While I may be largely fashioned from Irish and Scottish DNA, my love of whisky has nothing to do with our shared origins: I developed it in India. In 1997 I experienced my first ‘Delhi dinner’, a novel experience for me then. Nobody arrived before 8.30pm – and these were the ‘early’ guests – what might have been one pre-dinner drink at home in Australia, was usually two, or more, hours of tipples and snacks prior to the meal being served. I enjoyed the conviviality of this but being unused to dining post 10.30 pm, I ate too generously of the titbits and by the time the meal arrived I had little appetite for it. I was impressed though that the arrival of dinner seemed an understood signal that the night was over. When everyone was done eating, they chit-chatted a little and then left. No need to yawn and drop hints to try and politely encourage lingering loquacious guests to leave. ‘ India’s changing drinking culture
Where wine whispers, but whisky roars
My consumption of small eats at Delhi dinners was matched by my drinks intake. I preferred wine but as there wasn’t much of that available in India at that time, I went with the flow, and what was flowing was whisky: and with that my penchant for it came about. When I tell Australian friends my partiality for whisky developed in India, and that the country has a wine industry and produces indigenous and artisan liquors, they often express surprise saying: ‘I thought Indians didn’t drink’. When I ask why they think this, they will say: ‘Because their religion does not allow it’ or ‘I did not think it was part of their culture’. Bemusing ideas considering India has a very long history with alcohol, albeit a complicated one. India’s changing drinking cultur
View this post on Instagram
Of spirits past
The people of the Indus Valley were fermenting and distilling alcoholic beverages 5000 years ago. The Vedic scripts, great epics and ancient Tamil literature all mention the production and consumption of liquor for everyday and ceremonial use, with its existence equally condoned and condemned across the eons. Buddhist and Jain texts recommend abstinence from any intoxicants. Despite Islamic prohibition of alcohol, when India was under Muslim rule it remained part of court life – Aurangzeb unsuccessfully tried to prohibit it. When the British arrived in India in the seventeenth century, potations made from grains, palm saps, flowers and sugar cane were made across the subcontinent at small scale. They diminished these as ‘country liquors’ and set up large scale production of European beverages, such as whisky, creating the commercial alcohol industry in India.
In the early 20th century, Indian nationalists campaigned, unsuccessfully, for the prohibition of alcohol because the British controlled its industrial production and retailing. Post-Independence the new Constitution included Article 47 with its the directive to the States to bring about the prohibition of alcohol and attitudes to drinking varied. It was considered a pretension of the upper-class and the coarse habit of labourers and tribals; the middle classes abjured it, at least in theory; and it was especially taboo for women.
Pouring into the mainstream
In my post-liberalisation experience, bars, except in upmarket hotels, were seedy places with blacked out windows; liquor vends were caged and emanated a sordid vibe. I sometimes attended social functions with female friends who sipped soft drink rather than be seen consuming alcohol in public, even though they drank it at home. That alcohol can be problematic is indisputable, still socially accepted use of alcohol in India has evolved significantly over the past two decades. Metros now boast many cosmopolitan bars and fashionable cafes with wine lists; there are regional wineries to visit; ‘country liquors’ have been elevated, and contemporary Indian spirits are winning international awards. Social stigma around women and alcohol is dissipating, even kitty parties are being held in licenced public venues. Nonetheless complications persist.
Sobering challenges
While Article 47 directs moving to alcohol prohibition, each state is allowed to determine how liquor is treated within its boundaries. The result, India’s changing drinking culture – a bewildering complexity of varying taxes and regulations regarding how alcohol can be produced, sold and consumed, or not, around the country. Goa has become a centre of artisan distilleries and micro-breweries, including local feni, because the taxes on alcohol are lower and socio-cultural attitudes more relaxed. Yet, it is hard to buy commercial feni outside the state, partly due to small production, but regulations on transporting alcohol across state lines hamper its availability too. Indian wine often costs more than a bottle of whisky because of taxes. Gurgaon has many sophisticated liquor stores, whereas across the border in Delhi all the fancy private liquor retailers were abruptly shut down in 2022 and lacklustre government run caged stores reinstated – the one I shop at typically requires me to jostle through a scrum of men to get to the good Indian whisky at the back of the store.
Read more: Raising a glass to India’s wine industry
