7/23/2017 SMOKERS CORNER: PROHIBITION OF PLEASURES - Newspaper - DAWN.

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Both noted that although the consumption of alcoholic beverages was frequent
among court nobles and both Hindu and Muslim commoners, Indians did not
drink as much as the Europeans mainly due to the hot weather in India.

It was only in the late 1600s that sources mention the consumption of tea and
coffee in India. The earliest reference to tea in India was made by a German
traveller in 1638. He writes that Indians (both Muslim and Hindu) use tea as a
drug to cleanse the stomach Eraly writes that tea was not grown in the region
till the mid-19th century and whatever tea there was in India before this came
from China.

Coffee, too, was imported and was a luxury beverage in the Mughal court. But it
never caught on in the region as tea did. Sources also mention another mild
intoxicant, the paan (betel leaf). According to the 17th Century British traveller
Thomas Roe, Indians of all faiths and classes loved to chew the betel leaf which
makes one feel giddy and spittle red.

Tobacco was unknown in India till the late 16th century. It was introduced by the
Portuguese during Akbars reign. Akbar tried it in a hookah (which, too, was an
innovation). Some of his advisers asked him to ban it but Akbar enjoyed it and
allowed its sale. Tobacco soon caught on, becoming widespread, especially when
cigarettes were introduced in the region in the early 1900s.

The last major Mughal king Aurangzeb (1658-1707 CE) banned liquor but illegal
distilleries continued to churn out spirits. The British colonialists banned opium,
but regulated and taxed alcoholic beverages, hashish, tea and tobacco throughout
the early 20th century. Some of these revenue-generating methods were adopted
by India and Pakistan.

However, in 1977 Pakistan banned the sale of liquor to Muslims. In their 2008
research on alcohol consumption in Pakistan, Waseem Haider and M. Aslam
Chaudhry (Biomedica Vol:24, July 2008) discovered that despite the 1977
prohibition on alcohol and the further strengthening of this prohibition in 1979,
alcohol consumption remained prevalent (mainly due to bootlegging and illegal
distilleries).

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