Concerned Gujarat Vidyapeeth students invite MaltMarchers for a debate

Feb. 19, 2007: Today, the three of us - myself (Dinesh), Abhishek Shah and Kanan Dhru paid a visit to Gujarat Vidyapeeth on the invitation of a few post-grad students. Gujarat Vidyapeeth, under the leadership of its Vice Chancellor Sudarshan Iyenger, is organizing a massive rally on Feb 21st against any thing and everything to do with the likelihood of relaxation of the prohibition policy in Gujarat. Some concerned students wanted to hear the rationale behind our anti-prohibition motivation.

We were very well received by eager students who were very courteous and took us to a classroom where we all sat on the floor to start the discussions. Some of the students took the lead in establishing a protocol that everyone should speak one at a time, which really helped later on. I started by giving an introduction of MaltMarch and why we are doing what we are doing - and that we draw our inspiration from the same person they do - Gandhiji. I went on to emphasize that we believe that, had Gandhiji been among us today, he would not have favored the kind of liquor policy that exists today in Gujarat. The meeting lasted more than two hours, so I am just going to summarize the few salient point.

The Vidyapeeth students have been made to believe that:
- All cases of domestic violence against women, rape, molestation, crimes are commited under the influence of alcohol. We backed our stand with statistics that an overwhelming proportion of those crimes are commited without the influence of alcohol.
- There is no such thing as social or civilized drinking. We emphasized again and again that the problem is not towards drinking but the attitude towards it that pro-prohibionists have - if we were to have a drink among them, it is not going to turn us into vile, uncivilized criminals who would misbehave with the girls present in the room.
- All "haanikaarak" (harmful) substances should be banned as per the constitution of India. But no opinion was shared by them about Ghee/Mithai (harmful to the heart), cigarettes, Gutkha, etc.
- All temptation must be avoided. They did not have any opinion of the customs of covering women in head to toe in some cultures, as any sight of skin of a woman is considered a "temptation" and must, therefore, be covered and avoided.

Most of the students present there represent a minority at the Gujarat Vidyapeeth who wanted a rational dialog, and a couple of students there who were not part of such a minority openly (and joined halfway through the meeting) expressed that since I do not look like a Gujarati and believe in the freedom to drink, should leave Gujarat (to the embarrasment of the students who had invited us). Most were also surprised to hear the stand taken by Kanan Dhru as a Gujarati girl expressing that ones decision to drink should be ones' own, since they believed that prohibition is a means to ensuring the safety of women in the state. Abhishek, who made up for my Gujarati, won the opinions of many of the students by expressing the hypocrisy that exists in the name of Gandhiji.

The economics of prohibition was another topic that was discussed, with some students saying Gujarat doesn't need the extra income (estimated Rs. 2,500 crores) but failed to express views on any solution towards the fact that all that money goes to the underworld and criminals who take advantage of the situation. MaltMarchers also shared Justice Radhakrishna's report on the economics of liquor consumption in the Ahmedabad slums.

All in all, it was a good interaction between pro-prohibitionists and MaltMarchers and some students did tell us, in private, after the interaction that they do agree drinking should be an individual choice if the person's drinking is not a threat to the society.

The bottomline for MaltMarchers, though, was the disturbing fact that the instigators of the pro-prohibitionist movement among these students are brewing a very lop-sided view against drinking and are exploiting the name of Gandhiji to do so. I am still trying to come to grips with the statement of one of the students who said that they would be willing to fast until death to fight any relaxation of liquor policy in Gujarat. I thought I was in Gujarat, not Talibani Afghanistan with such a Jihadi mindset!