This book traces the origins and evolution of alcohol prohibition in India, drawing on extensive archival research and rich vernacular sources to explain its surprising resilience over time. Since its inception in the independence movement, prohibition has functioned as both an ideal and a tool of state power – a dual role that has worked to shape its shifting trajectories. Foregrounding intersections with caste and gender, the book illuminates how diverse social responses have made prohibition a deeply contested. Each phase of the enforcement of prohibition has served to reaffirm its founding logic, thereby further embedding it in the machinery of governance. While prohibition may be a thing of the past in the West, in India, history keeps it alive as a manifestation of postcolonial governmentality.