Valentines Day, or should we call it Violence Day, Vengeance Day or Vandalism Day. These are much more appropriate meanings that 14th Feb has come to attain. There is chaos, anarchy and a sense of desperation everywhere. People are being beaten up in every nook and corner of the country. Even females are not being spared. We pride ourselves in proclaiming that we have a Matri Pradhan Samaj, meaning a society that gives maximum value to providing respect to women. And the so called safe – keepers of this same society are taking to the streets to physically assault the ladies. It was pathetic to witness (in one of the news channels) how a girl was being pulled by her hair by a policeman and tortured like a common criminal. If the women are not getting spared, you can imagine what treatment is being meted out to the poor men caught in this cultural crossfire. You just had to switch on any news channel on 14th evening and you could see n number of incidents that had taken place across the nation. Some couples were forced to get married the moment they were seen together in public, while in one of the cities a boy was married off to a donkey for expressing his love. But one of the most shameful incidents was when a brother and sister were beaten up on their way to school as someone suspected them of being romantically involved. How worse can things really get? If we continue is this fashion, I am sure another Tiananmen Square is just waiting to happen. Some are calling this as the Talibanisation of Indian culture. But I guess even the Taliban have that much sense of respect left in them that they do not escort their women folk onto the streets and beat them up.
So what do these self – proclaimed saviors of Indian culture really have to say? They say that they are not against people falling in love. What they are against is the public display of love. They question why people have to express their love on a certain day in line with western thought. They ask why people are so hell bent on celebrating Valentines Day? My simple question to them is “Why not?” How the f**k does it matter to them how people want to express their love. It’s not as if people are stripping in public and enacting scenes from Vatsayana’s Kamasutra. If they wish to give a card or a rose to the people they love on a certain day of the year, how does it affect these people? If people want to glorify and celebrate being in love on a certain day, what is the harm? Actually these people have nothing to do with our culture. These are all bloody hypocrites. These are the same people who go to watch “Om Shanti Om” first day first show and fill the auditorium with whistles the moment Shah Rukh Khan breaks out into a song to express his love in a crowded street or a park. These are the people who have been failures as far as love in concerned. Maybe they tried their hand at getting a girl to accept them but failed miserably (which girl in her senses is going to fall for assholes like these) and this is just a manifestation of their desperation and agony. “What we cannot do nobody else should be able to do” must be their theory. These are idiots of the highest order. Some of these people call themselves the Ram Sena. They bring a religious and cultural touch to this whole thing. They worship Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. If they worship Krishna, they should at least understand what they worship in the first place. Krishna’s love for Radha is not only part of Indian mythology but is very much a part of our religious texts. Innumerable hymns and religious songs and stories have been woven around the central theme of Lord Krishna’s love for Radha. I may not be an exponent on Indian religious matters, but with my limited knowledge, I can safely say that Lord Krishna’s love for Radha was anything put private. He used to express freely and without any apprehensions of his deep love for Radha. The whole concept of Raas Leela is about the public display of affection between the Lord and his beloved. What has been so romantically and beautifully painted in the canvass of our religious texts has now become the reason for humiliating people and assaulting them. This is not only totally unacceptable, but an utter disgrace on everything Indian culture stands for. Heer Ranjha, Shiri Fariyaad, Laila Majnu, Raj Simran are just a few of the innumerable eternal love stories that are so strongly ingrained in our social fabric. And when the people of the same nation display such strong sentiments of intolerance, it’s just a bit too hard to accept.
So let’s see what can be done about this? Some people are already trying. A massive campaign has been launched to send pink panties and condoms to the Ram Sena chief. But this kind of a step is ridiculous at its worst and humorous at its best. This is not the age of Gandhi and so this kind of Gandhigiri is not going to work. This is not going to help matters in any way. It is just giving free publicity to these people. And going by the economic recession and given the fact that they have reportedly received a massive number of condoms and panties, the Ram Sena might as well plan to sell these items and make a huge profit out of it. These kinds of small and insignificant actions don’t yield any definite results. Actually, these are not meant to get any result but propaganda just as hollow as the Ram Sena’s. What we need to do is take some concrete steps and then have the determination to back them up with actions. Why cant we, the youth of our country decide that in the ensuing elections, we are not going to vote until and unless the perpetrators of this heinous crime are punished by the law. We have to take some strong step of this kind which will make the nation and its deaf politicians take note of the fact that what is happening is not right. Today is the 16th and in the space of two days, people have basically forgotten what has happened and resumed their normal lives. Also the laws of the country have to be amended to deal effectively with situations like these. Of course, when we find policemen themselves involved in the acts of violence, the whole system seems to crash like a house of cards. What was most amusing was the step taken by the administration of keeping the Ram Sena chief in custody on the 14th, and releasing the people who had committed the actual crime a few days ago. What the government thinks and what it wishes to do is really beyond anyone’s understanding. There is a dearth of that one thing that is so very important in any fruitful decision making – logic. Neither the Ram Sena, nor the victims, or the general public or the administration knows what it is doing. Everyone is just flowing with the flow and living life on the spur of the moment. This was how the early man used to live and animals do till this day. These are the actions of people who are guided by pure instinct and have very little or no respect for reason and justification.
You go to any corner of the globe and you say “India”, the first response that you are most likely to get is “The Taj Mahal”. A nation whose identity for the rest of the world is this icon of everlasting love, and which has been accepted for centuries as being the epicenter of harmony and tolerance, when such a country is engulfed by such intolerance and blatant violation of human rights, it’s a duty and responsibility of each and every citizen to do his bit to put an end to this nonsense and restore India to her pristine pride and grace.
So what do these self – proclaimed saviors of Indian culture really have to say? They say that they are not against people falling in love. What they are against is the public display of love. They question why people have to express their love on a certain day in line with western thought. They ask why people are so hell bent on celebrating Valentines Day? My simple question to them is “Why not?” How the f**k does it matter to them how people want to express their love. It’s not as if people are stripping in public and enacting scenes from Vatsayana’s Kamasutra. If they wish to give a card or a rose to the people they love on a certain day of the year, how does it affect these people? If people want to glorify and celebrate being in love on a certain day, what is the harm? Actually these people have nothing to do with our culture. These are all bloody hypocrites. These are the same people who go to watch “Om Shanti Om” first day first show and fill the auditorium with whistles the moment Shah Rukh Khan breaks out into a song to express his love in a crowded street or a park. These are the people who have been failures as far as love in concerned. Maybe they tried their hand at getting a girl to accept them but failed miserably (which girl in her senses is going to fall for assholes like these) and this is just a manifestation of their desperation and agony. “What we cannot do nobody else should be able to do” must be their theory. These are idiots of the highest order. Some of these people call themselves the Ram Sena. They bring a religious and cultural touch to this whole thing. They worship Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. If they worship Krishna, they should at least understand what they worship in the first place. Krishna’s love for Radha is not only part of Indian mythology but is very much a part of our religious texts. Innumerable hymns and religious songs and stories have been woven around the central theme of Lord Krishna’s love for Radha. I may not be an exponent on Indian religious matters, but with my limited knowledge, I can safely say that Lord Krishna’s love for Radha was anything put private. He used to express freely and without any apprehensions of his deep love for Radha. The whole concept of Raas Leela is about the public display of affection between the Lord and his beloved. What has been so romantically and beautifully painted in the canvass of our religious texts has now become the reason for humiliating people and assaulting them. This is not only totally unacceptable, but an utter disgrace on everything Indian culture stands for. Heer Ranjha, Shiri Fariyaad, Laila Majnu, Raj Simran are just a few of the innumerable eternal love stories that are so strongly ingrained in our social fabric. And when the people of the same nation display such strong sentiments of intolerance, it’s just a bit too hard to accept.
So let’s see what can be done about this? Some people are already trying. A massive campaign has been launched to send pink panties and condoms to the Ram Sena chief. But this kind of a step is ridiculous at its worst and humorous at its best. This is not the age of Gandhi and so this kind of Gandhigiri is not going to work. This is not going to help matters in any way. It is just giving free publicity to these people. And going by the economic recession and given the fact that they have reportedly received a massive number of condoms and panties, the Ram Sena might as well plan to sell these items and make a huge profit out of it. These kinds of small and insignificant actions don’t yield any definite results. Actually, these are not meant to get any result but propaganda just as hollow as the Ram Sena’s. What we need to do is take some concrete steps and then have the determination to back them up with actions. Why cant we, the youth of our country decide that in the ensuing elections, we are not going to vote until and unless the perpetrators of this heinous crime are punished by the law. We have to take some strong step of this kind which will make the nation and its deaf politicians take note of the fact that what is happening is not right. Today is the 16th and in the space of two days, people have basically forgotten what has happened and resumed their normal lives. Also the laws of the country have to be amended to deal effectively with situations like these. Of course, when we find policemen themselves involved in the acts of violence, the whole system seems to crash like a house of cards. What was most amusing was the step taken by the administration of keeping the Ram Sena chief in custody on the 14th, and releasing the people who had committed the actual crime a few days ago. What the government thinks and what it wishes to do is really beyond anyone’s understanding. There is a dearth of that one thing that is so very important in any fruitful decision making – logic. Neither the Ram Sena, nor the victims, or the general public or the administration knows what it is doing. Everyone is just flowing with the flow and living life on the spur of the moment. This was how the early man used to live and animals do till this day. These are the actions of people who are guided by pure instinct and have very little or no respect for reason and justification.
You go to any corner of the globe and you say “India”, the first response that you are most likely to get is “The Taj Mahal”. A nation whose identity for the rest of the world is this icon of everlasting love, and which has been accepted for centuries as being the epicenter of harmony and tolerance, when such a country is engulfed by such intolerance and blatant violation of human rights, it’s a duty and responsibility of each and every citizen to do his bit to put an end to this nonsense and restore India to her pristine pride and grace.
