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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS