The only thing that ever irritated me more than the prime minister’s Mann Ki Baat is the cultural policing and singlehood rants that storm social media every year around Valentine’s day (or week, as many claim to celebrate).
The very popular practice by the saffron army of destroying anyone who is seen coupling on Valentine’s day has prevailed from much before 2014, and later normalised once it became Modi’s new India.
These culturally hypnotised boys and girls who are appointed to ransack Valentine’s day dates, are apparently naive and unaware about the fact that even during the rest of the 364 days of the year, people date, make love, trip together, and do everything these saffron kids are taught to stay away from, in the name of discipline.
Apparently, these youngsters have never been allowed to coexist with people from other genders. Somewhere in my brain, a hypothesis believes that it is not moral policing, but the pleasure of coexistence (that comes from being in these dals and armies) that excites them.
Let Young People Experience Love
I have no qualms in saying that kids born after 1999 have grown up in an India in which a hate mongering man who abandoned his wife, rose to power and his ideology spread like wild fire.
So in an age in which we dated on Valentine’s day, returned home happy and blushing all shades of red, these kids remain exhausted with hatred (justifying their own singlehood by saying it is against their culture to date).
They may talk of celebrating Maha Shivratri instead of Valentine’s day, without realising that Shiva and Parvati were a couple. They are also known as the divine masculine and feminine energies that came together to form the Ardhanarishvara.
Maha Shivratri is also believed to be the day they got married. So, these youngsters are excited about divine love that happened centuries ago, while they negate its importance in their own lives, because they have been taught that love is against their religion and culture—and that sex and love making outside the confines of a marriage are sins.
It’s Easier To Hate Than To Love
Modi’s new India is against the very concept of love (or so, it feels) and endorses the idea of how these are westernised celebrations that threaten Hindu culture and its religious sentiments.
This reminds me of the Akshay Khanna and Kareena Kapoor film “Hulchul” in which an old man trains all his sons to hate women, whilst no one questions him about why he had so many sons if he hated women so much?
While in 2022, our youth should have been liberated from their genetic emotional baggage, what has happened is just the opposite.
Now, a new generation of people who bear the burden of hatred exist, for it is easier to hate in India than to find a safe place to date your loved one, without the fear of being beaten up by right-wing goons.
India Is Being Divided On Communal Lines
I have grown up in a setup where we were taught to protect what we love. Destruction or destroying something was never a part of it. But, today, the country is being broken up on the lines of communal hatred.
Bones are being broken in the name of preserving a woman’s dignity without ever consulting her or considering her wishes; married couples who chose each other consensually and mutually, are being beaten up and separated; little kids are being taught about the importance of celibacy in the name of safe sex practices, without considering the reality of the world they live in.
The same saffron wearing leaders have ill treated Dalits and kept them out of temples for years; and women to whom they have meted out a similar fate. Today, they talk about how much they love lord Ram and their country.
Our Heritage Is Based On Love
They might claim that what they against a minority is to save the country. With such a distorted idea of love, this country will be doomed and its youth destroyed.
Saints from our lands have talked of love and compassion—and how important it is for the well being of families and communities at large. This new India is scary for it hates everything that has love… Advertisements, inter-caste and inter-faith marriages, Valentine’s days, and worst of all—the freedom to choose what one loves.
Hatred has been sneaked into our roots and it will take decades to repair the damage. Modi’s new India hates love and destroys everything to do with it.