Teetotaling but Tolerant, Pakistan Lets Its Only Brewery Totter Along
By Matt Miller
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal 1,119 words
14 April 1987
The Wall Street Journal

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- Murree Brewery Co. serves some of the tastiest beer in Asia, but it has a problem: The government of Pakistan threatens to flog its customers.
Pakistan prohibits alcohol for all but a few of its citizens, and flogging is the officially recommended -- though so far never used -- punishment for those who imbibe.
While that may seem inhibiting, Murree Brewery has proved a survivor. Established in 1861 to help quench the thirst of British soldiers who poured into the Rawalpindi area after an 1857 military rebellion, Murree is one of Asia's oldest breweries.
But when Britain gave up its Indian empire in 1947, the brewery found itself under the authority of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. "Since independence, we've been on the skids," says the brewery's chief executive, M.P. Bandara. "We have a great past in front of us."
The brewery, which is on a shady lane off the main Rawalpindi highway and about 12 miles from the capital of Islamabad, produces whiskey, gin, rum and brandy, as well as beer. It is Pakistan's oldest industrial venture, according to its chief executive.
Mr. Bandara, a member of Pakistan's small non-Moslem Parsee community and a former government minister, claims Murree produces "the finest malt whisky outside Scotland."
Although Murree, Pakistan's only remaining brewery, is an anachronism, its existence reflects a strange kind of tolerance that continues to characterize much of Pakistani society. This tolerance has survived a fundamentalist onslaught and government-sponsored attempts at Islamization. It may also explain why no Moslem yet has been whipped for drinking alcohol, and why the government tends to turn a blind eye to discreet consumption at home.
Even the country's most zealous Moslems take a relaxed view. "We aren't opposed to the brewery," says Khurshid Ahmad, a leader of the extreme fundamentalist political party Jamaat-i-Islami. "We're opposed to the addiction of drink." Mr. Ahmad, over cookies and tea at his Islamabad house, suggests there are other uses for alcohol than the social variety. "Like what they're putting into cars in Brazil," he says. (What they're putting in is gasohol, a mixture of gasoline and alcohol.)
Still, Murree has taken the precaution of diversifying. It owns a glass factory, manufactures fruit juice and tomato ketchup and even produces a non-alcoholic malt drink called Malt 79. But booze sells best. In 1985, the latest year for which figures are available, more than half of Murree's total sales equivalent to $5.2 million came from its liquor division. The company, which is listed on Karachi's stock exchange, posted net income of $487,000 in 1985, up from $133,000 a year earlier.
The brewery stays in business through the sale of alcohol to foreigners and non-Moslems, who are the only people in Pakistan allowed to buy liquor. Foreigners can order drinks in their hotel rooms after producing passports and signing lengthy documents. The tough prohibition legislation was introduced in 1979 in the wake of the seizure of power two years earlier by the deeply religious Mohammed Zia ul-Haq.
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Non-Moslems, who account for about 3% of Pakistan's 100 million people, are allowed to buy small quantities of alcohol for "religious" purposes. How much of that ends up in Moslem tankards is anyone's guess. But there are plenty of stories about poor Christian servants who supplement their income from the sale of their quota -- six bottles of beer or one bottle of spirits a month -- to employers.
With domestic sales so limited, Murree's beer production last year was only 18% of capacity, or about 950,000 quarts. And most of the $2 plunked down for a 26-ounce bottle ends up in government coffers through heavy taxes.
Even more frustrating, says Mr. Bandara, is that Murree's award-winning "export-quality beer" hasn't been exported since the 1979 prohibition law. As a result, Murree has missed out on supplying the ever-increasing numbers of Pakistani and Indian restaurants abroad and can't cash in on the craze in the U.S. and Europe for exotic imported beers. The brewery also has lost out on a potentially booming market in neighboring Afghanistan, where thousands of Soviet troops are stationed. (Unlike the Afghan troops and guerrillas who are Moslems, Soviet soldiers are inclined to bend an elbow now and then.)
That Murree beer can't be sampled abroad hurts the pride of Khalil Ahmad, the company's managing brewer. Mr. Ahmad, who trained and worked in Britain, Denmark and Holland, has been a brewer since 1959. A walking encyclopedia of beer, Mr. Ahmad will gladly expostulate about the subtleties of glass bottles, carbon dioxide ("the heart of beer"), barley and yeast, occasionally throwing in a German or Danish term to make his point.
Murree is continuing to operate at less than 20% of capacity. Not only is the brewery resticted in its sales, but it must also compete with a thriving business in smuggled whiskey -- both the cheaper Indian concoction that is sneaked over the border and the expensive Scotch whisky that comes through the port of Karachi and sells for about $50 on the black market to status seekers.
But Murree has much experience in overcoming problems. Indeed, the brewery was nearly liquidated in 1868, just seven years after it began. After that, it prospered for a few decades, only to confront a jolting series of misfortunes in the first half of the 20th century, including financial difficulties and an earthquake that destroyed a brewery in 1935.
It managed to survive prohibition rules imposed soon after Pakistan's independence, which was when Mr. Bandara's family took over the company, because liquor was available to those who could procure a medical certificate. And there were many obliging doctors. But in 1977, after disputed elections led to a military coup, the brewery was closed for about five months. This was a period when absolute prohibition was enforced.
Although the alliance of the military and fundamentalist clergy continued to threaten operations, "gradually, gradually," the brewery was allowed to restart, says the brewer Mr. Ahmad. Then, in 1979, the martial-law government passed a decree that banned the manufacturing, drinking and possession of "intoxicants" except for the use of non-Moslems.
The order was challenged in the Moslem shariat, or religious court. The judges split on whether the Koran forbids all intoxicants or just the act of getting drunk. The majority held that intoxicants were illegal. The decision has been appealed. No result has been announced.