Betting is illegal in India.
Or is it?
It certainly used to be a very clear-cut answer. But the ban on betting doesn’t seem as convincing today as it did 20 or even 10 years ago.
The ban on betting in India started more than 150 years ago with the Public Gambling Act of 1967 which effectively outlawed betting on all Indian territory.
That law is still in effect to this day, so why is betting now becoming increasingly widespread in India, despite a sharply outlined set of laws that prohibit people from betting? The answer is technology.
The Backstory of Betting in India
People have always had a very liberal and open-minded attitude towards betting in India. That is until our colonizers outlawed gambling back in 1967.
When the law of 1967 was written, it was done with the purpose of outlawing all types of public gambling. It did so by banning public gambling houses and any type of gambling that takes place in public, such as street gambling.
Gambling among family members and during festivities was still largely tolerated.
However, the law failed to take into account that 150 years later, people would be gambling and placing bets using devices such as computers and smartphones – things that hadn’t even been invented back then.
How Technology Propagated the Spread of Betting in India
Online betting started as a purely western concept.
In western countries, online betting sites started popping up on the web in the late 1990s during a time when the Indian population was still largely disconnected from the internet.
Then in and around the year 2015 something happened – the population of India started getting access to laptops and smartphones, and internet connectivity became widely available.
So in just a few short years, the online betting companies turned their attention to India, which they saw as a huge emerging market with billions of potential users.
Allied with Indian law firms, these online betting sites found “legal loopholes” which technically makes it possible for Indians to bet online, without violating any laws.
Has Technology Made Betting Legal in India?
Technology has made it possible to bet legally in parts of India. This means that players can join betting sites and place bets if they reside in states that have not directly forbidden the use of online betting sites.
The only rule here is that the online betting site must be based outside of Indian territory.
Furthermore, to be in compliance with the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), players must ensure that the online betting site accepts Indian Rupees.
Players may only deposit Indian Rupees; it is not legal to convert and use other currencies such as US Dollars, Euros, or British Pounds. This would violate the FEMA act which only grants certified money exchange bureaus and banks the rights to convert currencies.
So if a player lives in a state where online betting is not criminalised, and if the betting site is based outside India and accepts INR currency, then players can use such betting sites legally and safely.