Girls wearing jeans or mini skirts, girls smoking and drinking, Valentine’s day, girls talking to guys have all been of late victims of a growing moral police in India. This self-styled Indian Taliban claim their origins in Hindu culture such as Bajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sena. Their ludicrous motive – to preserve Indian culture!

As I see it, culture is an evolving construct of a society defined by the society. It is certainly not harking back 500 years in history and claiming not to progress from there. It is not the prerogative of a few fringe groups to define or regulate culture. And lastly, smoking and drinking are not the privilege of males alone.

The attack on the Mangalore pub, on Hindu girls talking to Muslim boys, and on establishments welcoming lovers on Valentine’s day is a modern phenomenon in India of perhaps the 21st Century. It is then ironic that these groups practicing violence and preaching intolerance claim historic foundations!

Ashok Singhal, the president of VHP, while on the one side condemns violence and hooliganism on “western” culture, he advocates a rigid Taliban-style social code on the other. He is against recreational drugs, premarital sex and extramarital pregnancy. Intoxication and sex have been celebrated in India throughout the ages, so it is strange that he claims their basis in western modernism.

While unfortunately narcotic drugs are outlawed in India, there are no laws against inter-community relationships, premarital sex or extramarital pregnancies. Marriage is after all an artificial construct whereas love, sex and pregnancy abound in nature. Therefore, it is baffling that the moral police allow love, sex and pregnancy within marriage.

I don’t think we need any group telling us what we can or cannot do. What do you think?

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