Drink was the rage in India

From The Great Mutiny by Christopher Hibbert. Page 43.

Much as they enjoyed these women, the soldiers were even fonder of drink. Immediately on his arrival in camp, Quevillart was sent to the regimental stores to collect his bedding. On his way there he saw some men carrying two huge barrels of stout back to their barracks from the native canteen. By the time he himself returned to the barracks with his bedding - having paused on his way to buy two pints of goat's milk from the camp milkman who swindled him in giving change - the men were all helplessly drunk, twenty of them lying unconscious by the empty barrels in one of which another lay stupefied amidst the dregs. Many other soldiers described drunken escapades in the lines and bazaars. 'The native police, under the superintendence of a European Inspector, would make haste to the scene of the disturbance and endeavour to put a stop to it,' Corporal Alexander Morton recorded. 'If a row was continued the native police carried nets which they threw over the drunkards' heads, knocked them off their feet and rolled them up.'

There was never any 'want of grog' in India, wrote Sergeant Pearman of the 3rd Light Dragoons in his memoirs.

The canteen was open all days . . . and you could buy [over] three pints of [spirits] for one rupee or two shillings, and this arrack or rum was over-proof . . . In the canteen you could have as much as you liked to drink [but] carry none away to barracks [though] we had plenty of men who made 'bishops', a sort of bladder to fit into their shirt, inside their trousers, to hold about eight drams and smuggle it out . . . There was men dying every day from the effects of drink [which] . . . did more for death than the fever ... At the time the batta money was served out there were about thirty men in hospital from drink. The Regimental Sergeant-Major died, Sergeant-Major Kelly died; Sergeant Jones and many of the privates died . . . Drink was the rage in India.