Gandhi is the most misused political icon in India. Do anything un-Gandhian and you can get away with it just by proclaiming yourself to be a follower of the Mahatma. When we talk of Anna Hazare, it must be said that he is, at best, selective in using Gandhi's name.
If Anna has to raise a battle cry against corruption, he becomes a Gandhian; but when it becomes to enforcing prohibition, he goes against all tenets of the Mahatma. Anna has proclaimed with a sense of pride that he had turned his village Ralegaon Siddhi into a liquor free zone. But he stops short of telling his audience what methods he employed to enforce prohibition. The methods, flogging and beating, were violent, something that Gandhi would never had approved of.
Drinking is not a crime; but attracts a stigma in Indian Society. Liquor finds mention in the Vedas as 'the drink of Gods'. Jesus Christ drank wine with his disciples in his 'last supper'. Islam does not permit drinking alcohol. Yet, many followers of Islam permit drinking alcohol. Yet, many followers of Islam relish the drink.
True, Mahatma Gandhi abhorred drinking; yet, he never advocated coercion or violence against those who drank. In deference to his wishes, the Constitution of India included a separate article on the need to work for total prohibition in the Directive Principles of State Policy. But in the 61 years of since we adopted our Constitution, prohibition could not be enforced. Gujarat is the only exception where prohibition has been in force since Independence.
There is an irony. It was an Indian liquor baron who bid for the Mahatma's pair of glasses, a pocket watch and a pair of sandals at an auction in New York in 2009 for $1.8 million (approximately 9.36 crores at the current exchange rate) to bring the precious belongings of Gandhi back home. It is altogether a different matter that Gandhi would never have approved of this. May be, the Mahatma's opinion, as he wrote in Harijan in its edition of September 21, 1947, it is criminal to spend the income from the sale of intoxicants on the education of the nation's children or other public services.
No government at the Centre or in most states can afford to enforce prohibition, for the considerable revenue liquor fetches, much as sale of petroleum products brings huge revenue to the state exchequer. Alcohol consumption is estimated to cross 19000 million litres by 2015 from the current level of 6700 million litres, growing at an annual rate of 30%. The domestic market of alcoholic beverage will increase to Rs. 1.4 lakh crore by 2015 from the current level of around Rs. 50,700 crore.
To impose prohibition in the name of Gandhi would be to upset the country's macroeconomic balance, widening the states' combined fiscal deficit and sqeezing their expenditure. Widespread corruption by those in positions of power has catapulted Anna Hazare to the current political heights, however, flogging and beating people is no way to enforce prohibition, such coercion would be a criminal act.
Drinking may be a vice if stretched to an addiction but certainly is not a crime.
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