I do not wish to speak at length on prohibition because after very deliberate consideration and prolonged discussion most of the provincial governments and most of those who are interested in the progress of this country have accepted the necessity of protecting our people from going to their ruin by the use of intoxicating drugs and liquor. They believe that humanity will not progress on proper lines unless along with intellectual and material progress they give sufficient importance to moral progress and it is too late in the day now to argue that the use of intoxicating drugs and liquor do not affect the moral sense of a person who uses them. The very lamp which shows to you the distinction between right and wrong is extinguished and it is therefore, not a matter of individual liberty, which was one of the arguments which the honourable representative from Kolhapur used. There cannot be individual liberty to commit suicide. Society is interested in every individual’s prolonged life and therefore I was surprised to find such an amount of ignorance in what today is being done, thought and experienced as a result of the administration of prohibition in the provinces. Instead of getting a large excise revenue and spending it on education, the best education is to teach people to abstain from drink and drugs.
