Toshi Longkumer New Delhi
The road to alcohol directly leads to Nagaland Baptist Churches Council’s (NBCC) office. From the ‘top of the hills down to the lowest plains’ alcohol reigns supreme over NBCC. This is not a challenge, this is a fact. The NBCC ‘Headquarter’ in Bayavu Hill, Kohima, is just about three hundred meters from Teen Patti area, famous for the ‘Headquarters’ where many young men and women find their solace and pleasure mates in the evenings. Instead of the ‘Believers Headquarter’ crushing the ‘Unbelievers Headquarters’ the later sits comfortably crushing the NBCC’s mind boggling ‘Dry State’ declaration to ashes. Every ‘able-leaders’ working for NBCC must have passed through this area year round on their way to their headquarter. Perhaps, they might have even made way for some intoxicated strollers gallivanting from one of their headquarters to another. Can they pause for a minute and think about the epigrammatic ‘dry state’ dictum?
And once in a while, the authorities issue baffling reminders as to how alcohol ban in Nagaland, as an edict, is a total faux pas.
Like the traffic police warning against drunk driving, or in the recent past, ban on the sale of IMFL during Hornbill Festival. Warning against drunk driving is not so much of a mystifying order as compared to the ban on the sale of IMFL. Now, the Indian made Indian liquor (IMIL) and foreign made foreign liquor (FMFL) are exempted from the ban. It means, there are certain kinds of alcohol which are censored and there are also certain kinds of alcohol like beer, rum, whisky, vodka, wine and even breezer that is outside the enfold of ‘dry state’. Already burdened and drowning while calculating the wedding expenses on some not-good-looking sons and daughters of our VVIPs, we do not want to break our head trying to identify which alcohol is banned and which is not, in a dry state full of Christians.
Additionally, one time, a VVIP visited our state during winter. The cold chilled to his bones and therefore, he asked for some rum. People started to scramble looking for the demand. Anyway, the next night he was invited to a dinner in one of our VVIP’s residences. He was shocked to see the kind of FMFL and IMIL flowing from the bartender’s table. Imagine! There was a bartender in a dry state! Either the tag ‘dry state’ is faulty to the T, or water is miraculously turning into wine. Can we discuss any positive result because of the dry state declaration? Bootleggers and Assam are getting richer, while the people in Nagaland are getting drunk and dying of spurious alcohol- these are the glaring outcome as we know. We have three important measures to be adopted; firstly, NBCC, other institutions and organizations adamant on alcohol ban seriously need to review and retrospect on the term ‘dry state’ and maybe reconsider; second, if IMIL and FMFL does not come under the purview of banned alcohol we need to redefine the term ‘alcohol’; last, just lift the ban because how long are we gonna mock and fool ourselves? Or else, the slogan of ‘Dry State’ will ever remain a toothless roaring lion. Due to time and space constraints we will not delve much on the super advantages of selling alcohol legally, however, it should not be long before we realize “Drinkers gonna drink, drink, drink, drink, drink. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate” so let us just “shake it off” and sincerely lift the ban on alcohol sale in Nagaland, where people love drinking and getting drunk. Cheers!
