The first-ever liquor shop in Jammu and Kashmir’s Qazigund town opened in May 2023. Days later, its entire market shut down in protest.
The protests did not yield much. But since then, the worst fears of the Qazigund residents have come true.
“It’s become a nuisance,” said Muhammad Shafi Wani, president of Qazigund Traders’ Association, a representative body of more than 1,500 shops and other business establishments. “Young girls and women, who have to go to school or for work, don’t feel safe walking past the shop.”
The liquor store usually attracts outsiders who often create ruckus on the road or get involved in petty fights, Wani said. “We find empty alcohol bottles in almost all our open spaces, whether playgrounds or graveyards. We have asked authorities to at least shift the shop to some other place.”
Abdul Majeed Bhat, the National Conference legislator from Anantnag West assembly segment in which Qazigund town falls, said he gets daily calls against the liquor shop. “People curse me. They say if I am unable to get it shut then what is the value of being an MLA,” Bhat told Scroll.
In Uri town, residents have held similar protests against the opening of a liquor shop.
Alcohol consumption has always evoked religious and cultural disapproval in Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region.
The anxiety over liquor consumption in Kashmir Valley has only sharpened post 2019 and the scrapping of Article 370. In these five years, the Lieutenant General administration opened at least 10 liquor stores in different spots of the Valley, leading to scattered protests from residents.
With an elected government in place since November, this resentment is now finding political expression, with leaders cutting across party lines pushing for a ban on alcohol consumption in the union territory.
Observers pointed out that this was a sign of the political leadership trying to find a new vocabulary of politics.
“Post 2019, it's clear to the political class in Kashmir that invoking issues like azaadi or targeting New Delhi, will have costs. Therefore, most of them have gone silent on those issues,” a political observer in Srinagar said. “But supporting a ban on alcohol is not like supporting separatists or questioning India's control of Jammu and Kashmir.”
While there is popular support for the demand, it is not an issue that is “unpalatable for Delhi”, he pointed out.
An evolving consensus
In April, three legislators from various parties in Jammu and Kashmir are scheduled to introduce private member’s bills seeking an alcohol ban.
The idea was first proposed in February by Peoples' Democratic Party legislator Mir Mohammad Fayaz. He was quickly backed up by National Conference legislator Ahsan Pardesi and Sheikh Khursheed Ahmad of Awami Ittehad Party. “Jammu and Kashmir is a Muslim-majority region and alcohol hurts the sensibilities of locals,” Pardesi asked. “When liquor is banned in Bihar why not Jammu and Kashmir?”
The Srinagar MP, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, has also voiced his opposition to the mushrooming of liquor stores.
While the push for the alcohol ban is coming from the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Jammu has also supported the move. This is significant as more than 95 % liquor stores in the union territory are in the Jammu division.
Against local culture
In Kashmir Valley, alcohol has been a volatile issue for decades.
In the late 1980s, militants tried to enforce their writ by banning the sale and consumption of alcohol in the Valley, calling it an “assault on local culture”. Some outlets were also attacked by militants. With militancy losing its steam over the years, a few liquor outlets opened in tourist hotspots, guarded by the security forces.
But since the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir was stripped off its special status and statehood in 2019, the government has seemed eager to open more and more liquor shops in the valley.
Less than a year after August 5, 2019, the Jammu and Kashmir administration announced plans to open at least 183 liquor vends in the union territory – 116 in Jammu and 67 in the Valley. So far, 10 new outlets have been opened in Kashmir.
This did not go down with Kashmiri residents. But the opposition was largely muted owing to the memories of the government’s crackdown on Kashmir’s political leadership in 2019. “Most of the new liquor shops came up when the region was under direct rule of New Delhi,” the political observer from Srinagar said. “This [shows] how sensitive the administration was to local sentiments.”
Those sentiments now find greater voice, with multiple lawmakers taking up the baton against alcohol consumption.
The demand also comes in the backdrop of an uptick in incidents of drunk tourists creating public nuisance in the Valley. Multiple videos of such incidents have generated a lot of anger on social media.
In June, Srinagar police registered a case against a group of tourists and arrested two individuals after a video of them consuming alcohol while on a shikara ride in Dal Lake, went viral on social media.
That spurred the Muttahida Majlise-e-Ulama, an amalgam of religious sects and educational institutions in Jammu and Kashmir, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, to issue a strong statement.
“The people of Kashmir are hospitable and respect tourists visiting the Valley as guests,” the group said in a statement in June last year. “However, such un-Islamic and unethical practices will not be tolerated in the Muslim-majority valley, which is the land of saints and Sufis.”
Earlier this year, on February 21, traders in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk area put up a small board asking tourists to “respect local culture and traditions” and “avoid alcohol and use of drugs.”
However, the police – which comes under the jurisdiction of Lieutenant Governor – soon swung into action and seized the board, without giving any reasons.
The act triggered sharp reactions from Jammu and Kashmir’s political leadership, including Kashmir's chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.
Will the LG play ball?
If the private member’s bills go through, the union territory government stands to forgo considerable revenue.
From 2017-18, the revenue earned by the government through excise duty on alcoholic beverages has risen by nearly 200 %. In 2017-18, the government collected a total excise revenue of approximately Rs 844 crore on country liquor and Indian-made foreign liquor in Jammu and Kashmir. By 2023-24, the same has risen up to nearly Rs 2,500 crore.
However, residents reject the logic of revenue in order to justify opening liquor outlets in the region. “Does it mean we have to kill the future of our children and create a social crisis for ourselves just because the government wants to earn money?” asked Abdul Majeed Bhat, the National Conference lawmaker from Anantnag-West assembly segment.
But the passage of the bills seeking ban on alcohol in Jammu and Kashmir does not mean it will become a law overnight.
It will be presented to the Lieutenant Governor, who can then withhold assent or reserve the Bill for the consideration of the President.
In case the Lieutenant Governor returns the bill to the assembly to reconsider it or make some amendments and if the Assembly passes the bill without those amendments, the Lieutenant Governor still retains the power to either assent to the bill or reserve the bill for the consideration of the President. There is, however, no time frame by which the president’s assent or dissent for a bill should come.
In such a scenario, the assembly and the Lieutenant Governor administration are headed for a conflict.
