Is liquor prohibition a major issue in 21st century?
Everyone would perhaps agree that there are more important issues affecting society such as corruption, lack of infrastructure, educational facilities and job opportunities. Surprisingly, the Christian bodies, including the Catholic Church, failed to stand up for these.
Former Nagaland chief minister Late Vamuzo (he used only one name) has said the Church in his Christian-majority state “is often like the air we breathe. It is everywhere but mostly nowhere.”
Such statements come into focus for Mizoram, another Christian-majority state, where a prominent Congress party leader recently apologized for opening alcohol outlets when his party ran the government between 2008 and 2018.
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| Blogger in Nagaland |
The big issue is -- Life in India's Christian-majority northeastern states is often full of individual idiosyncrasies — and the focus keeps shifting between the protagonists, particularly when politics seeks shelter under the shadow of church communities.
If you don’t drink rum that is your business, if you drink that is our business”.
- V S Naipaul’s ‘The Middle Passage – A Caribbean Journey’.
Life in a Christian society of tribals majority in northeast of India is often full of individual idiosyncrasies – and the relationships keep shifting between the protagonists. Such is the story of the bond between individual Christians and the church as a body.
"We opened shops and issued alcohol permits against the interests of churches and NGOs, which was the main reason for our defeat” in the state polls in 2018, Congress leader Lal Thanzara has said.
It shows the political clout the Christian community wields in Mizoram, where they form 87 percent of the state’s 1.1 million people. The majority of them are Presbyterians and Baptists.
Of course, the alcohol menace has hit young people in Mizoram and Nagaland, where Catholic organizations have time and again demanded the imposition of prohibition laws. With what logic remains a debate, nevertheless.
Prohibition has never yielded the expected results anywhere in India and often led to people, particularly young people, turning to the more dangerous embrace of drug abuse.
In Mizoram, the liquor business boomed with bootleggers making under-the-table deals with officials in the black economy and the state government suffering immense revenue loss.
The Congress government that ruled the state until 2018 allowed the opening of alcohol outlets in March 2015, disregarding Christian groups' opposition. In the polls in 2018, Congress was booted out of power in Mizoram.
The new regime of the Mizo National Front, incidentally an ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), reimposed the alcohol ban in 2019.
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So far, so good!
But the real issue is, can prohibition be a success in any state? Modi’s native state of Gujarat has had a sumptuary law in force since the state was created in 1960.
The Gujarat law prohibits the sale, storage and consumption of alcohol, but foreigners and visitors from other parts of India can apply for a permit to consume alcohol. Presenting the permit, they can buy alcohol from some 35 stores across Gujarat. It means that if you need alcohol in Gujarat, you will get it — with or without a permit.
Gujarat, where Modi was chief minister for 13 years until 2014, loses some US$750 million in excise income to implement the dry law.
In Nagaland, where liquor prohibition was initially introduced in 1989 under immense pressure from the influential Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC), the move was considered a failure.
The prohibition move was “a mistake. We only helped the bootleggers, and our cash-starved state lost revenue," commented former Nagaland minister Thomas Ngullie, a church-going Christian.
In 2016, liquor prohibition was enforced in the eastern state of Bihar; of course, Christians had no part in that move in the Hindu stronghold.
Netizens on social media were quick to comment that Bihar’s government was indirectly encouraging massive investment in the money-spinner bootlegging industry.
The issue is not that prohibition laws are bound to fail. The bigger issue is this: why should influential bodies like church organizations demand liquor prohibition while being silent on worse evils.
Everyone would perhaps agree that there are more important issues affecting society such as corruption, lack of infrastructure, educational facilities and job opportunities. Surprisingly, the Christian bodies, including the Catholic Church, failed to stand up for these.
Just as in other states, in these Christian-dominated states too, money allegedly plays a significant role in the elections to sway support, engineer defections and withdrawals from candidates, and lure voters. The Church has seldom raised its voice against such practices.
The Naga or Mizo politicians also reportedly sponsor community feasts and other events to garner votes and of course these have prices.
It also can be declared affirmatively that elections in these states are one of the most expensive affairs.
In Nagaland, BJP had managed to win as many as 12 seats out of 20 seats it contested due to "resourceful politics" and the appeal from Nagaland Baptist Church Council urging voters to stay away from the BJP did not have much impact.
Of course in Mizoram and another northeastern state of Meghalaya, the BJP could not do well.
But several Christian leaders and former pastors had joined the BJP in Mizoram.
Some Christian individuals including Catholic leaders say corruption is a serious issue that has been eating into the inherent virtues of simpleton tribals.
Thus, comes the real question – how much has church bodies taken up matters pertaining to social reforms like enforcement of ethics and value-based lives especially against materialistic feelings and corruption.
“Sadly, the cherished Christian value that if you have two coats, you should give up one to someone more needy is just a fallacy when it comes to northeast India,” says Jack Satyavrata Baruah, a social worker in Assam’s tea-garden localities.
In December 2018, during a local traditional Hornbill Festival, Father Kavas of Don Bosco School in Kohima had said, “The Catholic Church in Nagaland has started educating the people, especially students, about the ills of corruption and how it affects society”.
But again the question comes – how much of such efforts have yielded results. And if the efforts have not proved successful should Church leaders also not be made more accountable!
There is another interesting feature. In the 1990s when NBCC was quite influential in Nagaland politics, veteran Congress politician S C Jamir had said, “It is sad even the church is dividing the God....you all should stay away from power politics”.
Father John Kavas of Don Bosco School in Nagaland’s capital Kohima told me during a conversation in 2018 that the Catholic Church in Nagaland “has started educating the people, especially students, about the ills of corruption and how it affects society.”
That’s is a good beginning. But we need to wait for a generation to see its impact.
Despite the federal government allocating billions over the past seven decades after independence, most northeastern states still lack infrastructure for travel, education and industries. Corruption is the villain.
But church groups are stuck with alcohol and silent about the worst forms of evils in society. Silence need not always be golden.
Around that it was alleged that NBCC exerted much pressure on the regional NPC party government headed by Vamuzo, a devout Christian.
Church leaders are often alleged for being comfort seeking. For one reason or the other, corruption and business of money has thrived. In the northeast, often rebellion against the federal government (militancy or popularly called insurgency) has been ‘curbed’ by use of two Ws – wealth and wine.
It may be also mentioned that since 1947 and over the last seven decades, northeast states, especially Nagaland and Mizoram, have received billions in funds from New Delhi.
Of course, the same money spent has not been accounted for properly because of corruption.
But why did the church or influential organisations remain silent?
ends
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