(Part 1)
I was shocked when I learned Mohandas Gandhi fought for alcohol prohibition. Gandhi had a long history of demonstrating tolerance for others and their ideas. In his prayer meetings, he would quote from both Hindu and Muslim texts. He didn't drink tea or coffee, but would serve them to guests in his home. He even offered non-vegetarians meat. How does this fit with his actions of not just passively supporting alcohol prohibition, but actively campaigning for it?
Easy. Gandhi was being a hypocrite. He might as well have said, “Be the change I want to see in the world, or go to jail.”
Before judging him too harshly, let's remember that we are all products of our time. Gandhi was no different. At the end of the 19th century, when he first arrived in South Africa as the first Indian lawyer in the country, he insisted on traveling first class. He didn't see the native Africans as his equal. Gandhi was not born perfect; but he evolved as a person the same way that we all can.
In the 1920s, prohibition was trendy. The biggest allies of World War One, the United States and Russia, had both embraced alcohol prohibition. (The experiments lasted 14 and 11 years, respectively.) This peer pressure among countries created a false dichotomy. What kind of country did Gandhi believe his homeland should be, wet or dry?
Gandhi wanted people to abstain from using alcohol; it benefited their personal and spiritual health as well as their communities. When he spoke, he encouraged people not to give into temptation. Alas; he himself was tempted by the luster of total prohibition.
“My life is my message,” Gandhi wrote, and voluntary temperance was his life. It's a much better message than prohibition. A century later, as America has realized that the war on drugs is a failure, it’s time to apply the same logic of voluntary temperance to drugs.
The American Union has proposed repealing federal drug prohibition and returning the issue to the states, like the 21st amendment did. Would you support this?