The intoxicated poor: alcohol, morality and power among the boatmen of Banaras

Abstract

Anthropological research on alcohol use and misuse has largely focused on the symbolic meaning of alcohol in ritual settings and its role in the everyday lives of indigenous populations. Much has been written on the role of alcohol as a social lubricant, a vehicle for anxiety relief, a marker of ethnic identity and social status and, in some cases, a part of everyday resistance practices deployed by subordinated populations. Less attention has been given to how the excessive consumption of alcohol is perceived amongst the people themselves, and their own ways of trying to make sense of alcohol-related problems within a rapidly changing social and economic environment. This article considers these issues by looking at a particular group of low-caste/class boatmen in the city of Banaras, and how they articulate alcohol use and abuse. It suggests that perceptions, consumption and broader cultural classification of alcohol can only be appreciated by considering how specific community structures, conflicts and everyday practice are interlaced with culturally constituted notions of power and danger in Hindu society.

Keywords:

• alcohol
• marginalization
• occupation
• morality
• everyday life

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Alex Broom, Robin Jeffrey, Kate Sullivan and Philip Taylor for their valuable comments and suggestions. I am deeply grateful to the boatman community in Banaras for their hospitality and generosity and to Pinku for his ongoing assistance.

Notes

1. Carstairs, ‘Daru and Bhang’; Chatterjee, ‘An Empire of Drink’; Dorschner, Alcohol Consumption in a Village; Hardiman, Histories for the Subordinated; and Manor, Power, Poverty, and Poison.

2. Douglas, ‘A Distinctive Anthropological Approach’ and Heath, ‘Anthropology and Alcohol’.

3. Dietler, ‘Alcohol’ and Room, ‘Alcohol and Ethnography’.

4. The official name of the city is Varanasi, while the name Banaras is also popular. The river is often referred to by its Indian name ‘Ganga’ rather than the anglicized ‘Ganges’.

5. Wilson, ‘Drinking Cultures’, 10.

6. See Doron, Caste, Occupation and Politics, Chap. 1.

7. See Osei-Kofi, ‘Pathologizing the Poor’, 226. On education narratives and caste/class distinctions, see Jeffrey et al., Degrees without Freedom.

8. Article 47, Part IV of the Constitution is clear that ‘the State shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.’ As a directive principle, however, this is a desirable aim but not an enforceable point of law by itself. Policies related to alcohol are on the state list and devolved to state governments. States such as Andhra Pradesh and Haryana have had alcohol prohibition in the past. In modern India, Gujarat, as the birthplace of Gandhi, remains the only Indian state where prohibition is still in place.

9. Fahey and Manian, ‘Poverty and Purification’.

10. Carroll, ‘The Temperance Movement in India’ and Hardiman, Histories for the Subordinated.

11. Cited in Fahey and Manian, ‘Poverty and Purification’, 489.

12. In fact, one of the preconditions for aspiring Congress members was the commitment to wearing khadi (homespun weave) and abstinence from alcohol.

13. Prasad, ‘Alcohol Use on the Rise in India’.

14. Ibid.

15. http://www.indianalcoholpolicy.org/images/alcohol_atlas/F-Current%20Patterns%20and%20 Trends.pdf (accessed September 4, 2009).

16. Ibid., p. 22.

17. This is a striking statement, first since it is widely recognized that well-educated consumers are equally ignorant of the hazardous ingredients commonly used in various foodstuffs. And second, it is among educated people in western countries that alcohol consumption and abuse is the highest.

18. Not long after the incident one could find a Wikipedia entry offering a brief but valuable account along with media links to the unfolding of events; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Gujarat_hooch_tragedy (accessed March 3, 2010).

19. Manor, Power, Poverty, and Poison.

20. Ibid., 18.

21. Indeed, these are two sides of the same coin. The poor are viewed as in need of paternal help (the state and public health), for which they are blamed but in turn it is recognized that they are not at fault for they are weak and suffer systemic deprivation. Such a predicament is reflective of the dual process of disempowerment and stigma.

22. Mandelbaum, ‘Alcohol and Culture’, 29.

23. Prasad, ‘Alcohol Use on the Rise in India’, 17. See also Sharma and Mohan, ‘Changing Sociocultural Perspectives on Alcohol’.

24. Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism, 189.

25. See also Allchin, ‘India: The Ancient Home of Distillation’, on the archaeological evidence regarding the ancient practice of distillation in the subcontinent.

26. See Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, 141, and 279 for the exceptions associated with Tanatrisim.

27. Hardiman, Histories for the Subordinated, 187 and Fahey and Manian, ‘Poverty and Purification’, 490.

28. Allchin, ‘India: The Ancient Home of Distillation’; Chatterjee, ‘An Empire of Drink’; and Prakash, Food and Drinks in Ancient India.

29. Hardiman, Histories for the Subordinated. See also Baliey's classic study on the distiller castes in Orissa.

30. In the case of south Gujarat, this was particularly the case with Parsis, who were the primary traders in government liquor (Hardiman, Histories for the Subordinated, 220).

31. Hardiman, Histories for the Subordinated, 220.

32. See Doron, Caste, Occupation and Politics.

33. Tiwary, ‘Caste and the Colonial State’.

34. Crooke, The Tribes and Caste of the North Western India, vol. 2, 113.

35. These views were partly derived from the British theory of hereditary criminality (Tolen, ‘Colonizing and Transforming the Criminal Tribesman’) and the notion that the incivility, crime and disorder were directly connected to alcohol consumption among the labouring classes in Britain (Barr, Drink: A Social History).

36. Doron, Caste, Occupation and Politics and Tiwary, ‘Caste and the Colonial State’.

37. Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor and Arnold, ‘The Ecology and Cosmology of Disease in the Banaras Region’.

38. See also Chatterjee, ‘An Empire of Drink’. As Chaterrjee aptly summarizes: ‘these inscriptions around native nonwork linked laziness, instability and addiction to innate and essentialized characteristics of negative difference: an otherness that had to be brought into the ambit of hardy, disciplined labor’.

39. Cherian, ‘Spaces for Races’.

40. See Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras.

41. See also Lynch, ‘The Mastram’.

42. See Doron, Caste, Occupation and Politics.

43. Crick, Resplendent Sites, Discordant Voices and Hannerz, ‘The Informal Sector’.

44. Gunewardena, ‘Pathologizing Poverty’, and Farmer's, Pathologies of Power, which examine structural inequalities and the pathologies of poverty, have informed my analysis.

45. Parry, Death in Banaras.

46. Coccari, ‘Protection and Identity’.

47. Ibid., 134.

48. Kakar, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors, 76.

49. Marriot, ‘Constructing an Indian Ethnosociology’, 18.

50. Derné, ‘Beyond Institutional and Impulsive Conceptions of Self’ and Davis, ‘Ethnosociology’.

51. See Doron, Caste, Occupation and Politics.

52. Bourdieu, Distinction.

53. Parry, Death in Banaras.

54. This also reflected though other aspects of ‘distinction’ and patterns of consumption, as Jeffrey et al. ‘Degrees without Freedom’ observed with relation to education narratives amongst different classes and castes in western UP.

55. Frembgen, ‘Marginality, Sexuality and the Body’.

56. Bourdieu, Distinction.

57. Douglas, ‘A Distinctive Anthropological Approach’, 8.

58. See Doron, ‘The Needle and the Sword’ and Doron, ‘Ferrying the Gods’.

59. Since the advent of economic liberalization, there has also been an increase amongst urban middle class women drinking alcohol; see Bengal, ‘India: Alcohol and Public Health’.

60. Osella et al., ‘Introduction’, 16 rightly cautions against any straightforward view of the householder, but maintains that such an ideal type remains important as ‘part of the generalised masculine hegemony … against which actual male performances are measured [and] which serve to structure other aspects of life such as education, housing [and] kinship’.

61. Phenomenologically, there is of course the analogy between spirit possession cum trance and theloss of control experienced under the influence of alcohol; see MacAndrew and Edgerton's classic study of Drunken Comportment, and for a more recent discussion on the topic see Room, ‘Intoxication and Bad Behaviour’.

62. Dietler, ‘Alcohol’.