Noble Experiment

Last July 10,000 Hindus marched through the streets of Ahmedabad pulling a chariot on which stood six youths lustily cudgeling a grotesque image labeled DEMON LIQUOR. At the city's boundary 62-year-old Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of Mahatma M. K. Gandhi's trusted lieutenants and legislative coordinator for the Indian National Congress Party, stepped forward to set fire to Demon Liquor. Thus did the prohibition crusade, which Sardar Patel called the "first and right step toward Swaraj (Indian independence)," come to Ahmedabad, "Manchester of India."

Since that time the Congress has edged up on prohibition in many ways, hopes to make British India bone dry to Indians some day. Prompted by Saint Gandhi and guided by Coordinator Patel, Congress provincial governments have outlawed the distillation, sale and consumption of liquor in numerous small experimental areas. In other places bars and liquor shops have been closed on pay days, thus making it more likely that the Hindu workman will get home with his salary before spending it on coconut toddy, a sort of ancient moonshine which is his favorite cheap drink.

Although the native States are legally wet, in the predominantly Moslem Northwest Frontier Province there is all but total prohibition. The Mohammedan religion bars alcohol, and its followers who want to lighten their immediate burdens take narcotics. In none of these places, however, are Europeans prevented from making, selling or buying liquor for their own consumption. For all Mr. Patel cares, the British can drink themselves to death with their chotapegs (half portions of Scotch whisky).

Last week India's prohibition movement made its biggest advance. India's second largest city, Bombay, will be bone dry next August--as far as Indians are concerned. Purred Mahatma Gandhi over his latest success: "If India carries out prohibition, it may well hasten the return of prohibition in the United States."

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