Anti-arrack Movement in Andhra Pradesh: Women’s Struggle for Prohibition

In the early 1990s, a quiet revolution erupted in the villages of coastal Andhra Pradesh. Women who had rarely stepped outside their homes for anything beyond farm work and household duties began assembling in the hundreds, armed with broomsticks and chilli powder, to shut down liquor shops. What started in one obscure village snowballed into a state-wide uprising that toppled a government, redefined women’s political agency, and revived a long-dormant Gandhian ideal: that prohibition was not just a moral choice but a tool of social emancipation. The Anti-arrack Movement remains one of the most striking examples of grassroots women’s mobilisation in independent India.

What was arrack and why did it spark a revolt
The unlikely spark: literacy classes in Nellore
Rosamma and the village of Dubagunta
How the movement spread across the state
The role of organisations and the media
Methods of protest
The Gandhian connection
Victory and the political earthquake
Why the movement succeeded
An unfinished story

What was arrack and why did it spark a revolt

Arrack is a cheap, locally distilled country liquor consumed mostly by the poor. In rural Andhra Pradesh, it was sold through government-licensed shops, and the state earned substantial excise revenue from its sale. By the early 1990s, arrack had become a household catastrophe in many villages. Men spent the bulk of their daily wages on it, leaving little for food, education, or medicine.

The consequences fell hardest on women. Group discussions during literacy classes revealed that cheap liquor was at the root of unsettled domestic life across countless homes. Alcoholism fuelled domestic violence, drained family savings, and pushed already poor households deeper into debt. In Dubagunta village, a local council estimate suggested that around 90 percent of men were alcoholics during 1988-92, with the problem so severe that families in other villages hesitated to marry their daughters into the community.

This was not simply a question of personal vice. The collusion between liquor contractors, the police, and politicians meant that the trade was protected at the highest levels. Challenging arrack meant challenging an entire structure of power.

The unlikely spark: literacy classes in Nellore

The movement’s origins lie in an unexpected place: a government adult education programme. In January 1990, the National Literacy Mission launched mass-literacy campaigns in Nellore district. As newly literate women gathered to learn reading and arithmetic, the classroom became something more-a space to talk about their shared struggles for the first time.

A telling detail appeared in the textbooks themselves. A lesson dealing with alcohol and the fight against the liquor trade played a direct role in inspiring the agitation. Women began to see their individual suffering as part of a larger social problem with a common cause. The literacy classes effectively became consciousness-raising sessions, transforming private grievances into collective resolve.

Rosamma and the village of Dubagunta

The turning point came in the village of Dubagunta, in Nellore district. A neo-literate woman named Vardhineni Rosamma-who would become famous as Dubagunta Rosamma-emerged as an early leader. According to reports, the women launched their fight after two adult literacy programme workers were abused by drunken villagers in 1992. Armed with broomsticks, chilli powder, and sticks, the women of Dubagunta attacked the arrack shop and forced it to shut down.

What makes Rosamma’s role significant is what she represented. She was an ordinary village woman, not a trained activist, who became literate through the very programme that sparked the movement. Her emergence was living proof of how education could empower the most marginalised. Importantly, there was no single organised leadership at the start. The groundwork was done through local initiative, with women in each village protesting collectively. Political parties entered only at the very last stage.

How the movement spread across the state

What happened in Dubagunta did not stay in Dubagunta. The agitation, which began in early August 1992, spread rapidly to almost every district of Andhra Pradesh. Women in neighbouring villages, connected through networks of kinship and friendship, adopted the same tactics. The movement gathered momentum particularly in Nellore, Chittoor, and Kurnool, before reaching the state capital, Hyderabad.

The role of organisations and the media

Several voluntary organisations helped coordinate the scattered protests. One NGO in Chittoor, the science forum Jana Vignana Vedika, was active in spreading literacy and called a meeting in Tirupati on 27 September 1992 that drew a large gathering of women, youth, and voluntary organisations. In Nellore, an NGO called Jagruti filed public-interest litigation arguing that promoting arrack auctions violated the fundamental rights of the people, supported by a memorandum reportedly signed by over 100,000 people demanding cancellation of the auction.

The press played a transformative role. Eenadu, the largest-circulating Telugu daily, was the first newspaper to report the Dubagunta incident in its district tabloid. From October 1992, it ran a special page titled “Saara pai samaram”-the war against arrack-devoted entirely to the movement’s progress, deaths from illicit liquor, and the responses of political parties. This sustained coverage unified and educated the public, while putting pressure on politicians who could no longer ignore the issue.

Methods of protest

The women relied on disruptive but largely non-violent direct action. They organised dharnas (sit-ins) outside liquor outlets, physically blocked access to shops, and persuaded customers not to buy alcohol. In many cases, women would stand guard outside shops from dawn until closing time, making normal business impossible. They repeatedly thwarted arrack auctions by simply refusing to let them proceed.

These tactics carried real risk. The women faced police action and threats from liquor contractors, who demanded government protection for their trade. At one large procession, where the crowd was reportedly around 50,000 and mostly women, police clashed with agitators after activists broke through cordons. Despite intimidation, the women persisted-drawing strength from their numbers and from the moral force of their cause.

The Gandhian connection

Although the movement was spontaneous and locally driven, it echoed an idea central to Mahatma Gandhi’s vision. Prohibition held a special place in Gandhian thought. Gandhi viewed drink as “more a disease than a vice” and made the abolition of liquor an integral part of his constructive programme. He repeatedly argued that the women who suffered most from drunken husbands understood best the damage that alcohol did to once-peaceful homes.

Gandhi also gave a specific call to action that the Andhra women unknowingly fulfilled. He urged voluntary organisations, supported by women and students, to treat temperance as the greatest moral movement and to launch educational campaigns against liquor through peaceful picketing. The anti-arrack agitation, led by literate women using sit-ins and persuasion, was almost a textbook example of this approach.

This Gandhian commitment also shaped the Constitution. Largely because of Gandhi’s influence, prohibition was written into the Directive Principles under Article 47, which directs the State to endeavour to bring about prohibition of intoxicating drinks. The Andhra women were, in effect, demanding that the State honour a constitutional ideal it had long neglected for the sake of revenue.

Victory and the political earthquake

The pressure proved impossible to resist. The government banned arrack from 1 October 1993. But this was only a partial victory. With arrack gone, consumption of toddy and other liquor rose, and women realised that nothing short of total prohibition would solve the problem.

The issue then moved firmly into electoral politics. Every major party, from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to the BJP and the Communist parties, made prohibition a campaign promise. TDP president N. T. Rama Rao pledged total prohibition if voted to power. When his party won a sweeping mandate, NTR announced total prohibition within minutes of taking oath on 16 January 1995, describing it as an obligation fulfilled towards his “adapadachulu” (sisters-in-law). The movement had not only achieved its policy goal but had contributed to changing the party in power, with the Congress losing to the TDP.

Why the movement succeeded

Several factors explain this remarkable outcome. First, the grassroots organisation gave the movement deep roots that no single arrest or threat could destroy. Second, the media support, especially from Eenadu, amplified local incidents into a state-wide cause. Third, and most importantly, the collective strength of women from the lower social strata-many of them from scheduled castes and agricultural labour backgrounds-gave the movement a moral authority and mass base that politicians could not dismiss.

An unfinished story

The triumph, however, did not last. Total prohibition proved difficult to enforce. Faced with rampant smuggling, illicit brewing, and a heavy loss of state revenue, NTR’s successor and son-in-law N. Chandrababu Naidu lifted the alcohol ban on 1 April 1997, just 28 months after it began, though the ban on arrack itself continued. Since then, prohibition has remained a recurring electoral promise, raised again and again by successive leaders without lasting implementation.

This cycle highlights the central tension the movement exposed. Prohibition is a welfare goal under Article 47, meant to protect families and the poor. Yet liquor is also a major source of revenue for state governments. Caught between the bottle and the ballot, governments have repeatedly chosen revenue over reform once the political pressure faded.

Despite its incomplete legacy, the Anti-arrack Movement transformed how women’s collective action was viewed in India. It demonstrated that even the most marginalised women-poor, rural, newly literate-could organise, challenge entrenched power, and force the State to respond. It aligned women’s everyday concerns with the larger questions of state policy and social justice, offering a distinctly feminist way of looking at politics.

What do you think? Should a state prioritise the welfare goal of prohibition under Article 47 even when it means losing significant revenue, or does the failure of past bans suggest that education and rehabilitation work better than blanket prohibition? And what does the success of an unled, spontaneous women’s movement tell us about where real political power can come from?

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Table of Contents

What was arrack and why did it spark a revolt 🔗

The unlikely spark: literacy classes in Nellore 🔗

Rosamma and the village of Dubagunta 🔗

How the movement spread across the state 🔗

The role of organisations and the media 🔗

Methods of protest 🔗

The Gandhian connection 🔗

Victory and the political earthquake 🔗

Why the movement succeeded 🔗

An unfinished story 🔗