[RolandBurnam]

I'm highly offended by their disrespect for our traditions. They should be more tolerant. We should bomb the hell out of this country.

[cantfindagoodscreenname]

I agree that the west has a lot of immorality, but I don't blame it on Valentine's Day, lol. This is just bizarre. Maybe I'm clueless about Valentine's Day because all of mine have been very innocent. :-)

[Fintan]

 

[livius]

I'm always amused by this, because as holidays go, Valentine's Day has got to be about the most inoffensive one on the block. Granted, it's super commercial, but how can people get enraged about candy hearts and fluffy stuffed animals?

[silverleaf]

Waiting for a photo of rabid peasants stomping on burning "good heart" Care Bears ...
Ham du l'allah!

[CarrotAndStick]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/V-day06/index3.htm

[joesnuffy]

Mohamhead hates ------- (fill in the blank)...

An Islamic valentine card

[Hoodlum91]

That's awesome! Can I join in?

[CarrotAndStick]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1414851.cms


V-Day fever has Indian youth in grip

[ Tuesday, February 14, 2006 06:43:36 pm IANS ]


NEW DELHI: Love was in the air as twosomes thronged parks, restaurants and malls in major cities to celebrate Valentine's Day with roses, chocolates and sweet nothings under the stern watch of Hindu hardline groups who tried hard to mar the celebrations.

Lovers were everywhere - holding hands and cosying up in parks and open spaces, meeting in lounges, discotheques, pubs and even parking lots - as flower sellers made a killing with a single rose stalk going for as much as Rs 50 in some places.

It looked as if the Indian heart had wholeheartedly adopted this day as its very own.

"For me the day is too special, since I got my girlfriend on February 14 three years ago. It's a kind of love anniversary for both of us," a beaming Moses Phillip, a young executive in the capital, said.

In Mumbai, couples celebrated the day on a low-key keeping the Shiv Sena protests in mind.



"We will be watching a movie and maybe go to a good restaurant. The point is we need to spend time together. We do not have to exhibit it and invite trouble," said Amrit Mehta, an undergraduate student of economics in Mumbai.

There was a palpable sense of caution among youngsters, especially after the hard stand taken by the Shiv Sena, the Hindu rightwing party, against celebrating the day.

The police stepped up security to end the vandalism of card stores that accompanies the celebration every year. Elaborate security arrangements were made to protect gift shop owners and the general public.

In Hyderabad, the Hindu rightwing Bajrang Dal married off a couple to prove the point that marriage was the best way to celebrate love, but the pair had not been found celebrating the day.

However, in Kolkata, romance was very much in the air, as Hindu radicals did not attempt to smother the celebrations in Communist-ruled West Bengal.



While traditional spots like the sprawling Victoria Memorial garden, Nandan film complex and the Maidan areas were full of love birds expressing their inner feelings with empty nothings, the new joints like the vast City Centre shopping mall and cine-plex in Salt Lake were chock-a-block with the natty Generation Next crowd.

Valentine's Day greetings cards, many in Bengali, were selling very well, said shopkeepers despite the growing popularity and convenience of SMS greetings. Heart shaped balloons and candles were also selling well in City Centre.

In Indore town, activists of the radical Hindu Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) were arrested on Tuesday before they could carry out their threat of marring Valentine's Day celebrations.

Reports reaching Madhya Pradesh state capital Bhopal said 35 activists of the two groups were taken into custody when they gathered at a prominent square armed with hockey sticks, rods and chains. They had intended to visit parks and restaurants to prevent couples from celebrating the day.

Security was upped in Bhopal too where the Bajrang Dal had formed 17 teams to ensure that couples don't celebrate the day. The group threatened to nab canoodling couples and hand them over to their parents. In Chandigarh, scores of police personnel kept a vigil on Tuesday to keep lovebirds in the city under check.



Some markets in the city's famous 'Geri route' (Geri means moving in circles), were full with the colour of love - red - with decorated shops and balloon-sellers doing brisk business. The youth had booked restaurants and discos for the evening for a date out with their valentines.

"With so much police around, who cannot think of love on the Geri route. It's better to let your hair down at the evening party," said Amrita, a second year arts student as she went around the route accompanied by friends in her car.

Barricades had been put up at nearly two dozen places all over the city to keep youngsters under check, especially while driving. The Shiv Sena in Kerala called for boycotting the celebrations, claiming that it is a Western culture and would breach family bonds in the state.

Sena leader M.S. Bhuvanachandran said the outfit had called for protests in Kochi. However, restaurant, cafeteria and discotheque owners in major cities were happy with the booming business on Tuesday.

"The partying on Valentine's Day is just getting bigger with each passing year. More and more people want to celebrate it. From young lovers to newly married couples all have been flooding our discotheque like never before," said Sunil Verma, of a leading south Delhi disco.



According to Verma, the youngsters were now slowly bringing their parents to join them.

"I have been celebrating Valentine's Day for the last five years with my boyfriend. While my parents were not very approving earlier, this year they are accompanying me for a special dinner in a five star hotel," said Nupur Sharma, a call centre executive in New Delhi.

Youths were quite upset with the protests by the Hindu radicals. "People should not interfere in such a lovely celebration. While trying to dampen the spirit of the celebration, activists of Bajrang Dal are behaving like anti-social elements," said Rajesh Pradhan, who came to Delhi's Lodhi Garden with his partner.

If young lovers were gung-ho about Valentine's Day, so were the newly weds.

"So what if we are not teenagers, we want to keep our love alive and what better occasion than Valentine's Day?" said Rubi Das. "For the last three days me and my husband were celebrating."

---

©Bennett, Coleman and Co., Ltd. Estd. 1838, in India.
All rights reserved.

[Mcirrus]

Protesting love lol, what will they they do next protest against peace and human rights?

[kajingawd]

...love-love-love. Nothing you can do that can't be done, nothing you can say that can't be sung...

love-love-love

[CarrotAndStick]

http://loveishere.indiatimes.com/

[57Chevy]

I can not understand their lack of rspect to our hearts and our love of our females. Valentines is a day to show your love and respect for your spouse, friend or anyone you want to say "I love You". Burning valentine cards depict that you dont love anyone. Thats ok, some folks dont care about others. Should we riot or start burning down their embassy. No, americans are not animals. We still have logic and feelings.

[RichInOC]

Fellas, chill. Just admit it: You don't have girlfriends, do you? That's all right. We understand.

...want cookie?

[Ramcat]

I'm looking out my window and I see a throng of youths gathering.
Perhaps to protest the Muslims treatment and depiction of a big American chocolate day?
They're looking restless. I observe some jostling among them.
Will there be trouble?
A black and gold number 36 school bus approaches and stops. The youth push their way onto the bus talking smack on one another.
No violence to report at this time. Perhaps the youth have not received word yet of the Muslim atrocities?

[MarxSux]

Egads! For one moment I thought this was Scrappleface!

[CarrotAndStick]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/south_asia/1820440.stm

India's fascination with Valentine's Day

The Taj Mahal - India's most famous expression of love

The BBC's Vijay Rana explains how Valentine's Day has replaced more traditional celebrations of love in India

Among the numerous gods of the Hindu pantheon, Kamadev is the lord of love.

He wields a bow of flowers.

Couples fall in love when struck by his rose-decorated arrows.

India is also the home of the Kamasutra, the most elaborate treatise on lovemaking.

There are numerous folk tales of legendary lovers who kissed death with a promise to meet, or rather mate, in heaven.

These old tales are so lurid they make Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet a pale afterthought.

Indians protesting against Valentine's Day celebrations make one wonder what has happened to the people who once sculpted the passionate love makers on the temple walls at Khajuraho.

That ancient tradition of love died somewhere in the Middle Ages.

No longer was it celebrated in public cultural displays.

Lovers were frowned upon.

Sexual suppression was severe and vehement.

Lovers who came from unequal castes were punished and even occasionally executed.

The tradition of Kamadev was buried and the lessons of the Kamasutra were forgotten - then, a decade ago, Valentine's Day began to make an impression in India.

Recent advent

Before that, hardly anyone celebrated Valentines Day in India.

Purists dubbed it as another decadent influence of the west.

But economic globalisation followed by the emergence of a class of neo-rich brought in a new a culture of fancy dinners and dance clubs, foreign satellite channels and expensive card shops.

Their clientele were the privileged few.

But millions of those who were unable to escape the grind of a meagre life could not be deprived of Valentine's universal gift of love.

Commercial TV channels invented special Valentine shows, dedications of love filled radio programmes and even love letter competitions were organised.

When Indians do something they tend to overdo it.

Weeks before Valentine's Day street Romeos reappear everywhere.

Many of them pretend to enact the Bollywood style boy-meets-girl stories that often degenerate into verbal abuse.

Tough love

Such harassment of women is a widespread problem in many parts of India.

Perhaps to lighten the social guilt it is rather imaginatively described as 'eve teasing'.

This kind of abuse becomes rampant in the days preceding Valentine's Day.

There is simply no escape for those girls uninfected by the love bug.

"It is virtually impossible to get out of your house before you find a love-struck class-fellow waiting for you. And you never know what they will do," said one of the harassed girls.

Sexual crimes are not uncommon in India.

Jilted lovers have strange ways of taking revenge: Verbal abuse, physical assaults, rapes, kidnappings and even throwing of acid and disfiguring a woman for life.

Sociologists have yet to come up with figures, but there is clear evidence that this abuse grows during the Valentine season.

People find ingenious ways to express love.

A few years ago a drunken thug, emulating a Bollywood film hero, arrived on horseback with a gun in his hand.

He fired a shot in the air and declared to the terrified father of the girl he fancied: "The bandit king has not come to destroy your house, but to marry your daughter and to shower prosperity on your house."

---

[snarks_when_bored]

This is a beautiful story of feuding religions joining together to oppose the disgusting Western decadence that is Valentine's Day. Perhaps peace in our time isn't so far away after all.

[Raj13008]

Much ado about nothing , really. Both the pro and anti V-day folks are wasting their time. Not that there is anything wrong with V-day if it helps one to get laid....chicks are easy on this particular day/night.....

[RGSpincich]

I'm all for eliminating Valentines day. When is it this year?