Resist Fascist Policing By the Saffron Brigade on Valentine’s Day!

Last month, it was planning to construct a temple for Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s murderer. And now, the Sangh Parivar is at it yet again – this time, they have grand plans of intimidation and hooliganism on 14 February, Valentine’s Day. The Hindu Mahasabha has openly “warned” that couples found celebrating the “foreign festival” in public will face a variety of “punishments”. According to the Hindu Mahasabha, if couples are found with roses in their hands, or if they are merely seen together in malls and parks, this is the fate they will meet:

 Hindu couples will be forcibly married in an Arya Samaj wedding ceremony

 Inter-religion partners will be forced to go through a “shuddhikaran” (purification) ritual

 Moreover, the parents of the couple will be informed

Not just this, the Mahasabha claims that it will keep a hawk’s eye on social media too on 14 February. If messages declaring love are made on social media, it will ensure the same treatment. The above strictures are in fact an open and dangerous threat to all men and women that they will have to pass the Hindu Mahasabha’s test of ‘marriage’ and ‘legitimacy’! Such campaigns are a completely unacceptable assault on the very idea that women and men have the right to enter into any kind of consensual relationship they desire. These campaigns reek of feudal attempts to control and police relationships within the confines defined by a patriarchal society. Along with these threats, the Mahasabha has also reminded us of its deeply prejudiced and bigoted majoritarianism: it claims that all Indians are Hindus, and therefore while it will not oppose inter-religion marriages, it will ensure that non-Hindus are subjected to a suddhikaran (read conversion) before the forced marriage.

Let us not forget that the same Hindu Mahasabha spearheaded the Sangh Parivar’s ‘ghar vapasi’ programmes in Uttar Pradesh, a campaign that was marked by intimidation of coercion of people from the minority communities. There have been several reports that during these ‘ghar vapasi’ programmes (which are based on the fundamentally majoritarian notion that all Indians are essentially Hindus, who need to be brought back to their Hindu ‘home’), Muslims were clearly told that if they wished to avail of their legal rights such as ration cards and voter identity cards, they should ‘reconvert’ to Hinduism.

Such blatant intimidation now continues through the proposed forced marriages and shuddhikarans on Valentine’s Day. According to the reported statements of the Hindu Mahasabha leaders: “The secular Hindus (who celebrate Valentine’s Day) should be converted to Hinduism completely so that they stop believing in the existence of any other religion”. We have here a deadly and dangerous ideological mix that wishes all Indians to stop believing in the existence of any religion other than Hindutva. After the attempts of the Modi government to remove ‘socialism’ and ‘secularism’ from the constitution of India, this is the next blatant move of the Sangh Parivar to push through its communal fascist agenda.

It is also important to remember that such patriarchal moral policing of consensual relationships are now new to the Sangh Parivar. Every single year the likes of ABVP and Bajrang Dal go around harassing young couples on Valentine’s day. For instance, this is how a news report in the Hindu, published on 15 February 2010, describes one such campaign:

“TIRUPATI: Tirupati city unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on Sunday prevented people from celebrating Valentine’s Day. Besides a symbolic torching of the Valentine’s effigy, the cadres, who went round the busy bazaar zones, also raided novelty stores selling Valentine’s Day greeting card and allegedly made a bonfire of them in some places.The ABVP, in a statement said the cadres also entered parks, restaurants and university campuses checking ‘love birds’ revelling in the Valentine’s Day celebrations and handed them over later to their parents”

Self-proclaimed godman Asaram Bapu has for long run a campaign against the Valentine’s Day celebrations. Explicitly pitting Valentine’s day against the ‘Indian culture’ of worshipping parents, Asaram Bapu exhorts young men and women to observe 14 February as ‘Matru-Pitru Pujan’ Diwas. Not just Bajrang Dal, RSS and ABVP, but BJP-led elected governments too have tried to enforce Asaram Bapu’s diktats against Valentine’s Day. Since 2012, the BJP-run Chhattisgarh government has declared 14 February as ‘Matru-Pitru’ Diwas – and in government schools across the state, parents are invited to schools on this day and children worship them.

Now that the Modi government is in power, these feudal, patriarchal and communal fascist forces are feeling emboldened to carry out these campaigns with far more aggression, in the confidence that they will be supported by a sympathetic government which will not act against them. It is high time that all of us collectively reject communal fascism in all its vicious forms. This open intimidation of consenting adults can be ignored only at our own risk; we need to defend our freedoms, our rights and our lives from the threats of communal, patriarchal and feudal forces represented by the likes of the Hindu Mahasabha.

AISA appeals to the student community to join the protest demonstration on 14 February at Hindu Mahasabha office in large numbers, to reclaim our rights and our freedoms.