Abstract
This article traces the transformation of liquor and industrial alcohol into a commercial product in twentieth-century colonial India. Liquor (alcoholic beverages for human consumption) remained prominent in political discourse and in the public sphere in this period. Temperance activists, Gandhian nationalists and medical authorities critiqued government revenue extraction from consumable liquors and advocated either partial or total prohibition. On the other hand, industrial alcohol emerged as an unchallenged and untampered commodity while it became essential to Indian industrialization, a process that accelerated between the wars. This article moves beyond cultural explanations of transformation of commodities and instead focuses on the temporal and political lives of liquor and alcohol in colonial India.
Highlights
From Liquor to AlcoholThe production and distribution of alcohol acquired a prominent place in public discourse and political rhetoric in colonial India
This article traces the transformation of liquor and industrial alcohol into a commercial product in twentieth-century colonial India
This article moves beyond cultural explanations of transformation of commodities and instead focuses on the temporal and political lives of liquor and alcohol in colonial India
Summary
This article will argue that alcohol—which had emerged as a broad category, including multifarious commodities, as well as liquor—had resonated in terms of its consumption and its production, taxation and uses in the political economy of modern India. It will trace how liquor was transformed into an industrial product, alcohol, and situate its role in the political economy of colonial India
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