A Sober Look at Violence

The case for flogging in Ralegan Siddhi is simple: it worked

This Monday Anna Hazare started blogging again, with a harmless post about development of villages in which he also talked about how Ralegan Siddhi changed. In a later interview, he remembered how drunkards would be flogged in his village if these drunks ignored three warnings and broke an oath sworn before the temple deity. His comments have since fuelled a sort of drunken outrage, but to all those who have used words like ‘medieval’ and ‘Taliban’ to describe the method, this is the answer: it worked.

On the yardstick of whether Ralegan Siddhi is a better place because of it, the answer is again yes. Are the drunks who were flogged better off? Yes. (An editor of a magazine I earlier worked for stayed in Ralegan Siddhi for a week in the 1980s and met one such person who was very grateful for the beating).

Prohibition is impossible to enforce in large democratic countries or states, but there are umpteen examples in small Indian villages where the threat of violence has worked to turn men sober. It is important to note that it is always men who get flogged, or are made to suffer anti-alcohol coercion, because women are usually firmly in favour of prohibition. Women’s self help groups have also shown in numerous instances that prohibition can be enforced in small communities. On a larger scale, Middle Eastern countries enforce prohibition very well using a combination of religious sanction and harsh penalties.

In Hazare’s case, it would be foolish to imagine it was the flogging that stopped alcohol consumption in Ralegan Siddhi. What did it was the end of social sanction. Every community sets boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not. Then, if it is able to, it enforces it. Alcohol went beyond those limits in Ralegan Siddhi. If that is hard for a liberal to swallow, all he has to do is take an analogy that repels him—hard drugs. Who makes a case for allowing free supply of brown sugar because it is impossible to stop or because it infringes the right of a person to do what he chooses?And if there were a guarantee that flogging could stop drug abuse forever, which society wouldn’t jump at it?

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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