comes, ironically, from Gandhi's Dandi March (also called Salt March) 75 years ago, which protested the salt laws of the British rule in India. Gandhi, who also said that you have the duty to disobey unjust laws, was the chief proponent of an alcohol-free India. One of our objectives is to make a case that the context under which Gandhi instituted prohibition is not valid today. Today, alcohol prohibition in Gujarat is an outdated, corruption and crime breeding, short sighted law which must be systematically removed. Keeping up with Bapu's spirit, the Maltmarch community plans to march to the Sachivalay and have a drink in defiance of the prohibition law (date undecided). 
Donors will get a summary of where & how their funds were used. Don't worry, we don't use donation money to buy booze.Gandhianism as a religion
Gandhi was an individual, so was Mohammad, Allah, Buddha, Mahaveer, Jesus.... some of the individuals who have been credited with starting a religion... Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. Yet, Gandhi's distinction comes from being one of the few to have earned the "ism" after his name in the 20th century. I hesitate to name the others but suffice it to say that the human race had enough collective wisdom to realize by then that "gods" were capable of making mistakes and did so, and were not "complete" and perfect, something for which we pay the price in every religion.
Gandhi was, indeed, a great human being - and the world is a better place for he lived in it. Yet, are Gandhians ever capable of being as great or even aspiring to be as great as him if they don't have the freedom to question him? Are all muslims capable of being as intelligent and wise as the prophet Mohammed himself, if they must live by the strict codes Mohammed preached? Are all Jains deserving of putting themselves on the same pedestal as Mahaveer without going through the self-discovery he did? If not, aren't we merely relegating ourselves to the level of blind followers if we don't have the freedom to reason with their choices? After all, how many muslims you know following buddhism and how many gujaratis you know following Christianity? I, for one, know none, but I do know everyone claims their religious to be the most noble. Almost all follow what we are born into, and you and I very well could have been born black, brown, christian, buddist or a nomad (or an animal for that matter). Wouldn't any of these intellectuals have been strongly against blind faith, which denies the precious human liberty to reason and freedom to choose? It is my opinion that religious heads were leaders who understood, in the absence of law and order, that the only way to unite humankind is to play on their conscience... aka sin. But Gandhi was on a threshold - he saw law and order, and I add freedom, within grasp but not given, so with the goodness of his heart he set about to unite all the different flavors, religions and colors of his motherland - India and set about to capture that freedom from the oppressor and share with the rest of his kin.
What he didn't realize that in "being Gandhiji" to the Gandhians, he set about things that went against "freedom" - such as his views on khadi and alcohol and sex. Everyone trusts that the much talked about "experiments" in sexual purity did not actually result in deviant sexual behaviour. However, don't you feel his experiments would be shunned by Gandhians or any religionist if it were to be done by you or I? If Gandhians were advocating all the things Gandhi preached as vehemently as they do alcohol prohibition, sex would only be for the purpose of procreation, we'd all be wearing khadi, there would be no meat eaters in India. So, my request to Gandhians: Gandhi had all the quirks and issues we all have but had the freedom to learn from them since he was human. And he had the conviction to "experiment with the truth" - truly a fundamental right of any human - and he realized in in the oppressed times of the British rule. For what is the "truth", is it something that can be learnt by a child by reading the koran or visiting the Gandhi ashram? So, please don't treat your fellow gujaratis as persons incapable of "discovering the truth", by snatching away their freedom to choose.
Cheers!
- Old Testament. Psalm 104 assures that "Wine makes glad the heart of man."
- Old Testament: "go eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart.
- Hindu gods drank somras, on many religious festivals drinking hard liquor or bhang (hashish)
- Koran forbids drinking as haraam
- Zoroastrianism does not forbid drink
Solution: make your own religion, you don't have to follow what you were born into! Isn't that what most religious and spiritual leaders did? They found their own idealogy.
Gandhian's €“ please stop turning Gandhi's philosophy into a religion. All the data to prove that prohibition has not worked in Gujarat or anywhere in the world is already there. What we need is an environment where we can drink if we want, just like Morarji could drink his own piss. What Gandhi's stand would have been on his darudiya friends (such as Jinnah and Sardar Patel, who were regular drinkers €“ he never asked them to stop drinking). If you can approve of someone drinking their own piss, how can you not approve of us having a chilled, refreshing "beer". But I empathize with pro-prohibitionists on their stand that "this shouldn't be just for the money" (although even that argument is self-defeating, since not only are we losing money, we are empowering criminals, violence, smuggling, hypocrisy - its become a way of life).
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