Valentine's Day Outrages India

India is a land of traditions and culture. 

This culture dictates the lifestyle of the  people here. 

With more Indian men and women getting educated and with the increasing impact of western ideals on young Indians, several traditional practices that were upheld for ages are losing value at a fast pace. 

Valentine’s Day best describes this scenario. It is the best example for Hindu religious extremism. The older folks prefer to cling on to the age old traditions in which they were raised and many a times disapprove of Valentine’s Day. Many believe that it would eat out the Indian traditions.

This offers a perfect scenario for various political parties to host upon these beliefs and give air to them.

The media too plays a very important role in this. News channels focus on the outrage in India during Valentine’s Day. These outrages sometimes take a very violent turn.

Let us take the example of The Sri Rama Sene. It is basically a squad of young vigilante thugs, spoke to the media on February 5,2009  in Bangalore. As reported, the group’s leader, Pramod Muthalik, announced, “We will ensure that there is no love in the air on Valentine’s Day.”

And let’s get this clear, The Sri Rama Sene are not kidding. An example highlighting just how far they can go involves a number of young women who were trounced after leaving a night club recently in another large city, Mangalore.

The incident received nationwide and international attention since the women had done nothing wrong. Their mere attendance at the club was enough to infuriate Sri Rama Sene members. And so, the solution was to beat them up badly.

 This incident outraged the public nationwide. Various news channels showcased debates on if such outrage was ethical & moral.

Like this debate on Times Now.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y193F-dY0Mk)

Also, a campaign called Pink Chaddhi Campaign was launched against this action.

It was a nonviolent protest movement launched by Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women in February 2009. The campaign was conceived particularly in protest against a threat by Pramod Muthalik of Sri Ram Sene, an orthodox Hindu group based in Mangalore.

The Pink Chaddi Campaign received widespread media coverage, and the Facebook group saw numbers of members growing exponentially in the following days. A few reports were also critical of the campaign accusing it of trivialising an important issue like attack on women.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgrk9YG6Nq0)

 There was also political reaction to the campaign as supporters of RSS objected to use of pictures of RSS members on the campaign blog. RSS had criticised the Mangalore attack and favoured ban on the Sri Ram Sena. The blog owner removed the pictures of RSS members following this objection.

A counter-campaign calling itself "The Pink Condom Campaign" was started by some unknown activists a few days before Valentine's Day.

Taking the present day scenario one can see, not only did News but even social media has changed the viewpoint of people on Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day is promoted on social media a lot these days. Even companies make special advertisements for Valentine's day.

YouTube Channel are also influencing the mindset of people. For example, the YouTube Channel TVF featured the following video taking the viewpoint of India on Valentine's Day.

 

The outlook of the Indian society towards Valentine's Day has changed in the past 5 years and Media has influenced this change on a very large scale. The society is opening up to the concept of Valentine's Day.