INDIA UNDER CONGRESS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I
am surprised to see in last week's issue of The Spectaior (October 22nd) a letter from Mr. H. Tempest Reilly, in which he deprecates the idea of Prohibition in India.
Apart from the fact that the religion of both Hindu and Mussalman forbids the use of intoxicants, my own eightee4 years of experience of Indian village life confirms me in the belief that toddy-drinking is harmful to the agricultural labourer. Mr. Reilly says : " Prohibition of toddy would entail . . . the cutting down of all the palm trees and consequently depriv- ing several hundreds of thousands of Indians of their means of livelihood." This is absurd, as the very juice; which is now used as toddy, if not allowed to ferment, can be made into sugar in the villages, and in fact is being so used in some parts of the country. In the case of one experiment for which I saw statistics, the making of sugar was found to be-more profitable than toddy, and the result would almost certainly be to employ more people rather than causing unemployment.—Yours truly, 9 Lodmoor Avenue, Weymouth, Dorset. F. MARY BAR.
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