Special issue with the Sunday Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

ADDICTIONS: February 25,2001

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The innocent victims

Ambika Menon

The writer is an activist for human well-being.

Action to counter addiction has concentrated on cure rather than prevention. While true of most ills, it does not justify the practice. With regard to alcohol addiction, this lack of perspective is particularly reprehensible because it not only blights the life of the addict; but to a greater degree, the lives of his wife and children. They are the innocent victims whose plight society turns away from. As a participant observer (I work with women and children), my experience is that when society does perceive their distress, it exacerbates their sense of alienation and shame, often unwittingly.

Aditya Dhawan

Some would have us believe that genetic programming is at fault. The overwhelming predominance of males among alcohol addicts would then compel the assumption that the malaise lies in a male gene. The great biological divide is in one chromosome; women have two X genes while men have an X and a Y. Y is the key to male babies, which men hold; and yet countless women and girls over millennia have been victimised. Is Y the genetic culprit, yet again, for women's and children's suffering?

If a genetic malady, how do we resolve the contradiction in cultures that span the spectrum from ritualistic and celebratory communal drinking to those that abhor even the presence of alcohol in their villages, leave alone their homes? What explains addiction being minimal in traditional tribal societies and its proliferation in mainstream culture, tribal and non-tribal alike? Where have the genes fled from orthodox villages?

Tribal women brewed liquor either for consumption or barter. Access and availability were limited by the season and women's and children's time for gathering, to what was surplus of food needs. Consequently, drinking stayed within bounds. Individuals or even the entire community got drunk on occasion but it seldom denigrated to the social evil it is today in urban societies and among individuals whose cultures had not, hitherto, countenanced drinking.

Outside the spectrum, Dalits, dependent on other sections of society for livelihoods, live on the fringes of rural and urban settlements, prey to liquor traders. Their drunkenness perpetuates their poverty and renders their women defenceless and exploitable. In their jhuggies (slums or settlements) drunkenness is fairly common, generally tolerated. Poverty and dependency denies them upward mobility. Facile assumption of congenital addiction and immorality "justifies" social ostrasisation. Does society preempt or actively condone till the point of no return? If this is reminiscent of colonial practises, particularly on plantations, it is no accident.

The pattern of action and reaction that emerge from attention to the drinking habits of various communities and their correlation to the status and condition of women in them are educative. From agrahaaram (brahmin settlement) to which an imbiber would not dare return till he has dried out, to jhuggi with its evening ritual, to tribal village with ritualistic universal drinking, the strictures against habitual drunkenness are based on very different parameters.

In the first, the crux is protection of the twice-born pretensions of men, the family shunned and derided by the community. Tribal addiction to alcohol has its genesis in deculturisation and advent of liquour traders. When the potential of alcohol for human degradation became a tool for economic, social and sexual subjugation, for exploitation, the communal drinking of tribal societies degenerated into alcoholism, a cross for women.

The Dalit's powerless protest of emasculation is "justification" for oppression and gendered discrimination, by "caste" beings. Some women drink, normally the older ones. No communal sanctions are applied except in cases of habitual violence or aggression. The wife and children merit little consideration. Understandably the common experience of severe oppression and inhuman deprivation render drunkenness a lesser evil, serving a critical need: escape from reality.

Only in the inaccessible and vanishing tribal hamlets are wife and children considered, a reason, perhaps for the near-absence of child abuse. For the rest, including all caste-based communities, the sanctions serve men and gender oppression. Do these variations in access and acceptability on habitual indulgence point to a genetic factor? And, if it does, does it not raise a critical question: what has society done about its proliferation?

Sanctions vary across societies and geography, but sanctions to protect whom? Women and children from all strata of society are prey to alcohol-addicted husbands and fathers. Till quite recently typed the addiction of the poor, the outcaste, it was comforting to pretend that "we" were superior; though everyone knew that alcohol, like sex, recognises no social barriers.

A significant number of men addicted to alcohol are intelligent, educated, widely read and articulate, with a happy facility with words. Despite illiteracy, they have the other attributes. Peer group popularity for bonhomie and wit flatters the ego and feeds self-esteem. Ironically, had they exercised their talent, they could have enjoyed an equal degree of appreciation, universally.

Accustomed to indiscriminate praise from overindulgent natal families, effortlessly, as infant, child and adolescent, are they craving that condition in adult life, when respect and regard have to be earned? Is it this futile pursuit, this Peter Pan syndrome, which drives them towards the vortex of addiction? Is it one of the pitfalls of patriarchy, for men, an aberrant manifestation of the cultural selection that has consistently favoured males?

Addiction to alcohol does point towards cultural selection and social programming. Over indulgence of the male child results in pandering to weaker personality traits at the cost of reinforcing the strengths to counter them. Mothers are blamed for smothering but the entire family is culpable. Sons of demanding martinet fathers often revolt and actively upend social norms. Coincidentally "gene" also means embarrassment. The "embarrassment" is that patriarchy may find itself responsible for promoting the personality that underlies addiction, for condoning. The whole question of our culture, its treatment of predilection to alcohol, smacks of sexual politics of the double standard.

Community drinking is open and encompassing. Exclusive male drinking involves slinking off from home or village, to engage in a prohibited activity, as a band of men; or arrogating to themselves the right to drink exclusively, in an all-male ambience - in homes, bars, "boys together" outings, kothas, even clubs. In kothas, men chose to see drinking as incidental to their patronage of dance, music and poetry. Westernisation was the crutch that urban middle and upper class men used to convert a nefarious or "patronage" activity into a socially acceptable one. Western culture did not entirely condone habitual drunkenness and, over time, had built some support systems for battered families. This did not find replication in Indian society or home.

Sex disaggregated drinking in bands is especially dangerous to women, in or outside the family. Male aggressiveness is reinforced, a false sense of male superiority stoked, and the propensity to subjugate unleashed. Further, there is no inhibiting factor save money, access to alcohol having moved into the cash economy. A manifestation of sexism, these bands spawn rape: individual, gang or domestic. The male band, often impels a man, if alcohol has not made him incapable, to proclaim his phallic mastery. The activities associated with over-indulgence in alcohol owe much to the culturally constructed macho images of man: conspicuous consumption, exhibition of physical prowess, holding women in thrall.

Migration to urban areas, to slums, apartments, palatial town houses, is accelerating. Community culture no longer prevails. Sanctions have lost their relevance. Further, urban migration and job mobility have made the joint family obsolete. The fear of parental (read father's) disapproval is no longer a constraining factor. Religion and ethics, loutishly espoused by fundamentalists, are lost to a critical mass. What is there to persuade an individual to keep to the straight and narrow? Expectedly, drinking has become a social problem of the urbanites, rich or poor.

Generally it is men who drink to excess, in the company of other men. Till recently, men would not have countenanced the presence of "their" women in places where alcohol was served. That they actively sought the company of other woman at some of these gatherings was a different issue, an issue, which to them, was no concern of "their" women. Where they kept their wives pandered to the male construction of the female gender; what they engaged in with the "other" women conformed to the social construction of aggressive manhood. In either instance, women were kept in their "places". They may or may not have censured men who drank to excess, depending on predilection to alcohol or aberrant views on upward social mobility - or parsimony. The painful and inhuman behaviour with the wife and other women they either did not see or chose not to.

For millennia men have seen women not as she is but as they would have her be. They do not see in her the same human need for love, for approval, for support. Therein lies the seed of antagonism between men and women. Patrilocality or job-related locations deprive women of kin and friendship networks, which served them till marriage.

Isolated from those who might have intervened, the wife kept the verbal and physical abuse to herself. Where the wife enjoys support, husbands are circumspect. Even habitual wife abusers, know well enough how to desist. It is remarkable how unrecognisably different behaviour and language can be in front of relatives and strangers. All of the charm and intelligence - and the strong instinct for self-preservation - are applied to this charade. It is well neigh impossible for the wife to convince her family that she is under unbearable duress.

Thrust into a no man's land - where a woman is truly alone - she finds herself in a position wherein her husband's family expects her to accomplish what they have failed to do, to wean her man away from drink, to function as a biped detoxifying centre. Her own family may still be accessible to her; though given the Indian context, it is unlikely. The culture, traditions and socialising, may well lead to her having no recourse to them, her friends or her community. Even if she does, she is terrified of the backlash particularly on her children. Apprehension for her children's future, even in her natal home, gives her pause. Alone and victimised, her sense of hopelessness and isolation is different for those more fortunate than her to fathom.

G. B. Mukherji/Wilderfile

Caught between families, often "burdened" with children, there is nowhere for her to go. In the majority of cases, she is ill-equipped to earn a living. Women would not be supportive, even if sympathetic because alcohol is associated, not always deservedly, with licentiousness. She burdened with shame and hopelessness, would not initiate a relationship.

She is made to understand that it is her sexual inadequacies or her lack of physical or financial endowments that have driven her husband to drink. Faulted by the family for her husband's addiction, never mind the fact that it pre-dated her advent, she has no reason to believe that she will find support in their environment. If at all she finds support, it is usually from an older woman. Powerless to correct the situation the latter can only provide a shoulder, listen and proffer advice.

Terrified of bringing a child into her tortured world, sex and its consequences, far from being a pleasure, are an added dread. The mother's love and concern for her children, her need of them, are used as currency of oppression. They are hostages for her "good behaviour", subservience, non-assertiveness. Of all the victims of alcohol, the children of a drunkard are worst hit, from conception through life. Assaulted in their formative years, redemption lies only in inner strength and unsought support. They learn to survive.

The erosion in social acceptability of the family curtails the social resource of the child. For such children, social learning is a complex and disjointed task and the signals they receive are often contradictory. These early experiences have an overshadowing effect on the natural process of growth. Are we in a position to categorically deny an impact?

How good are the chances of a child placed in the environment of an addict-headed family for learning this coping strategy? To begin with, is there a continuum in its life? It gets the pieces of a jigsaw, while the complete picture guides its peers. Will it be equipped to direct its own process of maturation efficiently and effectively or will the environment of its nature stunt the child and incapacitate it, to varying degrees, in moulding its destiny as an adult?

Conditioned by a childhood of keeping a low profile, of melding into the background, these children find it difficult to harness the incentive to excel, to form positive self-images and to develop career goals. Though boys in our society are trained from infancy to be self-assertive, this cannot apply to the son of an overly self-indulgent father whose role model is desecrated. The mother, from her own experience of her husband's drinking companions and some of his "friends", secludes her daughter, keeps a tighter rein on her than dictated by social decree. Often, in her teens, the daughter rebels. Whether she does or not, unlike the son, society sees the mark of her father's addiction on her forehead.

Least understood and most sinned against - by parents, relations, friends, teachers, peers and society - it is a tribute to their resilience, their innate sense of right and wrong, that so many have made something of their lives, brought joy into other lives. Harnessing for themselves the self-esteem and self-confidence so essential to being a good human being, they have left their genes to fend for themselves.

For most women, becoming a mother is the most meaningful event of her life. Despite her position in the family being affected by the sex of her child, she finds great fulfillment in her baby, happily unaware that her travails as a mother and the baby's as a human being have just begun. With fatherhood, the selfishness and lack of responsibility that is integral to an alcoholic personality come to centre stage. The intelligence is used to find the most effective trigger to wound, the breadth of information to belittle and degrade and the charm to exploit - initially, all against the wife. It serves as a means to keep her off balance and to denigrate her in the eyes of her children.

Amit Khullar

How dangerous to the children's wellbeing this erosion of a mother's position, her status, is of no concern to the man. In a family setup where the mother, whether she has the capacity or not, will have to be the only effective parent, the person who will have to fend off or neutralise the uncertainties and disturbances caused by the father and by society, this behaviour has a particularly vitiating and long term impact. The resilience, courage, and determination that young mothers have displayed, despite the derision, have been the salvation of their families.

All human beings have vulnerabilities and a child even more so. Trust is the foundation of this crucial but oft neglected facet of a child's learning. As there is little that is private in such homes, except the child's anxieties, the child is witness to its mother's degradation. The constant humiliation of the mother deprives the child of the fulcrum of its quest for emotional stability, brands as insecure the only anchor it has. The child is faced with the dilemma of a parent it instinctively trusts but whom the authority figure denigrates.

The anguish of these children calls for society to be proactive, to stem the tide of addiction and alienation in the wake of accelerating urbanisation and globalisation. As human beings we have no justification for insensitivity. Instead of being judgmental of stricken families we should lay the blame where it belongs, on society; which is every one of us. Society, which makes the cultural choices, has supported a culture of condonement.