Nisha Susan is a busy lady on an unusual Valentine’s Day mission, sorting out piles of cards, letters and lots of pink underwear — all destined for a right-wing Hindu vigilante group.
“There are many of these coming every day, these ones for instance are from Jaipur” in western India, said the 20-something Susan, holding up a pair of vivid pink panties.
Susan is founder of the “Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women” — a group she set up as a provocative response to a recent attack by Hindu extremists on young women drinking in a bar in southern India.
PHOTO: AFP
Television footage of Sri Ram Sena (SRS, or Army of Lord Ram) activists chasing, slapping and kicking the terrified women prompted widespread condemnation and outrage.
The attackers, who style themselves as guardians of traditional Hindu values, were briefly detained and then released on bail, prompting Susan to take matters into her own hands.
Using the Facebook social networking site, she appealed to Indian women to send in their pink chaddis — a colloquial Hindi term for underwear.
The panties would then be sent to the SRS as a special “gift” for Valentine’s Day — an event the right-wing group denounces as Western and decadent.
“We want to tell these people that there are other ways of protesting, particularly the non-violent way,” Susan said.
The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women already has 20,000 Facebook members and the underwear is coming in thick and fast.
Contributions — some of them from men — have arrived from across the country and from all age groups, said Isha Manchanda, a member of the campaign.
“One of the contributors was a 55-year-old woman who said she had not been to a pub in her life or celebrated Valentine’s Day but was joining our cause because she was horrified by what she saw on television,” Manchanda said.
In the wake of the pub attack, India’s Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowduri compared the SRS to the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the group’s leadership was unrepentant.
Not only did it defend the violence, but it also warned that any shops buying into the Valentine’s Day market would face attack.
“Drinking, socializing, celebrating Valentine’s Day is all part of Western culture which is corrupting our Indian culture,” SRS general secretary V.K. Rajesh said.
“We are not against love. But we are against loose morals we see among the younger generation, which is blindly aping the West. And we will not spare these people and take whatever action needed within the law,” he said.
Rajesh did not seem fazed by the impending deluge.
“We welcome the gifts. Those who send us the underwear, we will send them pink saris. It is symbolic of Indian culture,” he said.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant