Mumbai: Love Commandos is a reactionary force- one born to oppose the repressive and regressive tendencies of self-appointed outfits for moral-policing such as the Hindu Mahasabha or the Yuva Morcha. Formed in July 2010 in India, the group shelters couples on the run who have nowhere to hide and are being hounded by their own families or other groups. The growing assertiveness of right-wing groups that oppose any public display of affection as an undesirable Western influence or seek to clamp-down on the rights of women to dress or behave as they choose has also spawned a series of other reactionary campaigns from the Pink Chaddi Campaign to the Kiss Of Love campaign, Write a Love Letter campaign and the Shuddh Desi Romance campaign.
Armed special police and encounter specialists from Uttar Pradesh took over a suburban Delhi locality last summer combing through the streets to look for a 22-year-old whose only offence seemed to be that he had fallen in love with the daughter of an influential liquor baron in Agra. The young couple had eloped and taken refuge with the Love Commandos, an organisation that helps lovers on the run. The situation steadily turned more volatile.
“If Delhi Police had not stepped in at the right moment, our corpses would have figured in the dailies the next day,” remembers Sanjay Sachdev, journalist and Love Commandos chief. “The Agra police had illegally used mobile tower surveillance that usually requires a government permit and a home secretary clearance to track us down,” he says, adding that the incident had exposed one of their shelters in the city.
Sachdev says, Love Commandos was reportedly formed in July 2010, following a fake rape case being slapped against a man. The girl went on record to say that she was not a minor, and that their relationship was consensual. She even refused to undergo a medical test. Yet, the police attested to the statement given by the girl’s father.
The man then procured bail and Love Commandos was formed a few days later, proving that every action has an equally strong and unexpected reaction. In four- and-a-half years, the force has helped thousands of couples. They have seven dedicated apartments which shelters couples on the run. Apart from that, couples can also hide in the 300 odd houses of some of those they have helped save.
Sachdev, whose service has practically turned into a life-line for many says, Some live here for a few hours, while some stay with us for months. But he admits finances have been a persistent problem. It takes them between Rs.8 lakh-Rs.12 lakh each month to run the shelters. But support has apparently spiralled since actor Aamir Khan featured them in an episode of his popular show Satyamev Jayate last year.
Likewise, in February 2009, the Pink Chaddi Campaign (or Pink Underwear Campaign) was born. The campaign was a brainchild of Nisha Susan, an employee of Tehelka political magazine. Described as a nonviolent protest movement launched by the Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women, the campaign was conceived particularly in protest against a threat by Pramod Muthalik of the Sri Ram Sene an orthodox Hindu group based in Mangalore, Southern India. Muthalik threatened to marry off and take other action on any young couples found together on Valentine’s Day.
Following public outrage over an attack on 6 February 2009, by a group of men from the Sri Ram Sene, on a group of women in a pub in Mangalore, a group of young women, urged a peaceful protest (described as Gandhian in the press) to all of India, by sending pink underwear (“Chaddi” in Hindi) to Muthalik’s office on Valentine’s Day. As the protest grew, underwear started pouring in from locations all over India in solidarity for the “Love Sena”. The Pink Chaddi Campaign received widespread media coverage, and the Facebook group saw numbers of members growing exponentially in the following days. A few reports were also critical of the campaign accusing it of trivialising an important issue like attack on women.
Eventually a tentative truce was established as Pramod Muthalik expressed his inclination for a dialogue to resolve the issue.
Similarly, Sukhesh Vadavils Kiss Of Love campaign spearheaded in Kochi was in defence of freedom of expression. When a Calicut restaurant was vandalised by Yuva Morcha goons because visuals of young couples making out was released by a TV channel, Sukhesh and a few friends who were part of a Facebook group decided that enough was enough. “If they had a problem with people kissing, we thought why not go and kiss in front of them,” says Vadavil. So, the group invited people for a march to Kochi’s Marine Drive to kiss publicly.
The Kiss of Love campaign gave way to several chapters across the country. Groups led similar campaigns in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pondicherry, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and Jadavpur. In Vadavils view, the underlying issue here is patriarchy and the need to suppress women. He says, The problem is not as much with watching people kiss in public as much as it is in letting a woman chose her own fate. Letting a woman exert control over who she chooses to sleep with or marry is scary.
During Valentine’s Day last month, these campaigners launched the Write a Love Letter campaign against a Hindu Mahasabha diktat that unmarried couples professing love to each other in public or in social media would be married off.
The diktat also invited the ire of the guys behind the Shuddh Desi Romance campaign, who planned to reach the Hindu Mahasabha office in Delhi in full marriage attire in defiance. A lot of our LGBTIQ friends are also planning to turn up. If the Hindu Mahasabha is generous enough, why not get married?, said a group member. What all these groups are fighting for is essentially their freedom- one guaranteed by the constitution of India. The idea is not as much as to assert their right to celebrate Valentine’s Day as it is to assert their rights to public places, right to protest, right to chose life partners, right to love. It is simply about living and letting live- with peace, and dignity.