as an alien contaminant that came to India
with the empire and would doubtlessly leave along with it. Since temperance or
743
Ibid. Here we see Rajaji’s faith that in a state with its “own government,” rather than colonial rule, the
success of prohibition was assured; the fundamental purity of Indians assured the success of prohibition.
744
Ibid.
265
complete abstention were tightly held values for the leading nationalist organization,
using state power to move towards prohibition was an opportunity for Congress to
demonstrate that its values were not merely rhetorical. Indian freedom meant
independence from both colonial administrators and the liquor they brought with them.
Actually deciding to use state power to implement prohibition again placed
Congress in conflict with a segment of the population for whom they hoped to speak—
liquor sellers and a vast numbers of their customers. A recent history of half-hearted
enforcement of abkari laws by magistrates and police during Civil Disobedience
frustrated the Congress Working Committee, which had good reason to doubt the full
cooperation of all bureaucrats in prohibition schemes. Some of those officials were
known to have imperial sympathies. Hence, the Working Committee decided to set up a
non-state bureaucracy to function much like a shadow-state that would cooperate with
amenable bureaucrats and force the cooperation of recalcitrant officials. Prohibition
boards were peopled by both government officials and volunteers who worked in tandem.
Within the Congress provinces, the new governments established government-operated
prohibition departments that would adapt the goal of prohibition to local circumstances.
The Congress governments replaced those excise ministers known to be hostile to
temperance with heartfelt temperance men.
To ensure the cooperation of law enforcement and the judiciary, Congress-run,
non-state Prohibition Committees carefully surveilled their districts. The broad
participation of non-official Indians was a fundamental aspect of prohibition. For
example, Bihar’s prohibition law dictated that “Every village chaukidar [watchman] and
dafadar [non-commissioned officer] shall be bound to give immediate information at the
266
nearest police-station or to a Prohibition authority of any breach of any of the provisions
of this Act which may come to his knowledge.”745 Yet this injunction went far beyond
petty officials and extended virtually to all Indians. Bihar required that
Every person who occupies any land or building or who is a landlord of an estate,
residing in the village, or in which there shall be any tapping for tari [toddy] or
manufacture of any liquor or intoxicating drug not authorized by a permit or license
issued under this Act, shall, in the absence of reasonable excuse, be bound to give notice
of the same to a Magistrate or to a Prohibition authority or to an officer of the Police as
soon as such tapping or manufacture shall come to his knowledge.746
Bihar’s prohibition law required virtually all Indians to inform on drinkers and police the
moral standards of drinking classes.
Prohibition officers also used the power of employer over employee to further
their cause. In the Bombay Presidency, “all the mill-officers co-operated with the
[Prohibition] Committee in the effort to dissuade mill-workers from going for drink.”747
This “suasion” reinforced the patriarchal authority of mill-owners over their employees.
Just as prohibition activists “encouraged” temperance by denying them toddy trees, millworkers were “encouraged” by bosses to abstain from drink with the implied threat of
dismissal. Prohibition was in most, but not all, cases, a top to bottom affair, with those
on the lower rungs of the social order more or less compelled to follow the moral
example of their social betters.
Surveillance included “watching lonely paths usually taken by smugglers,
checking conveyances, shadowing suspected individuals, spotting illicit distillation,
checking niro [non-alcoholic toddy juice] for alcohol content, and keeping in touch with
745
Government of Bihar, "Bihar Prohibition Act, 1938," ed. Legislative Department (Patna, Bihar:
Superintendent, Government Printing, 1938).
746
Ibid.
747
Ruth Robinson, The India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon XXXIII, no. 7 (1939).
267
the taluk and village prohibition committee members and village officers.”748 Checking
niro for alcohol content was particularly burdensome to toddy tappers who complained of
outright harassment. The India Temperance Record and White Ribbon reported
favorably on this harassment as evidence for the vigilance of government officials:
… a close watch is already being kept in some areas as is clear from complaints received
from some toddy tappers that they have become weary of constantly climbing trees to
bring down pots and show to police officers, of another complaint that persons frequently
ask to see their licenses and take the opportunity of having a swig of their sweet toddy at
the same time.749
The complaints of the toddy tappers seemed well-founded. With their hereditary
profession outlawed, even sweet toddy was being simply taken by “respectable” men.
Moreover they were compelled to climb the trees far more than necessary to prove again
and again their fidelity to the new law—no easy feat as evidenced by the picture
below.750
748
Holdsworth, B.G. "Press Communique--Prohibition Department." edited by Revenue Department, 1-15.
Madras: Government of Madras, 1938. Niro is the unfermented juice from toddy trees, sweet in flavor with
no alcohol content. Many former toddy tappers moved to the production of niro.
749
Salem District Collector, Madras, "Prohibition in Salem District: Extracts from the Report of the
Collector of Salem District," The India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon XXXII, no. 4 (1939).
750
W.S. Caine, "Letters from India," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian Temperance
Association I, no. 28 (1897).
268
Figure 14
Source: W.S. Caine, "Toddy Palms," Abkari: The Quarterly Organ of the Anglo-Indian
Temperance Association I, no. 28 (1897).
269
“Leading men” of local communities comprised approximately half of each
prohibition committee, with prohibition-friendly state officials filled the remaining spots.
In this way Prohibition Committees blurred the line between government officialdom and
“leading citizens.” “Respectable and well-to-do” men, in addition to the various social
pressures they could formerly initiate, now had the expanded authority to operate as a
quasi-official police force. However well-intentioned, prohibition committees were
authorized to impose the social values of “leading men” on the drinking classes; to do so
was as a “holy task.”751 In Bombay City alone, “besides the 4,000 city police, the
Government draft[ed] 500 more police from the moffusil. Voluntary service [was]
provided by 800 prohibition guards among whom are many students and professional
men.”752
Prohibition departments also watched the movements of individuals who
journeyed from their homes in dry districts to slake their thirst in wet districts. Since
Congress opted for piecemeal implementation to avoid setbacks and budget crises,
prohibition areas were abutted by wet districts. Ahmedabad’s prohibition department
documented quite of bit of daily migration on the part of drinkers. An inspector charged
with surveilling these movements noted that “The statistics for persons going to take their
drink outside the dry area by passing various outposts has been compiled by the Excise
Department... Average number of persons coming after drinking outside the Dry Area per
day: Sphijpur Outpost 144, Chandola Outpost 10, Rakhial Outpost 4, Nicol Outpost 1.
751
Katju, Kailas Nath. "Message from Hon'ble Minister of Excise." Public Information, United Provinces,
Lucknow II, no. 2 (1939): 2.
752
Robinson.
270
Total average 159 per day."753 To that number, prohibition authorities added an
estimated 100 other drinkers who travelled by railway, bringing the total to 259
individuals per day. Prohibition officers and volunteers “watched the people visiting
these places [drink shops] and tried to get their names and addresses.”754 This close
surveillance met with sporadic resistance by some drinkers. At least one prohibition
inspector was “assaulted by a drunken man.”755
Persistence paid dividends for Ahmedabad’s Prohibition Department when,
244 names of drunkards were received in the Dept. Those were analyzed according to
their places of occupation... The inspectors approached those people and persuaded them
to give up the habit. A number of people have signed a pledge for giving up the drink
habit. The inspectors of the Department paid 25 visits to the liquor shops situated outside
the Dry Area to get the names and information regarding the persons going there
weekends and holidays.756
Prohibition officers observed drinkers and visited them individually, attempting to use
every means at their disposal to root out the drink curse from every nook and corner.
Although Congress’ surveillance plans were extensive and ambitious, their
efficacy is debatable. Detection of illegal drinking and brewing made manifest the
seriousness with which prohibition officers took their “holy task,” but it also represented
a failure of moral suasion and appeals to nationalistic feeling. To take a specific case,
Ahmedabad’s monthly prohibition reports in 1938 reflect some odd numbers suggesting,
that the near unanimity of prohibition sentiment among Indians was illusory. In one
month alone the department processed 448 applications for drinking permits and
documented the daily trek of some 260 drinkers to wet areas. It is notable that these 448
753
"Ahmedabad Prohibition Department," (Ahmedabad: All India Congress Committee, 1938).
754
Ibid.
755
Ibid.
756
Ibid.
271
applications were completed by either literate drinkers or those with the aid of literate
men with at least a cursory knowledge of how to petition the bureaucracy for a drink
license. Yet during this month only 33 reports of alleged breaches of prohibition laws
were reported to the Prohibition Department.757 Of these, only 9 were reported to the
excise department for prosecution. Only four prosecutions were successful while five
failed. If the number of wandering drinkers and drink license applicants is any
indication, nationalist (and now official government) appeals to report illicit drinking
inspired few Indians to inform on their kith and kin.
Resistance to prohibition laws by drinkers and drink-makers was widespread, but
persistence in the drink habit was but one way to challenge the sweeping legal and moral
authority of Congress-raj. Some lower classes groups who chose to eschew drink did so
without regard to Congress volunteers and temperance organizations. In February of
1938 a mass movement emerged among the Bhils of Khandesh, people well-known for
their historical affinity for alcohol. Begun by Ghuliya Bhagavan, the Arti movement
galvanized the Bhils of Khandesh to abstain from alcohol. The central ritual of the Arti
movement was the ceremony of Arti, a devotional offering of light to the Bhil deity,
Janatha Janardhan. During this ceremony the wives of the men present circled the sacred
lamp while enjoining their husbands to not eat flesh, avoid falsehoods, take daily baths,
and forswear the use of alcohol.758 Arti ceremonies drew thousands of participants. On
one day alone an estimated 6-7 thousand people visited Morwad to “pay homage to the
757
758
Ibid.
Uknown, "Ghulia Bhagavan Paves Way for Bombay Govt. To Follow up His Good Work by Declaring
Khandesh a Dry Area," in Home Department (Special), Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive,
1938).
272
Samadhi of the late Guliya Maharaj.759 The movement grew so large that railway
authorities commissioned “special trains” to ferry the thousands of Bhils from East and
West Khandesh to take part in Arti.
But if Arti devotees adopted abstinence from alcohol, that practice did not imply a
favorable view of nationalism or the Congress more generally. Those who practiced arti
had little love lost for the Congress party. The District Magistrate of West Khandesh,
where the movement was centered, reported that “Some Congress representatives tried to
preach the principles of Congress at the time of Arti at Morwad but without success as
Ramdas, the brother of the late Gulya Maharaj, does not allow them to speak, saying that
they have nothing at all to do with the Congress principles or propaganda."760
Invested with the power of the state and the future of the nation, Congress
ministries set out to help “poor peasants and workers and Harijans in very humble
circumstances of life…to make them strong in body and mind, full of self-respect and
self-reliance and self-control.”761 This installation of “self-respect and self control”
among the masses required a great deal of disciplinary control from elites. In U.P.,
“warning boards” were set up at the roads leading into prohibition areas.762 Those who
illegally engaged in the drink trade, whether as sellers or their customers, were put on
notice that they would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that their actions
were being observed by both officers of the state and by their “respectable” neighbors.
759
G.K. Joshi, District Magistrate, West Khandesh, "Extract from the Weekly Confidential Report of the
District Magistrate, West Khandesh," in Home Dept, Special (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archive, 1939).
760
———, "Extract from the Weekly Confidential Report of the District Magistrate, West Khandesh," in
Home Department (Special) Bombay (Mumbai: Maharashtra State Archives, 1938).
761
Katju, Kailas Nath. "Message from Hon'ble Minister of Excise." Public Information, United Provinces,
Lucknow II, no. 2 (1939): 2.
762
Uknown. Public Information, United Provinces, Lucknow II, no. 5 (1939).
273
These regulations provoked desperate behavior on the part of those involved in
the liquor trade. In the early months of prohibition in Bihar, of an estimated 6,000 who
had been involved in the liquor trade, 2,500 left for non-prohibition districts, and 2,330
others found employment in low wage positions as vegetable wallas, cart-men and
railway workers.763 In Madras, some Salem district families that refused to give up the
liquor trade were “assisted to emigrate to Malaya,” where they could continue their
occupations.764 Salem’s prohibition committee eventually had to curtail the ambitious
program to literally expatriate liquor-trading Indians due to “depressed wages” there.765
Those involved in the production of alcohol were stigmatized by prohibition officers who
labeled them as “unclean” and “unfavorable elements.”766
Like lapses in the failed experiment of prohibition in the United States, loopholes
persisted. The decision to gradually introduce prohibition into British India piecemeal
allowed drinkers to simply walk to locations where the trade remained legal. More
problematic was princely rule in the native states. Although the princes were closely
allied with the British who helped to secure their sovereignty, few in an era of Congress
ascendancy were willing to oppose prohibition. The princely state of Baroda particularly
benefited from prohibition in Ahmedabad, enjoying the tax revenue incumbent with the
influx of drinkers and drink-makers from nearby prohibition areas. Ahmedabad’s
prohibition committee complained that liquor-men in Baroda “are canvassing and
763
Department of Public Information, United Provinces. "Prohibition Movement." Public Information,
United Provinces, Lucknow 1, no. 6 (1938): 4.
764
Union, Women's Christian Temperance. "The Progress of Prohibition." The India Temperance Record
and the White Ribbon XXXII, no. 7 (1938): 2.
765
"Report of the Collector of Salem on the Working of the Madras Prohibition Act, 1937 up to the End of
June, 1938 Is Published." Public Information, United Provinces, Lucknow I, no. 7 (1939): 6.
766
"Ahmedabad Prohibition Department."
274
inducing people to come to their shops where they provided them with all the necessary
facilities. They are also providing motor cars for conveying customers to their shops and
back. This organized move stands out as a grave danger."767
Individual permits allowing the continued consumption of alcohol in prohibition
areas on a limited basis were another loophole. Madras had a rather liberal policy,
granting drink permits to people of all confessional groups irrespective of their country of
origin. Bombay’s prohibition committees were much more restrictive, granting permits
only to those of “non-Asian” extraction, based on the assumption that liquor was “alien to
Indian culture.”768 By the early 1930’s it was long-settled fact that “Asia has always been
the cradle of all the great religions of the world and nearly all of the religions that have
nestled in its bosom strongly denounced the use of liquors.”769 If Indians had never
belonged an abstemious “race,” Bombay’s government had every intention of making
them so. Central Provinces and Berar administrators followed Bombay’s lead in 1939,
providing special dispensations only to “non-Asiatic” drinkers or members of the armed
forces.770 In its prohibition areas, Bihar granted permits only to “persons other than
Musalmans,” making the state a guarantor of religious ethics.771
767
Ibid.
768
Uknown. "How Prohibition Will Work in Bombay." Public Information, United Provinces, Lucknow II,
no. 3 (1939): 2.
769
Government of India, "Bills-Indian Prohibition Bill-Legislative Assembly-Wajihuddin (Khan Bahadur
Haji), M.L.A.-Proposal for the Introduction of-Refusal by H.E. The Governor General to Accord the
Necessary Previous Sanciton," ed. Excise and Opium Central Board of Revenue (Delhi1933).
770
Undersecretary West Godawari District Congress Committee, Lakshmana Acharyia. "Prohibition in the
Central Provinces and Berar." The India Temperance Record and the White Ribbon XXXIII, no. 6 (1939):
1.
771
Bihar, Government of. "Bihar Prohibition Act, 1938." edited by Legislative Department. Patna, Bihar:
Superintendent, Government Printing, 1938.
275
In the brief period from 1937-1939 during which Congress held provincial power
under a still sovereign empire, for the first time Congress nationalists had the opportunity
to enforce an imagined common heritage of abstention from alcohol on Indians, many of
whom had long traditions of drinking. Nationalists attempting to usher in prohibition at
once fought against colonial rule and a new standard for Indian behavior modeled upon
the supposed temperate lifestyle of the upper castes. On the cusp of freedom, India was
set to be an example for the world with little room for the now un-Indian habit of
drinking.
As dry areas slowly spread across the maps of Congress provinces it might have
appeared that India was on the cusp of complete prohibition, but a Bombay judge in the
case of Imperator verses Sheth Chinubhai Lalbhi suddenly cut this future short. The
judge discovered an arcane technicality that effectively halted or reversed prohibition in
the presidencies.772 This ruling coincided with the withdrawal of Congress participation
in the legislative assemblies. The implications of the Bombay ruling influenced all
Indian presidencies, forcing an end to prohibition. India would have to wait until
freedom in 1947 to attempt prohibition on a large scale again, another effort that won
only mixed results.
Conclusion
The temperance movement in the 1930’s was inextricably linked to nationalism
and Indian freedom. Drinking became a symbol, not only of personal degradation, but
772
The judge’s opinion, supported through subsequent appeals, was that under the 1935 Government of
India Act, the legislative assemblies of the provinces had every right to regulate alcohol use, but not to
outlaw it entirely because it would infringe on the right of the central (British) government to regulate
international trade and trade between Indian states. Bombay’s Prohibition Act “could not be used to
prohibit possession of liquor imported across a frontier or intended for export so as to prevent or impede
import or export. We are clear that in practice prohibition could not be enforced in these conditions.” See
"Excise Supplement to the Bombay Police Gazette," ed. Appellate Side Bombay High Court (Bombay:
Government of Bombay, 1940).
276
also of disloyalty to the concept of a free India. As thousands of volunteers poured
through the bazaars, narrow lanes and even into the homes of drinkers, it became
increasingly clear that a free India would make a claim on the bodies of Indians. But in a
free India, drinkers could not allow the degradation of their bodies to infect the body
politic. Increasing activism (or harassment depending on one’s perspective) contributed
to growing tensions between drinkers and nationalists, tensions that were never resolved
in the prohibition areas of the late 1930’s.
The decolonization of India was prefigured to some degree by the decolonization
of temperance organizations like the AITA and PLI. Temperance as introduced to India
in the late 19th century had changed dramatically. Prohibition, the stated goal of most
temperance reformers of the 20th century became indivisible from Indian freedom. As
such Indian men assumed the leadership of these organizations. These Indian men, many
of them of high status, found in temperance a way to elevate the condition of the poor in
a way that they hoped would mobilize them politically. To some extent, it is clear that
prohibition was successful. One of the few studies on the economic impact of prohibition
area (Salem, Madras) found that much more money was being spent of food and other
necessities for families rather than on liquor.773 This finding echoes that of other studies
on the effects of prohibition on families. But as we have seen, the discourse surrounding
alcohol far surpasses the borders of what is healthy or just. Use of or abstention from
alcohol became a powerful symbolic act in the 1930’s. Prohibition and its associated
propaganda and surveillance campaigns divided Indians as much as it unified them,
773
P.J. Thomas, "A Statistical Analysis of the Shift of Expenditure in a Prohibition Area," Shankhya: The
Indian Journal of Statistics 4, no. 4 (1939).
277
perhaps explaining the persistence of both the wide availability of drink in contemporary
India and the heated debates surrounding it.
278
CHAPTER VI
DRINK IN INDIA: THEN AND NOW
In September of 2012, Vasant Dhoble, the Assistant Police Commissioner for
Mumbai was fired. He had earned much praise and criticism for his attack on alcohol
there. Using an archaic remnant of Mumbai’s now-defunct prohibition act that remained
on the books, Dhoble demanded drinking permits from those imbibing—a requirement
that had been ignored for decades. Famous for his hockey stick, a totem much like Carrie
Nation’s hatchet, Dhoble began harassing drinkers and arresting middle class women on
suspicion of prostitution.774
This policing of moral behavior no doubt came as a surprise to those accustomed
to Mumbai’s famed night-life. Lower class Indians have long been the target of the
criminal policing of moral behavior but this was something new for Mumbai’s middle
class drinkers. Middle class women suffered particularly, being labeled as prostitutes,
however erroneously and briefly. In the upscale bars targeted by Dhoble, female patrons
could hardly be confused with prostitutes, and they could easily have been arrested on the
same charge as male drinkers for not having a permit. Why, then, were they arrested as
prostitutes?
During his crusade as Assistant Police Commissioner, Dhoble was policing
gendered and class-based national boundaries—boundaries that began to take their
current form in the late 19th century. Male and female middle class drinkers committed
two different kinds of infractions against the nation. Men of the middle classes were not
774
Dean Nelson, "Mumbai sleaze fighting policeman sacked after making enemies; A controversial police
chief who launched a moral crusade against Mumbai's party-goers has been ousted from his job amid
complaints that he had killed the Bollywood capital's celebrated nightlife.," The Telegraph, 17th
September, 2012 2012.
279
to drink in public because drink is an emblem of the “backward” classes. As
representatives of what is best in India, they could not engage in behavior that the legacy
of nationalists associated with the worst of India. Women also transgressed gender
boundaries. Idealized as symbols of Mother India, middle class Indian women who
drank alcohol represented the poisoning of “traditional” India. To police the drinking
habits of wealthy Indians was to police the moral health of India itself.
British missionaries of the late 19th century in India found the meanings
associated with the use of alcohol much different from those in Britain. Well-to-do
Muslims and high-caste Hindus eschewed drink, at least in public, and low status Indians
were associated with intemperance. The religious texts of India, often translated by the
missionaries themselves, gave textual support to the general view that Indians more
generally avoided alcohol. However, by relying on the authority of the texts themselves
rather than on observation, missionaries had a skewed perspective with regard to Indian
drinking customs.
Indian nationalists of the late 19th century, in some ways, adopted the orientalist,
more homogenized view of Indian religions espoused by the missionaries. That is to say,
since Indian religions “forbade” alcohol and India was a quintessentially spiritual place,
drinking Indians were evidence of British administrative failure. Moreover, the detailed
accounts of alcohol sales revenue fit nicely with extant economic criticisms of empire
such as Naoroji’s “drain theory” of empire.
Most importantly, since drink was a “moral” rather than “political” problem,
temperance provided a degree of protection for early nationalists. The temperance
movement was global in scale and events in India were followed closely by myriad
280
organizations working towards the same goal. Where other aspects of colonial rule might
have been too parochial to garner the attention of those outside of India, temperance was
different. Temperance brought Members of Parliament together with nationalists,
providing them information, resources, and some protection from Government of India
intervention. Temperance also won Indian nationalists a great deal of support for their
cause more generally. For instance, the hue and cry raised in response to the temporary
outlawing of liquor shop picketing brought condemnation from temperance workers in
Britain and the United States. Unlike with larger questions of sovereignty, temperance
provided a case study for the inadequacies of colonial rule, one that resonated with the
temperance activists of numerous countries.
By the 1910’s, as the nationalist movement grew in radicalism, so did the
temperance movement. Poona’s “temperance riot” reveals how this created fault lines
within government. Temperance-concerned Members of Parliament made it increasingly
difficult for colonial administrators to silence Indian critics. There were divisions among
colonial administrators as well, with some, like A.M.T. Jackson, drawing distinctions
between temperance and nationalist agitation, while the majority of administrators saw
the movements as one and the same. Temperance divided colonial rule, both in Britain
and in India. The ambiguity between the two movements provided a degree of protection
for Indian temperance workers and nationalists against the colonial state.
In the 1920’s, India’s poor had become the focus of the temperance movement.
Alcoholic Indians were symbols of the devastation that empire had wrought. Drinkers
found themselves policed by uniform-wearing sevaks of the upper castes. The uniforms
of anti-liquor sevaks, like the veneer of national homogeneity over diversity, wrapped
281
high-caste morality in the cloth of the nation. The nationalist flags hoisted in view of
liquor shops reminded would-be drinkers that their private habits were imbued with
national significance.
This significance was hard to escape, even for foreign temperance advocates.
William “Pussyfoot” Johnson, who toured India on behalf of the World League Against
Imperialism, found himself unable to avoid the subject and once found himself an
unwitting participant in a nationalist parade. Most foreign temperance workers in India
supported nationalism, explicitly or implicitly, but there were exceptions. Those
temperance workers who were against nationalism found it very difficult to continue their
work. Where nationalism had once been one aspect of the temperance movement, the
temperance movement had become one small aspect of nationalism. This coincided with
the gradual demise of those temperance organizations reticent to support Indian
independence, like the AITA.
Indian nationalists toured the world as temperance men. Indian representative
attended world temperance gatherings, bringing with them India’s uniquely nationalist
brand of temperance. The 1921 Toronto conference of the World League against
Imperialism brought Indian nationalism on to the international temperance stage,
requiring temperance workers who had little to do with India to, however obliquely,
deliberate on its fate. Indian temperance workers like the staunch nationalist Jnananjan
Niyogi toured American churches, introducing American audiences to the tragedy of
colonial rule with regard to drink. Temperance created a new rhetorical space
internationally where the question of Indian freedom could be seen through the lens of
morality.
282
Indian temperance in the 1930’s continued and escalated earlier trends.
Nationalist volunteers continued to harass drinkers and drink-sellers. To avoid the
violence associated with drink pickets in the 1920’s, volunteers were given detailed
orders describing exactly which behaviors were endorsed and proscribed. This coincided
with more direct Indian National Congress control over liquor-picketing activities. By
this time it was official policy that liquor picketers should be drawn from the “well-todo” classes. Indian women, who had received only intermittent support for their own
efforts to picket liquor shops were invited to participate in temperance aspects of the
Civil Disobedience movement.
In the late 1930’s, the INC stood for provincial elections and won control of some
aspects of administration between 1937 and 1939. During this period, the temperance
movement had the imprimatur of government. It was during this period that the policing
of the moral behavior of low-status Indians reached its zenith. As prohibition areas were
introduced, individuals were tracked, names collected, villages blacklisted, and, in some
cases, individuals were moved to “wet” areas. Drinkers found that, in addition to the
significant social pressure and intimidation they had experienced in the 1930’s, they
could now be prosecuted as criminals.
The Indian temperance movement began as a cooperative effort of Western
missionaries and nationalists in the late 19th century. By 1900, the AITA had over 200
affiliated branches in India. Despite the intentions of the organization’s founders, the
pages of its journal, Abkari, served as one of India’s first nationalist publications.
Instances of British administrative failures with regard to alcohol were shared across the
subcontinent and events in the mofussil became as relevant as those in Madras, Delhi,
283
Calcutta, and Bombay. This follows closely with Benedict Anderson’s notion that print
media was a key element in the development of the imagined community of the nation.775
In light of India’s famed linguistic and religious heterogeneity, India’s temperance
journals provided an important line of continuity, however contrived, around which to
construct the nation. The repercussions of constructing Indian identity upon that
foundation remain with us today.
775
Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities : reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism
(London: Verso, 1983).
284
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