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| Saturday, 14 February 2004 |
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Tough love for Indian Valentines targetted by hardline Hindus NEW DELHI, Friday (AFP) India's upwardly mobile generation will celebrate Valentine's Day while looking over their shoulder for gangs of Hindu hardliners who are threatening to blacken the facers of lovers across the country. The ritual protests from Hindu hardliners drove Bombay shopowners to sell only "love" or "friendship" cards as they feared attacks by Shiv Sena, a right-wing Hindu movement that has denounced the festival as "a bad Western influence on Indian culture". Shiv Sena has in the past attacked shops selling Valentine's Day cards and young lovers buying them. The hardline Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council) in Bhopal in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, meanwhile, also vowed to blacken the faces of couples with soot - deemed a grave insult - if they celebrate what is known as Lover's Day in India. "All this public display of love is vulgar and pure foreign nonsense," D. Khandelwal, a local VHP leader, told reporters. "Indians are not like that - if youngsters want to disgrace their families we shall blacken their faces," he added. Shiv Sena spokesman Subhash Desai admitted it may be impossible for them to stop Indian sweethearts from exchanging presents or sweet nothings but vowed to police the streets. "We oppose Valentine's Day ... but if a boy wants to give a gift to his girlfriend what can we do about it?" Desai said in Bombay. "But if we get complaints that women are being harrassed by men in the name of Valentine's Day then Shiv Sena will step in and I assure you we will not spare the culprits," he told AFP. However, Indian newspapers and websites are already crammed with Valentine's Day messages and announcements of special parties and dinners for the big day, while millions are likely to use the increasingly popular form of communication in India - the SMS facility on mobile phones - to send messages of love. The VHP-rumblings have appeard not to have reached the far-flung tiny Westernised northeastern state of Meghalaya where a serving judge has been roped in by a local club to sift through love letters and pick the best. The winner of the local Rotary club sponsored Love Letter Writing competition gets to take a date to Shillong's best disco on Valentine's Day. "Though love and passion have no limit, we have limited the length of a love letter to 300 words," said one of the organisers, adding that the judge had been inundated with entries. Lakshmi Narain Shastri, the head Hindu priest of the Birla temple in Delhi, predicted a weekend of at least 500 weddings and post-wedding receptions in the capital. "I have noticed couples putting pressure on their parents to ensure their weddings coincide with Valentine's Day. I think they feel it adds romance to their wedding," said Shastri. |
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