Valentine's Day Brings Fundamentalists of All Hues Together - Mehul Kamdar For the past few years, India sees a regular ritual on February the 14th. Young people who would like to spend time in each others' company like their peers in Europe or North America, end up threatened, beaten or paraded with their faces tarred and blackened by self appointed guardians of Hindu morality, the RSS, Bajrang Dal and a horde of sympathetic fascists. In the past, the Indian establishment has lent tactical support at times, asking the police to look the other way when the Hindutvaite storm troopers go about smashing greeting card showrooms, beating people up or terrorizing poor streetside flower vendors. However, sometimes, though not strictly the same day, the state has indeed gone much further. In 2003, the Tamilnadu police raided the Anna Nagar park, in Chennai, a popular destination for young couples, arrested and held more than 60 couples and released them only when their parents came to the police stations and signed a "guarantee" that they would not let their wards meet. If this sounded like the Taliban or the Saudi Arabian muttawa - every one of the arrested couples were adults and they would have been left alone in any civilized country - it was symptomatic of what India was turning into. 2005 saw the Hidutvaite groups with a new set of allies. The Islamic Students' Association joined them in bringing their version of thuggery to the nation and the state of Assam saw several terrorist groups, including the ULFA (best known for killing some 10,000 Bangladeshi refugees in the Nellie massacre) call for a bandh on this day, ostensibly to protest government corruption, but, in reality, to disrupt the celebrations by young people who were more interested these days in taking up jobs and spending time in each others' company. The self appointed "guardians" of Indian culture had turned out to be a most unusual group of murderers, thugs and religious fundamentalists of several ugly hues. But what was India in the past? If one goes back two or three decades, the country seemed a collective psychiatrist's nightmare. The government appointed guardians of public morality, the Central Board of Film Censors, had a policy which banned kissing scenes between caring adults in India's huge film industry but allowed gory and brutal rape to be shown. Apparently, this was to prevent the "commodification" of women, something that the government was most concerned about. A Miss World contest that was held in Bangalore, then a garden city and not today's economic powerhouse cum environmental basket case, saw one Amulya Ganguli cheerlead a band of thugs from the editorial pages of The Indian Express calling for attacks on what he described as "apasanskriti" to use a term that the Communists in West Bengal had made famous to play spoilsport with pop music performances. All this was in the interests of preserving Indian culture, we were told, and in the interests of "safeguar! ding" Indian women.  This selective amnesia on the behalf of India's moral dictators forgot the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho, Indian epics which had glorified everything from homosexuality to weird tantric sexual acts and, worst of all, had relegated women to a position below animals in the scriptures with the Manusmriti insisting that this was womens' status despite whatever caste they were born into. And then, the guardians of this morality worshipped at centres where women were not allowed in some religions and where they were even forced to live lives of prostitution as Davadasis in others. And, while the Indian establishment hemmed and hawed over the sad fate of women caught up in the world's oldest profession, it was a little known fact that until the 1980s, the Orissa State government actually employed devadasis and put them on the government's payroll. The sad fact became known when the late Sanjukta Mohapatra (the Odissi dancer and artist) applied for this post to draw attention to the is horrendous support, by the government, of an obnoxious practice. Perhaps, the hypocrisy of the protestors is something to be expected. Noise and violence are invariably resorted to when people do not have a logical argument to make. The fact that the Indian state has been complicit in this violence both directly and indirectly is proof that this thuggery is an act not just of religious sanction but is also approved with the indirect blessings of the government. The national pledge says that "All Indians are Brothers and Sisters," though, even if this is accepted as a typical official exaggeration, there is indeed unity among the fundamentalists on this one day every year. All Indian thugs, Hindutvaites, Islamists, Communists, policemen and terrorists find common cause in safeguarding the nation's unity, culture and ethos in beating up young couples, greeting card sellers and poor flower sellers. Perhaps, the nation needs to declare this day a national holiday. And, considering how badly it has fared at other sports, declare open season on! it's young. Indian television advertisements keep talking about "national integration" and this, possibly, has been the first step. Once the goons and thugs are integrated, the rest of the nation could follow. If the Nazis could call their Germany a democracy, so, surely, could the valiant Indians from the RSS, Bajrang Dal, the Islamic Students' Association and the sundry Assamese terrorist groups dub their India. ========= Responses:   Replies Name/Email Date 22864 Re: Hindu Fundamentalists in India on Valentine's Day Kisan Fri  2/18/2005 22901 Re: Hindu Fundamentalists in India on Valentine's Day mehul kamdar Sat  2/19/2005