Governing the Bottle: Alcohol, Race and Class in Nineteenth-Century India

ABSTRACT

Following a series of aggressive military campaigns across India, by the early nineteenth century, the East India Company had secured a more definitive political space for itself in India. However, in taking over the administration of the diwani, or administration and revenue collection duties in Bengal, the Company gained responsibility for the taxes that governed the production and sale of alcohol and drugs—the abkari system. The abkari duties represented an opportunity and challenge for the colonial state. What followed changed the social landscape of India as the Company developed a series of regulations to govern alcohol in both military and civil space. These laws quickly moved beyond earlier Mughal dictates on alcohol, revealing the state’s intent to mould society through taxation.

This article frames these colonial taxes on alcohol as a tool of governmentality. It argues that the state utilised the abkari department not simply as a means of generating revenue, but as a means of managing social relations and economic life in nineteenth-century India. It explores the path that the colonial state sought to forge between arguing for the ‘moral uplift’ of drinking populations and securing reliable revenue for Company (and later Crown) coffers. The laws themselves were often race- (and class-) specific, suggesting, for example, the pre-disposition of certain peoples to particular drinks. Moreover, the drinks themselves, whether toddy or ‘European’-style distilled spirits, were assigned a racial identity. While European observers viewed toddy as ‘natural’ and even beneficial when drunk by poor Indian labourers, in the throats of European soldiers it was labelled ‘dangerous’ or even lethal. Conversely, later Indian campaigners warned that ‘alien’ distilled spirits, such as whisky or rum, were completely foreign to India and that their introduction suggested a darker, less benevolent, side to India’s colonial rule. As such, these colonial controls on alcohol, and the debates that swirled around them, illuminate the ways in which the colonial state both understood and attempted to shape its subjects and servants.

KEYWORDS:

• Alcohol
• India
• consumption
• excise
• abkari
• military law
• race
• class

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Erica Wald http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4989-583X

Notes

1. Indicating, perhaps, the eighteenth-century understanding of the ‘foreign’ place of liquor within India was the entry for the 1795 almanac, which, in spelling out liquid measurements, noted that in Madras town, ‘milk, ghee and oil were sold by the Measure [padi]’, whereas ‘wine and spirits’ were sold by English measure. See Madras Board of Revenue, Memorandum on the Weights and Measures.

2. One kos is roughly equivalent to 2.25 miles (3.6 km). AD 1793, Regulation XXXIV, Regulations Passed by the Governor General in Council of Bengal, with an Index and Glossary, Vol I (London: JL Cox, 1828), British Library, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies (AAS) V/8/16.

3. The term ‘abkari’ is derived from the Persian for strong water, or spirituous liquors. In India, the word came to mean the taxes, or excise system, imposed on alcohol production and consumption.

4. There is an extensive historiographical debate that engages with the question of how the colonial state reinforced religious and caste identifications through its actions. See, for example Washbrook, ‘South India 1770–1840’; Dirks, Castes of Mind; Appadurai, ‘Number in the Colonial Imagination’.

5. For a discussion of governmentality, see Burchell, Gordon, and Miller, eds, The Foucault Effect.

6. Hardiman, ‘From Custom to Crime’, 167.

7. Cassels, Social Legislation,  y.

8. Pan, Alcohol in Colonial Africa, 16.

9. Gilbert, ‘Empire and Excise’, 117.

10. See, notably Colvard, A World Without Drink; Fischer-Tine and Tschurenev, eds, A History of Alcohol

11. Crush and Ambler, Liquor and Labor, 14. The European colonial powers grew increasingly anxious about Africans’ consumption of dangerous ‘foreign’ spirits. This anxiety led to the 1919 Treaty of Saint Germain-en-Laye, which banned the production of spirits and barred the introduction of imported spirits into large parts of Africa.

12. Related to these two streams was a third means of dealing with alcohol in the areas under ‘indirect’ rule: civil and military negotiations with the princely states on the flow of alcohol into and out of their territory. The complexity of the issue of alcohol in the princely states merits its own article and will not be attempted here.

13. The Nizamat referred to the civil administration of the area.

14. Regulation Number XXXIII by the Board of Revenue, 19 April 1790, Regulations in the Revenue and Judicial Departments Enacted by the Governor General in Council for the Government of the Territories under the Presidency of Bengal, 1780 to 1792, 1834, AAS V/8/15.

15. High-ranking East India Company civil servants were known as civilians. These sought-after, covenanted posts were awarded through nomination (by a Company director) until 1855 when the Company, under pressure, shifted to introduce competitive examinations for these appointments.

16. See, for example, Ludden, ‘Transformations of Colonial Knowledge’; Bayly, Empire and Information; David, ‘Law, State and Agrarian Society’; Rocher, ‘British Orientalism’.

17. The three presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras were the administrative divisions of the Company state. Bombay and Madras were administered by governors and Bengal by a governor-general (the viceroy after 1858) who not only administered Bengal, but who held precedence over the other two. While officially, the decisions of the governor-general in Calcutta took precedence over his peers in Bombay and Madras, in practice, divisions and inconsistencies remained throughout the nineteenth century. For a further discussion on the many fractures within the colonial state, see Wald, Vice in the Barracks.

18. Remarking on the variation of Indian land measures, W. H. Bayley, a member of the Board of Revenue in Madras exasperatedly noted, ‘it is well known that the areas are not even what they profess to be, the rod or rope being seldom or ever the number of cubits it is said to be’. See Madras Board of Revenue, Memorandum on the Weights and Measures, 4, emphasis in original.

19. Extract from the Proceedings of the Board of Revenue, 2 March 1812, Revenue Letters from Madras, vol 4, 1812–14, AAS L/E/3/234. The report fixed the commission appointed to officials at 1 per cent of collections and capped this amount at 1,500 pagodas a year. The star pagoda (coined at Madras) was worth 3½ rupees. See Madras Board of Revenue, Memorandum on the Weights and Measures, 25.

20. From pāunch, the Hindi and Marathi word for five, suggesting its five ingredients: arrack, sugar, lime juice, spice and water.

21. Extract from the Proceedings of the Board of Revenue, 2 March 1812, AAS L/E/3/234.

22. Abkari Mahal simply denotes the abkari office.

23. AD 1793, Regulation XXXIV, A Regulation for Re-enacting, with Moderations, the Rules passed on the 16th April 1790, and subsequent dates, for levying a tax upon intoxicating liquors and drugs. AAS V/8/16.

24. On the nature of the military fiscal state, see Peers, Between Mars and Mammon; Bayly, ‘The British Military-Fiscal State’; Wald, Vice in the Barracks.

25. Number XL, Regulation for Cantonments, Passed on 28 July 1790, Regulations in the Revenue and Judicial Departments Enacted by the Governor General in Council for the Government of the Territories under the Presidency of Bengal, 1780 to 1792, 1834, AAS V/8/15..

26. See references to earlier 1782 legislation in AD 1793, Regulation XXXIV, A Regulation for Re-enacting, with Moderations, the Rules passed on the 16th April 1790, and subsequent dates, for levying a tax upon intoxicating liquors and drugs, AAS V/8/16.

27. Hospital admissions for liver complaints were often attributed to the over-consumption of alcohol.

28. Hawes, Poor Relations.

29. For a fuller explanation of the differences between the Crown and Company troops, see Stanley, White Mutiny. For details on reading, and literacy, among Company troops, see Murphy, The British Soldier, 29–61.

30. Between 1868 and 1874, the Army enacted a series of reforms which had been proposed by the Secretary of State for War, Edward Cardwell. These reforms aimed to make the army more efficient and to attract better recruits. Amongst other things, the reforms abolished flogging and shortened the length of service.

31. Here too one can draw an interesting comparison with later policy in East Africa. As Justin Willis has argued, policies at the turn of the twentieth century were very much concerned with securing a stable labour supply. See Willis, Potent Brews, 120–22.

32. Ibid.

33. The point at which toddy became alcoholic was debated regularly, with many authors stressing the health benefits of fresh and lightly fermented toddy.

34. AD 1800, Regulation VI, A Regulation for Defining the Tax to be Levied on the Sale of Intoxicating Drugs and Toddy, Regulations Passed by the Governor-General in Council in Bengal, Vol. II ,1828, AAS V/8/17.

35. Letter to John Nugent, Acting Secretary to Government, Revenue Department, from W. R. Pratt, Acting Commissioner of Customs, Opium and Abkari, Bombay. 25 March 1881, Report on the Administration of the Abkari Department of the Bombay Presidency (Exclusive of Sind) for the Revenue Year 1879–80, 1881. AAS V/24/1098.

36. Wald, Vice in the Barracks, 128–36.

37. AD 1813, Regulation X, A Regulation for reducing to one Regulation, with Alterations and Ammendments, the Regulations at present in force respecting the Manufacture and Sale of spiritous liquors, intoxicating drugs, taury and putchwye Regulations Passed by the Governor-General in Council in Bengal, Vol. II, 1828. AAS V/8/17.

38. Letter to Lieutenant Colonel James Nicol, Adjutant General of the Army, from Major General George Ashe, Commanding 2nd Division, 28 May 1819, Bengal Military Collections, Proceedings Adopted with the View of Checking the Sale of Spiritous Liquors to the European Troops, 1819, AAS F/4/643/17790.

39. Ibid.

40. Regulation VII of 1832; A Regulation for  …  the better order and discipline of Military Bazars, the more effective administration of justice, and of the police, at the stations where such Bazars are established, and at certain other military stations, and in military forces in the field; the extension of the powers of Courts Martial; and the more effectual prevention of the undue use of spirituous and fermented liquors, and intoxicating drugs, by the European Troops under this Presidency, Board's Collections, 1833–34, AAS F/4/1425/56238.

41. This weight conversion varied, but was roughly equivalent to 2½ lbs.

42. Letter to Mr Chief Secretary Hill from W Morison, Commissary General, 4 October 1826; Enactment of Regulation 7 of 1832 for the Better Discipline of Military Bazars and Relative to the Establishments to be Entertained in lieu of Troops at the Several Military Stations for the Execution of Civil Process, Board of Commissioners Collections 1833–34, AAS F/4/1425/56238.

43. For a broader discussion of climatic determinism and race, see Harrison, Climates & Constitutions.

44. Ibid.

45. Longhurst, Diet of the European Soldier, 25.

46. Ibid., 34.

47. The British army retained the liquor ration through the First World War, after which it was phased out. The Royal Navy abolished rations for its ranks, the ‘Rum Tot’, only in 1970.

48. ‘The European Soldier in India’, Calcutta Review 59 (1858), 136.

49. Longhurst, The Diet of the European Soldier, 35.

50. Wald, ‘At Ease Soldier’.

51. Hardiman, ‘From Custom to Crime’, 176.

52. Sulabha Samachar, 19 Oct. 1875, Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal, 1875, AAS L/R/5/1.

53. Protesting the abkari department and the ostensible rise in the use of spirituous liquors among Indian populations, the editor of the Sulabha Samachar asked: ‘Of what use will be an increased revenue, and the consequent increase in the power of Government to benefit the country, if the people continue to be deformed, demoralized and demented by the use of intoxicating liquors and drugs?’ See Caine, India and the Excise Revenue, 3.

54. Report on the Financial Results of the Abkarry Administration of the Lower Provinces, 1852–1868, 1857. AAS V/24/1128.

55. The ‘gentle-folk’ - this term referred to the English-educated ‘respectable’ classes of Bengal.

56. Bharat Sangskarak, 22 Jan. 1875, Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal, 1875, AAS L/R/5/1. The mofussil were the regions outside the main cities of India.

57. Grambasi, 30 Dec. 1874, Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal, 1875, AAS L/R/5/1; Behar Bandhu, 2 Feb. 1875, Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal, 1875, AAS L/R/5/1.

58. Hindu Hitoshini, 18 Sept. 1875, Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal, 1875, AAS L/R/5/1.

59. Tribal peoples

60. This was not the first time that the Bhandaris petitioned the state to demand their rights, but it did represent the largest strike on their part. For earlier protests, including what one resident described as a Bhandari ‘mob’, see Letter from Lawrence Shah, Resident at Bancoot, to the Revenue Department, 17 August 1808, Bombay Revenue Proceedings, Nov. 1808, AAS P/366/64.

61. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 4 Feb. 1875, Indian Newspaper Reports, Bengal, 1875, AAS L/R/5/1.

62. Colvard, ‘A World Without Drink’.

63. Hardiman, ‘From Custom to Crime’, 173.

64. Caine, India and the Excise Revenue, 3.