Valentine's Day Results In Rape, Hindu Extremists Claim; Divided India
Celebrates Controversial Holiday
.
Meredith Bennett-Smith ("The Huffington Post," February 14, 2013)
A right wing Hindu group claimed this week that celebrating Valentine's Day
and other "Western traditions" results in rape and sexual assault.
Hindu group Hindu Janajagruti Samiti (HJS) made the claim Monday during a
press conference, the Indo Asian News Service reports.
"Since the Bharatiya youth is turning towards indulgence by blindly
following westerners, it has been noticed that the sale of contraceptives
peaks on
this day in cities such as Mumbai and Pune. This leads to a rise in
incidents of rapes and other atrocities," HJS state convener Manoj Solanki
said.
The comments come as Indians across the country participate in rallies and
events in support of One Billion Rising, a global campaign that seeks to
raise awareness -- and help prevent -- violence against women. There are more
than six events in Delhi alone, The Times of India reports. All of them
coincide with Valentine's Day.
Valentine's Day is a complicated holiday in India, a country that is marked
by a generational divide, The New York Times notes:
The battle is always waged in the name of protecting something called
Indian values from something called Western decadence.
Nobody can fully explain what Indian values really are, but there is clear
evidence to suggest that they have something to do with Indian girls being
sober and married while having sex.
In 2009, Hindu extremists vowed to attack couples seen expressing affection
in public, according to The Telegraph. Militants affiliated with a group
called Sri Ram Sena said the holiday is "un-Indian."
"If people celebrate the day despite our warning, then we will definitely
attack them," Sri Ram Sena activist Gangadhar Kulkarni said at the time.
The threats of violence, in turn, prompted a wave of pro-Valentine's Day
protests, according to Reuters.
But there were still many reports of attacks. Two couples were forced to
"marry" on the spot, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. While elsewhere in
the city of Ujjain, an angry mob beat a brother and sister they had mistaken
for lovers.
This year, Sri Ram Sena burned Valentine's Day cards in front of the Press
Club in Jammu, decrying the holiday as vulgar, Merinews reports.
But the New York Times reports that the thugs who have patrolled streets in
years past might stay home.
"What is the use or point? We cannot stop them from celebrating, and we are
getting a bad reputation,” Om Dutt Sharma, Shiv Sena’s Delhi convenor,
told NDTV, the Times notes.
--
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
