Happy Belated Valentine’s Day, mutineers. Hope you lovely folks got all the flowers, chocolates and cards you deserve. I was doing a little post-celebratory research tonight on Valentine’s Day and came across a couple of interesting facts I thought you folks might like to learn a la our good friend, Wikipedia. For instance, did you know that American men spend twice as much money on Valentine’s Day than women? And that in Paris, there was a ‘High Court of Love’ established on Valentine’s Day in 1400 that dealt with crimes against women? And that the judges for that court were picked by women, based on their love poetry? Oh yeah, and finally did you know that in India, Hindu fundamentalists highly discourage the celebration of Valentine’s Day? Of course you do, you read SM. We’ve covered that in the past. Not to worry, Shiv Sena continued its anti-Valentine’s Day diatribes this year, although they were a little distracted. So many grievances, so little time… what’s a violent protestor to do nowadays? It’s gotten so there’s too many effigies to burn.
With most of their aggressive workers identified and picked up by the police ahead of the release of My Name Is Khan, Shiv Sena members have admitted that their annual Valentine Day protests will likely be low-key, if they happen at all.
Every year, Sainiks denounce the concept of Valentine’s Day and warn couples against celebrating it, but this year, they say, the agitation against Shah Rukh Khan and his movie are of more immediate importance. [Link.]
Perhaps they’ve turned their sights to virtual protests? Alongside the other factoids on Wikipieda, I came across this interesting new poster, which was uploaded on Wikipedia’s ‘Valentine’s Day’ this past Saturday. I thought SM readers would find it as amusing as I did.
Beware of Valentine’s Day, huh? SMH. That’s web-lingo for ‘shaking my head.’ So ‘Valentine’s Day’ which is all part of ‘Western culture’ leads to ‘external attraction,’ which leads to ‘unethical conduct,’ which leads to ‘A Moment’s Happiness,’ which leads to ‘Immoral Behavior,’ which leads to ‘Destruction?’ I’m pretty sure I saw the same posters in the Sunday school class at the Mennonite church I attended as a nine-year old. Oh, the common threads that bind us.
This ‘scientific’ information is good to know, thanks HJS. God forbid children should exchange sweets. What if they haz the sex? Or the inter-religious marriages? Tsk, tsk. What is this world coming to?
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HJS didnt get the memo. English is western. They should use an Indian language, I propose sanskrit. So no one can read it.
That poster reminds me of the anti-Halloween brochures I got as a kid (from whatever christian denomination; probably General Baptists). The scare tactics, they are everywhere.
The noun is “shararat”, the adjective is “shararati” (as in “shararati ladkey”). Not to be pedantic or anything. 🙂
Very interesting. Would love to have read the entire treatise, but it was giving me eye strain!
yeah… dont celebrate valintines day. celebrate indian patriotism. these things are close substitutes because… umm….
The poster artist must have taken a few pointers from Jack Chick . Ironically, Chick has similar posters on the “evils” of Hinduism/Eastern religions.
Because they’re in black and white? Because I really don’t see any other similarities in art style.
Actually, I’m pretty sure the stuff in here is just cut & pasted clip-art.
Nooooo, don’t strain your eyes. I linked to the original, check it out on their website.
Phillygrrl probably meant the plural, ‘sharaaraten’ (which btw is also the title of a Bollywood movie): as in Valentine’s Day par ladkiyon ki shararaten.
Brilliant. Do they not realize how many “anti-nationals” are celebrated in Hinduism? Ah well, maybe they and their muslim counterparts can co-host a valentine bonfire or something. Unity through hate is still unity, y’know!
We elites could laugh and dismiss them as unintentionally funny idiots….
But when they gather together, they do beat people who just want to have fun and are minding their own business. Those who feel oppressed or frustrated do join the Sena. This is not funny all…I think we need some sort of piece like the one by Stetson Kennedy (for Superman) that made KKK a laughing stock of everyone and their KIDS. Only then will the Sena grow up (or more hopefully disappear)….
5 · Puliogre in da USA:
Bharat Mata + Oedipus
When SM feels free to ridicule Hindu fundamentalists this way, but would never do so to equally regressive conduct by Muslims (for example, burqa), it makes me feel like my people are treated as if they’re on the short-bus. Which many of course are, but I’m a big girl and so are a lot of the rest of us.
Aaaaaaah, I know understand why I have been battling my addiction to smoking! It was all those Valentine’s leading to my indecent behaviour…. 😀
Halloween all the way, because kids pretending to be monsters > monsters pretending to be in love
As crude and unsophisticated as this ‘poster’ is, these guys have a smidgen of a point, albeit expressed in a slightly twisted way – I have myself abhorred V’day for the whole and crass commercialness of it all. I happened to be in Bombay a few years ago during this time, and the only thing you could see in the media was either the hooliganism of these pseudo-hindu clowns, or this phony V-day crowd, trying to out-american everybody else.
I wonder if there a middle path out there somwhere.
The middle path isn’t out there PhillyBoy.
The Middle path, why, the middle path is in your heart.
i really hope it’s more than a moment- otherwise, what’s the pointof corrupting oneself?
thanks for the post, phillygrrl – from what i have been reading and hearing from friends in bombay, the shiv sena, along with the mns, is getting increasingly out of control. at least,wrt to the srk/mnik issue, it’s good to see that the mumbai police prevented a lot of disturbance by taking a strong stance.
i don’t get (violent) hooliganism – i’ve always thought that it so much more effective to discard/verbally belittle those who have a different opinion;)
It’s typical acting out behavior. But, perhaps, they have a vague inkling of how indigenous traditions were wiped out by monotheist and corporate religions in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Europe, Persia, Sindh, Punjab, Goa, Kerala, Kashmir, Afghnaistan, Central Asia, the Phillipines, Bangladesh, Korea, Africa, North America, South America, Central America, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and Pandora, and they just don’t have the powers of articulation of your typical Harvard Yale -educated abcd yuppy? But go ahead and yuck it up. It’s the “ticket”, if you know what I mean.
I did a college year in Madurai, Tamil Nadu in 2002-03. My only reminder of Valentine’s Day was in the morning on my way to school, in a city bus. The driver (or someone) had written “Happy Lover’s Day” on a large piece of paper and stuck it to the inside of the windshield.
Perhaps that’s a middle path?
You know, I find it silly that some Hindu organization needs to put up such a poster. But I do wonder why people in India supposedly have started to celebrate Valentines Day. What does that got to do with India? India doesn’t need any more Hallmark card days to burden themselves with. Why not come up with one of their own instead of copying the west. Is it true some Indian families have been having Thanksgiving Day get togethers. Are they going to change their Independence Day to July 4th?
Good point. It’s the hypocrisy which is stifling. Just appoint an America Day. Problem khalaas.
Sharmishtha and Plural, thanks for helping me with my Hinglish/Urdish. Sorry about that. I should’ve checked with my mom 🙂 I’m going with ‘sharaaraten’ now.
Referring back to Wikipedia, if I may Praveen, what does it have to do with America?
Yes, why are people in India eating pizzas? Are paranthas not good enough? I make mine with only a smidgen of ghee — it’s very good for health, and add a bit of ajwain — very good for digestion. The crust is made from refined flour, but our paranthas can be made with stone ground wholesome grain flour. No good comes from eating pizza — tt is very cheesy and fatty. Why add something unwholesome to our great cuisines and support foreigner-owned companies?
But it’s modern yaar! You want to be modern don’t you?
There is nothing more terrifying to the Indian upper-classes than the prospect of being thought of as backwards and unsophisticated. Since they share skin-tone with so many of the unwashed masses, it’s easier to assuage how uncomfortable they are in their own skin by adopting some deracinated “global citizen” hokum that they conflate with “modernity.”
I’m sure glad that the Shiv Sena wasn’t around when the Portuguese introduced the tomato, potato, and chili pepper to the subcontinent.
Great, now I’m hungry. Thanks a lot.
Next time the pizza boy makes a delivery, I’ll be sure to find his ancestral temple and build a copy of san thome cathedral atop it.
AnnoyedDesiMuslim, never say never. Email me the stories and I’ll blog ’em, geez. I’m all about the equal-opportunity hatemonger bashing. As for phillyboy, well if you can’t see the difference between hating Valentine’s Day for its background of commercialism and hating it based on religious principles…well…not sure if I can help ya.
there are parallel movements around the world – closer to home the quebecois movement has adopted similar hardline measures to preserve their culture. there is even a language police that charges store owners for not having signage or public displays in french – of the right size, and the right spelling. they are somewhat dogmatic about it, to the point that quebec is the onyl place on the planet that doesnt want to call emails as ’emails’ preferring to use a rather odd ‘courriels’. even the stop signs are ‘arrete’ rather than Stop (as in france). it may seem abrasive but when i take a pan-canadian view, quebec sticks out as a province that has successfully preserved a unique culture and (to me) surprisingly is home to a disproportionate number of canadian worldleading companies [bombardier, bell helicopters, snc lavalin, jean coutu]. while i admittedly dont know much about the shiv sena movement beyond the caricatures, i would not be dismissive of these token gestures. i suspect it all ends up being a net positive for the state of maharashtra and i think the state would be poorer without the maratha nationalism.
Touché, mais rasam vaut bien une messe
Also, here you go PhillyGrrl.
Anti-commercialism/globalization is a religious principle. In fact, in the modern age it is probably one of the most salient ones and I would be willing to bet that it is the most powerful motivating factor behind modern religious or traditionalist revivalism. It’s a common strain that goes across most right wing religious revivalist movements as well as hippy-dippy spiritualist/neo-pagan stuff. It underlies the slow food movement and locovores, and all these other, basically anti-modern, traditionalist movements as well.
No. The Sena is an important party in Maharashtra. If you are in business, and want to get permits for your business, it makes sense of join the Sena. So, lots of sensible people are in the Sena. They provide the finances every party needs to succeed.
Let’s not laugh at the violent cadre. All parties have to have a violent cadre. How else will they grab the voting booths? How else will they prevent the other parties from capturing the voting booths?
Stopping Valentine’s day is not a big deal. You have lawyers and policemen fighting in the Chennai High Court. You have legislators throwing paper weights at each other.
Why do you say the Sena is frustrated or somehow worse than any other political party?
Fixed link.
a reaction all through the world – UK and the BNP, france with its stance against UN having one official language, the burka in public order etc. looks like people everywhere are hitting some saturation point in terms of diversity. Even in India, the name changes of cities is juxtaposed with more citizens of the city feeling more as citizens of the world. The Shiv Sena/MNS is just narrowing the divide to hold onto not just Indian values, but to regionalise the issue, as well.
a point i wanted to stress is that it is easy to mock the outre, but not paying heed to the motivation for the activism is doing grave disservice to the broad people. the question i woudl pose here is if the shiv sena is indeed the representation of maratha nationalism? if so, does it even make sense to highlight a single incident as being representative of the entire movement? alternately, is this single incident an encapsulation of the complete movement, all its chauvinism, all its dogmatism all gathered in one fell swoop into a poorly written internet page?
man bites dog.
Booth capture? Which era are you living in, man? This is the era of EVM. Where Kongress flunkey Chawla (of Emergency fame) declares Chidu the winner after an “EVM recount.”
the question i woudl pose here is if the shiv sena is indeed the representation of maratha nationalism?
The answer to that would be ‘no’. Their leadership is a mercenary outfit looking to make money and exercise power.
Besides, ‘Maratha’ is a caste not a nationality. Perhaps you meant ‘Marathi’. During its stint in power the Shivsena did nothing to encourage Marathi writers, filmmakers or linguistic resources in any way. Threatening businesses to put up signs in Marathi is about the extent of their language nationalism.
New to Indian politics are we?
I’m on a Young Sindhi Adults list serv and recently got a chain email which claims that Valentine’s Day has its origins in Sindh. It’s obviously a humorous piece meant for laughs but I thought I’d share since its so interesting to see what may be appropriated as part of a national identity (for example English as pointed out before) and what may be vehemently rejected (Valentine’s Day)
in this narrative, the westerners not only got the idea of valentine’s day from south asia but also corrupted the word from “velan-time” to “valentine”
BTW – “velan” means “rolling pin” in Sindhi and the holiday allegedly started when wives would beat their husbands with their velans and to avoid this punishment, husbands would bring flowers and sweets to their wives.
the story is really long so I’m only including a small excerpt: As Sind with the rest of India fell under the influence of Western culture, with Sindhis migrating world wide, the ritual soon spread to Britain and many other Western countries, specifically, the catch words ‘Velan time’ !!!
In course of time, their foreign tongues, this got anglicized to ‘Velantime’ and then to ‘Valentine’. And thereafter, 14th of February, came to be known as Valentine’s Day and now you know the true story of Valentine’s day.
you are civilized and hence you dont get it 🙂 power flows from teh barrel of a gun or something like that 🙂 violence works far better than verballing someone regardless of cultures. Verballing works only when violence is off the drawing board so to speak. Try having a verbal argument with a bikie and it will quickly degenerate into violence.
one reason is that it’s an outlet for the frustration of unemployed able bodied young men without adequate opportunities. another reason is that parties like to exploit this for their benefit as it is certainly easier than winning the support of the people through actual beneficial works. i mean – in india, where infrastructure etc. is quite abysmal, even in a major metro like mumbai (think about roads, electricity, toilets), surely a party that actually cared could win people’s support by making a dramatic difference on these counts instead of fighting phantoms like immigrants and insults to maratha pride. and soon, the cycle perpetrates itself in explosions of inchoate rage without people even knowing exactly what they’re fighting for. it is depressing.
it’s especially ironic since vada pav, the de facto street food of bombay, has the word pao which itself was borrowed by marathi from portuguese. and of course, pav is the bread in pav bhaji, another iconic food item in bombay.
Shiv Sena/MNS will get obsolete soon unless they are able to get substantial traction on the marathi manoos issue. Indians are getting more tharkee by the day, financial freedom and excuse from home to work during the night at call centers has started a sexual revolution at a small scale. Pretty soon it would be only jerks from Shiv Sena who will be jerking off.
The strange behavior of desis on V-Day can be seen across the board. My child’s class was to have a “friendship party” (during school hours) on Friday 02/12/2010 and as wife-ji is volunteer-organizer-class-mom so she received an “not attending” rsvp from a Indian-hijabi-mom, reason was a medical appointment for the child. Now, the party was postponed and was organized today, Ms Indian-hijbi-mom swooped in and picked up the child 5 minutes before the party. This kid is getting 10 hours of Arabic per week so that she could read Quran, OTOH in school the poor kid needs all sorts of help with academics. Oh! and these kids are just babies most of them still have their milk teeth.
I couldn’t disagree more. The marathi manoos issue is a 3 way fight between the Congress, Shiv Sena and the MNS, where each one is trying to outdo the other. There won’t be a clear winner on this issue. On the other hand, the Shiv Sena has a winner in the SRK issue – because the Maharashtra Congress is being compelled to make love to Pakistan by the high command.
true dat. cue the cong parochialism on the domicile and language requirement for cabbies in bombay.
actually no. people voted with their wallets and their free time and made the ss eat crow on this one.
Look at the brighter side. Say you are in love with a girl & you want to marry her. She is not yet keen on this idea. Take her out on V day, ask your friend to call the sri ram sene (in case if you are in Bangalore). They will come, scold you, they will ask you tie a rakhi or mangalya. Make your move quickly, before the girl picks up the rakhi, pick the Mangalya & tie it. Later claim innocence, telling you were really scared & didn’t know what to do 🙂
Phillygrrl – You did not address one major thing. This is also about the conflict between two India’s. One which is poor/rural & the other – middle class/rich/urban. While the one wants move towards the west, the other wants to hold back since it cannot have access to all these. Since poor outnumber rich/middle class in India these things are bound to happen. If say 8 people are poor & don’t have enough to eat will they be happy if they see 2 people spending on cake/champagne? This is also the reason for the growing menace of Naxals. Then all these are manipulated by politicians/religious leaders.
‘Phillygrrl – You did not address one major thing. This is also about the conflict between two India’s. ‘
Great point, Akash. Thanks.
Most of this culture war broohaha is a middle class/upper class divide. India’s poor are too busy making ends meet to worry about existential notions of identity. Even the communist ideology is rooted in a “You get to shoot guns and take whatever you want from anyone!” recruiting ethos. The ideological indoctrination comes in later.
It’s the middle class that tends to be skeptical of the whole progressive agenda and concerned about cultural values while the literati like to style themselves as “modern” and “cosmopolitan.” Politics, insofar as the poor are concerned, is pretty much purely transactional. Free electricity, subsidies, and who is going to get patronage jobs and money to my caste or village or [insert litany of narrow parochial interests here.]