By Aaliya Ali
Few months ago, a video from one of the courts of Bihar went viral, featuring an advocate being reprimanded by the judge for chewing gutka during the court proceedings. Have you ever wondered as to why Indians love gutka so much that even in such formal settings they can’t resist eating it? Gutka chewers leave behind red stains on roads, railways stations, buildings, hospitals and markets as a sign of their presence.
Why do people consume Gutka? Why is it harmful for health? Who are the major players in the Gutka business and how much does the government profit from it? And what is the history of Gutka in India, let’s understand.
To protect the public buildings and places from gutka chewers’ menace, people paste pictures of religious sites like Kaaba and Masjid an Nabwi and religious gods to prevent them from spitting there.
Even the pillars of the Howrah bridge have started to corrode due to the gutka chewers using them as spittoons. According to a study, out of World’s 100 gutka chewers, 67 are Indians. It means that 67% of all the tobacco users worldwide are Indians. In another study it was found that, in India 1 out of every 3 adults chew tobacco in the form of gutka, khaini or zarda.
Indians spit so much after chewing gutka, that in one year about 211 olympic sized pools can be filled with their spitting. An ideal olympic sized swimming pool contains upto 40,00,000 litres of water, according to this, in one year gutka chewers can spit upto 844,000,000 litres.
It is said that Indian Railways spends around 1200 crore Rs just to clean the stains created by the spitting of gutka chewers. Indians are so compelled by this habit of spitting that even in foreign countries, they don’t shy away from spitting on roads and corners of buildings. In the London borough of Brent, the government had to run a campaign to stop people from this behaviour.
According to the Indian Journal Of Cancer, more than 4200 chemicals were found to be present inside smokeless tobacco. Another report said that tobacco contains more than 30 deadly chemicals that alter the DNA of human cells resulting in cancer.
As per WHO, approximately 10 crore people die from cancer around the world and in the 21st century, this number will become 100 crore. In India, more than 13 lakh people die due to cancer, in other words, more than 3500 people die every day due to this dangerous disease.
Out of all cancer cases in India, 90% are found to be oral cancer, and the death toll due to oral cancer is around 2.5 lakh every year. Oral cancer is a dangerous disease, its first step is called Oral Submucous Fibrosis due to which the person is unable to open his mouth.
So, why is it that even after there’s a clear warning of cancer on the gutka packet and its dangerous after-effects, it is still sold easily all across India?
Actually, tobacco is deeply rooted in the culture of India. In Atharva veda chapter 11, verse 8, it is said that cannabis is one of the 5 plants that reduces stress and depression, and also promotes happiness, the same information is also mentioned in multiple ayurveda texts such as Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita, Sargandhara Samhita, which is why it’s use can be seen in hindu festivals.
Gujarat is famously known as the Gutka capital of India, as it is the highest Gutka-consuming state of India. Gujarat alone is the home of 18 gutka manufacturing companies. In the year 1605, the Portuguese started the cultivation of tobacco in the Kaira and Mehsana districts of Gujarat. During the British era, pan became highly famous among the Indian masses, specifically Banarasi Pan was widely consumed as a mouth freshener in social as well as religious gatherings, it was made up of a betel leaf, tobacco, areca nut and some spices and herbs. However, it was very costly. The mouth freshener industry witnessed a revolution when a man from Gujarat named Mansukhbhai Kothari started selling gutka packets which were a powdered form of paan. These 5 and 10-g packets of gutka were cheap and affordable for the people in comparison to other smokeless tobacco.
Moreover, out of all the smokeless tobacco products, gutka is the one that hits the chewer instantly, making it three times more addictive than cigarettes. Therefore, gutka being addictive as well as cheap is the reason why it’s widely consumed by the labour class.
Now let’s also look at some other reasons which prompt people to chew gutka.
Some people consume gutka under peer pressure to fit in the standards of being cool among their friends. But one of the biggest reasons which makes people resort to gutka consumption is poverty. A huge chunk of the Indian population is still below the poverty line, unable to afford enough food, these people consume tobacco to suppress their hunger. Little do they know that what they are consuming to suppress their hunger is a poison being sold in the surveillance of the government.
Talking about the policies of the government to ban tobacco products, the Indian government passed the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) to ban the selling of tobacco products. Sounds fascinating, right? But in practice, it has barely been implemented. Gutka companies have successfully found their way to manufacture and sell gutka through the loopholes of this law. These companies sat down with some of the most clever minds to come up with intelligent marketing strategies to advertise gutka without directly advertising it.
Wondering how? Let us unpack this for you. You must’ve seen when a person goes to buy pan masala, he also buys another packet with it which contains tobacco and the person mixes the contents of both packets then eats that mixture. What the companies do is they run advertisements for a pan masala on the TV and in newspapers etc. And this pan masala has the same packaging and name as the gutka of the same company, this keeps the brand image of the gutka intact in the minds of the gutka consumers. Although pan masala is advertised on TV, in actual practice it never reaches the market, instead, gutka is sold in the same packaging. This strategy of advertising a product indirectly is called surrogate advertising.
Even big actors like Shahrukh Khan, Ajay Devgan, Akshay Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan are complicit in this deceptive marketing of gutka, these actors just for the sake of money, readily agree to appear in the advertisements while being fully aware of what actually is being sold in the name of pan masala.
In India half of the population watches cricket matches on TV, during the 2023 ICC World cup, two gutka companies paid a handsome amount of money to run their advertisement in the intervals on TV. In 2012, one of the T20 matches was played in Melbourne, Australia during which two gutka companies had paid for the advertisement posters on the ground which were removed after the Australians protested against the promotion of such harmful products.
Now let’s shed some light on the role of the government in this gutka trap. Today, India is the second largest consumer and producer of tobacco. In 2020 alone around 7,61,335 tons of tobacco was produced in India. According to the Tobacco Institute of India, in the year 2023, India exported approximately 9,740 crores worth of tobacco. Moreover, India received around 53,750 cr in tax from the tobacco industry.
As per a report of The Hindu in 2010-11 ITC Limited which also produces gutka-based products, granted 3 crores to Congress, 2.5 crores to BJP, 42 lakh to SP and 33 lakh to RJD as funds. And in 2018-19 it granted BJP 23 crores.
Hence it’s crystal clear that the government is not unaware of the fact that gutka and other tobacco products are still openly being sold throughout India. This is the sad reality of the capitalist system, where first harmful and addictive products are sold to earn money and when people are caught up in the habit of eating them, they suffer from dangerous diseases, creating another opportunity for the capitalists to earn money in the name of medicine and treatments.
Among the Muslims in India around 14% of people chew gutka and if you were to visit any of the cancer hospitals, you can easily find a good number of Muslims that are cancer patients owing to their addiction to gutka. Due to these destructive habits, they ruin not only their own lives but that of their family as well. Instead of becoming an asset for their religion, nation and society, they become a liability.
Gutka is haram in Islam. A hadith of Sahih Muslim states do not enter the masjid after eating onion or garlic, because it will bother the worshipers. If this is the case with onion and garlic, then think how much will the smell of gutka bother the worshipers as it has a very strong smell, and people still chew it shamelessly.
We conclude with two points here, gutka is a social evil which is a huge blot on our society. Gutka chewers easily fall prey to fatal diseases like tuberculosis and cancer which not only affects them but also those present around them. Secondly, where the government on the one hand passes laws like COTPA to ban the production and sale of tobacco, on the other hand, it benefits from taxes worth 72 crores that it collects from tobacco manufacturing companies.
Therefore it is important that the government frame accurate and loophole free policies to curb the consumption of tobacco in India. And as for the shameless celebrities, they should be called out and boycotted when they appear in advertisements of hazardous products like tobacco, just for their own profit.
