I am allergic to checkgates as I have come across much harassment meted out to me while traveling from Dimapur to my home town in Ukhrul during my college days. Though we didn’t carry any arms or prohibited items by the law those days, the security forces ordered us to line up by roadsides and check all our belongings and search our bodies. If they don’t want the looks of a person, all they do was slapped, kicked and bashed up or detain him. Thus travelers never reach their destination they were checked more than 10 times along the Dimapur-Imphal road. Wasting 4-5 hours in the journey was normal. However, with the changing time, today the checker has been replaced by NGOs. Those days the security personnel were basically on the look-out for arms and ammunitions; today NGOs are for liquor and other abused substances. The former is to enforce law and order while the latter is policing one’s moral.
Too wet that whisky washed away our footprints - Ngathingkhui Jagoi
Knowing that there is prohibition in Mizoram, my friend purchased 2 bottles of whisky from Shillong that evening before we proceed for Aizawl a few years ago. “A bottle of Blenders would cost us more than Rs 1000; a bottle of cheap quality rum is available at Rs 500-600 and that too, we have only 25% chance of availing. Get a stuff of your choice from now,” my friend suggested. So I choose a bottle of Smirnoff. However, he again insisted that I should fill my Vodka in a mineral water bottle (to make checkers think that it is mineral water) and also advised me that we should claim 1 bottle each of the whisky if we were caught by Excise personnel and volunteers of Young Mizo Association at Vairangte Excise checkgate.
Sips of Vodka from the mineral water bottle took me to sleep slumber through our journey that night till I was woken up at dawn by some arguments inside our bus. As I wiped off my sleep, I found it was my friend arguing with the Excise personnel at the Vairangte Checkgate. There were few young Mizo girls with cane beer and Bacardi Breezer in their handbags and some men carrying one or two bottles of whisky or rum (obviously for gifting to dear and near ones when they reach home). The excise men took it all except my mineral water bottle. We followed them to the station and demanded that we should be allowed to speak to the OC who was sleeping, since the jawans could not converse in English.
The OC came out apparently a little agitated for waking him up. “What can I do for?” he asked. We explained him our position. But he expressed his inability to change the law and turned his back. “We are journalists invited by Mizoram government. We are taking it along with us for our own consumption since it is not available in Aizawl. You have no right to police our food habits,” my friend argued and made his stand that we would not leave without our bottles even as our bus honked beckoning us to move. Since he would not budge in, as our last resort we called up an officer in the IPR Department of Mizoram who sleepily answered the call. We highlighted to her the situation we are in and even let the police officer speak to the bureaucrat. We could not make out what transpired in their conversation. But the OC finally assured that our bottles would be delivered to us the following day. “It would be improper for me to return your stuff in the eyes of others whose things are also seized,” he finally said trying to be polite.
We gave our names and lodging address. True to his word, two persons in a Gypsy delivered a packet meticulously wrapped in a sack the following day. But on our part, we could not be true to our words. It didn’t turn out to be ‘our own consumption’. We took the bottles to the bureaucrat’s house who invited us for dinner and shared it with some Mizo friends. They also bought another two bottles @ Rs 1000 per bottle which normally cost Rs 400 in wine stalls in Shillong. They also say that all brands are available any time, everywhere if one is willing to part with triple price of the actual rates. To prove that another bottle was brought in at 10 pm. We had a good time that evening swaying as Guru Rewben Mashangva (who happened to be in Aizawl by coincidence) played his folk blues. I woke-up in the morning only to find my head still dizzy probably due to the impact of my diving into a pool of whisky in the dry land the previous night. My friend asked me how he came back to our room at Tourist Lodge. I couldn’t trace my footprints either. Too wet that whisky washed away our footprints.
When common sense eludes lawmakers
When I came to Dimapur in 2002, I was full of idealism and respect for the law. I hardly drink. By then, even as I drink for companies’ sake, a peg of rum could make me totter and stammer. Therefore, even if friends insisted me to have some, I always make it a point that we drink at home in privacy (not necessarily my home ofcourse) as prohibition is in force in Nagaland. During the first few years, I didn’t even know from where my friends bought the liquors. They only told me that ‘it is available in plenty at vendors and ‘wine outlets which had a permit’. And where are these ‘outlets’ with a ‘permit’? I made enquiries and found that, these outlets are those owned by powerful people who could pay huge sums to certain organizations and officials! In other words, those who connive with the relevant authorities (which I prefer to call)!
Things gradually changed for me. I started and working nightshifts and entering illegal bars owned by ‘aunties’ (as they are better called), for a ‘quick peg’ with friends before we sup our dinner brought from a hotel. I went to quite a few ‘aunties’ with my friends where all kinds of alcoholic concoctions are available. An Assamese friend of mine who used to be regular imbiber would fall sick regularly. There would be the occasional police raid on the ‘outlets with permits’ and the ‘aunties’, but everybody knew this was only for show and that the police were on the take. In fact, all those involved (relevant authorities) were on the take.
Only one particular section of society benefited most from Prohibition – the underworld. Crime became big-time in the state as the Prohibition reels. A powerful nexus has developed between the underworld and the relevant authorities. It is still there. Apart from crime and corruption, Prohibition brought with it something else that is almost as insidious: disrespect for the law.
The prohibition story in the US is loud and clear. There too, a strong moralistic streak in the American psyche led the government to impose Prohibition. But it was an unmitigated disaster. Crime and corruption flourished. Those were the days of gangsters like Al Capone. The patriarch of the famed Kennedy family made his riches through Prohibition. Fortunately, better sense eventually prevailed in the US and Prohibition was lifted. Not only following the Christian religion, we should have learnt from the US.
However, this piece means no disrespect to the Nagaland Churches Baptist Council (NBCC), national workers, women organisations, under whose influence the policy was implemented in Nagaland. They have their reasons, the primary one being concern for the poor, that on payday, many wage-earners tend to blow up their salaries on booze, leaving the family destitute. The answer to that, however, I would argue, is not an outright ban – which never works – but education and driving home the importance of temperance. Prohibitionists tend to lump drinking with drunkenness. Many non-drinkers feel that anybody who drinks is an alcoholic. There is no appreciation of anybody enjoying the occasional glass of wine or a peg of whisky in convivial company, in a restaurant or at a party at home. I hold nothing against teetotalers but at the same time they should hold nothing against one’s drinking, as long as one does not make a nuisance.
In my view, apart from the crime and corruption Prohibition brought with it in Nagaland, something else that was almost as insidious came as ell: disrespect for the law.
Many drinkers or for that matter ‘alcoholics’ (if you prefer to use that term) are normally law-abiding citizens and Christians, yet they are being confronted by a law that was both stupid and unenforceable. Drinkers simply break it by drinking illegally in illegal bars. Thereby, even if in a small way, they became law-breakers. When a person breaks one law, however senseless it may be, and he/she begins to lose respect for other laws as well. That was the tragedy of Prohibition.
Why not get rid of this stupid Prohibition? Only one reason I can fathom: while liquor flows like a river in every party or festival (including the Christmas, the most revered festival of Christians), the state does not want to lose the revenue it earns from them!