Prohibition Is An Infringement Of Our Fundamental Right

As goes the famous saying, “forbidden fruit is the sweetest”; prohibition of anything does exactly that. In our journey of life, the stage where we are the masters of our own will is childhood. At this stage of our life, we function as our heart tells us. We all would have come across such instances where a child is refused or I would say prohibited to do a particular task but does the child obey? No, in fact he does the opposite. Anything that they are prohibited from, they make sure that they do that particular work. It increases curiosity when something is denied. As we grow up this curiosity eventually reduces but it still pertains somewhere deep inside us and prohibition triggers the curiosity again.

The word ‘prohibition’ owes its genesis to the word ‘prohibit’ which means ban. It is commonly used to abstain people from doing certain things. Some examples are liquor ban, beef ban, etc. It is advocated as a way of moral and ethics. According to us, consumption of alcohol makes people addicts and ruins our family. But we fail to understand that out of thousands of people consuming alcohol, there are only a certain percentage of people who have addiction for it. So, in order to ban alcohol for few people, we are doing unjust to everyone. According to doctors, small amount of alcohol is good for health. Furthermore, it is a necessity for people living in cold climatic conditions.

In India, Gujarat was the first state to ban liquor. However, has it eradicated the consumption of alcohol in Gujarat? No, on the contrary, people who are addicted to alcohol have found out more dangerous means to fulfill their desire. Alcohol ban leads to illicit trading of alcohol by small shopkeepers. There were other states that enforced liquor ban like Andhra Pradesh, which hindered on the path of development of the state as the revenue fell significantly, leading to further problems like bootlegging and trafficking of illicit liquor. Thus, prohibition is an infringement of our freedom of choice that does more harm than good to our society.

Likewise, beef ban violates our right to privacy. There is no denial that in Hindu culture cows are considered holy but that doesn’t give the right to exploit our right to privacy. The State cannot intrude into an individual’s house to check whether there is consumption of beef in that particular place. It exploits our personal space and privacy. Moreover, to think of it India is supposed to be secular country, is banning a food item because it does not fit in your religion, correct? Furthermore, due to the affordable price of beef, it is a staple diet for people who cannot afford other food items. How is this kind of prohibition just and fair to anybody?

To conclude, we can say that prohibition is not a solution to change the mindset. On the contrary, as mentioned in the first paragraph, it leads people towards the loopholes and increases their curiosity even more. If we truly want to eradicate something then we should educate the mass about what is right, what is wrong. This will help eliminate the problem once and for all and there would be no fear of reoccurrence.