With love from India

For over a decade, since Hindutva extremists started gaining ground in India, Valentine’s Day is marred with high drama in public spaces – from restaurants to streets – with threats against couples, public shaming and actual violence perpetrated by the Sangh Parivar, a collective name for the Hindutva groups, which is the wellspring of the ruling BJP.

This year was no different, though the violence was tame in comparison to previous years. In addition, some of these groups refrained from issuing threats, perhaps because of the growing internecine competition, the demands of electoral politics and the bad publicity such violence usually generates – both domestically and internationally.

Three days prior to the event, the Shiv Sena conducted a ‘stick puja’ in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh (UP), threatening they would use bamboo sticks to teach a lesson to couples. The Times of India quoted Shiv Sena’s deputy head for UP: “Our workers will visit restaurants and hotels and conduct checks. We have warned … [them]… not to organise Valentine’s Day events. There could be a risk of property damage, for which the owners themselves will be responsible”.

A member of the organisation, Lokesh Saini, claimed that “the celebrations increased the risk of ‘love jihad’, an oft-repeated false Hindutva propaganda that Muslim men are tricking gullible Hindu girls to fall in love with them with an aim to convert them. Bajrang Dal, another violent Hindu group, warned pubs and restaurants in Hyderabad not to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Vishal Prasad, in-charge of Bajrang Dal’s Hyderabad unit, told the Deccan Chronicle, “It is not in Indian culture to celebrate such events and we should not let the foreign culture in”. It even promised to be on a lookout for the couples carrying roses or smooching at malls and parks.

The Bajrang Dal in Maharashtra even promised to deploy priests in public parks to conduct on-the-spot marriages of the ‘amorous couples’. In 2014 in Pune, the Shiv Sena forced several couples to ‘marry’ by exchanging flower garlands. This year, the Sri Ram Sena, notorious for Valentine’s Day violence, including severely injuring women some years ago, had asked the Karnataka government to ban the celebrations. Meanwhile, the Hindu Mahasabha formed teams to monitor social media for those who are creating and nurturing virtual passions.

The group threatened to catch anyone expressing love on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp and observed February 14 as Prem Vivah Diwas or Love Marriage Day. According to a Mumbai tabloid, Afternoon Voice: “The plan is to encourage love-struck young people, who are dating someone who aren’t Hindu, to come forward and getting married. There’s one requirement – the person will have to convert to Hinduism”. The group also called on famous Bollywood actors – Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan – to convert if “they loved their wives”, who are Hindus. A couple of years back, several Hindu groups launched public campaign and held mass camps to force conversion of Muslims under the rubric of ghar wapsi, a term denoting that Muslims were returning to their ancestral religion – Hinduism.

The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS), a pseudo-intellectual arm of Hindu extremists that claims to be working for the “education...awakening ... [and] protection of dharma, [the] protection of the nation, and uniting Hindus”, claimed the Valentine’s Day celebrations result in rape and sexual assault. It warned Hindus that the day aims at their cultural conversion and called upon “the youth to oust Western Valentine’s Day which ruins their morality”. It added: “If young revolutionaries, such as Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Madam Lal Dhingra and Chapikar who sacrificed their lives in their youth, had spent their days celebrating days such as Valentine’s days, then we would have never been able to enjoy freedom today. What pain their souls must be suffering in seeing their dreams being shattered in this way”.

True to their obsession, the group could not help but bring Kashmir and Pakistan into the discussion. In the latest article on its website, arguing against ‘love’, the Samiti came up with the most inventive argument: “It is said that love can conquer the world; then why couldn’t we win Kashmir with love? If the love of ‘Valentine’ is so powerful then why can’t this love change the hearts of terrorists creating havoc in Kashmir and killing innumerable innocent brethren of ours in rest of Hindustan? In today’s times when 10 young terrorists from Pakistan attack our country with an intension to destroy it, why should our young generation...get trapped in the celebration of ‘Valentine’s Day’? Therefore, this is a call to harness the power of our youth to turn them towards the defence of the nation and dharma”.

The main argument of the Hindutva groups is to protect the ancient Indian culture that, in their imagination, is pure and pristine. But the reality is that ancient Indian culture has a lot of erotic iconography. The ancient stone sculptures of the famous Khajuraho temples in Madhya Pradesh depict graphic scenes of carnal engagement. There is also the ancient Indian text of the Kama Sutra, often described as the bible of lovemaking.

More paradoxically, Kamadeva, the Hindu god of love, sets up couples by shooting arrows made of flowers using his bow that is carved out of sugarcane. Then there is the devadasi system, where young girls are dedicated to Yellamma, the goddess of fertility, and live in temples to perform sex work in the name of religion, effectively turning them into concubines for the rich through the active connivance of the priests. Although it has been made illegal since 1998, the practice continues in some places.

Postscript: Pravin Togadia, the anti-Muslim firebrand head of the extremist Visha Hindu Parishad, who recently fell out with the ruling BJP amid claims of his life being in mortal danger, supported Valentine’s Day celebrations. He told The Hindustan Times: “If couples don’t fall in love, there will be no marriages. If there are no marriages, the world won’t progress. Young men and women have the right to love”.

Twitter: @murtaza_shibli