No forced shaadi, only roses from right-wing groups in Delhi

NEW DELHI: In a bizarre turn of events, Hindu Sena activists ended up offering white roses to the protesters who were detained outside its office at Mandir Marg on Saturday. Till Friday, right-wing groups like Hindu Mahasabha and Hindu Sena had been threatening to “marry off” couples found courting on Valentine’s Day.
The Facebook-driven protest of city students was against this threat but the saffron organizations said they had been “pressured” by BJP to call off their anti-V-Day programme—forced weddings of lovers and ‘shuddhikaran’ of couples from different communities.“The party has asked us not to take up any such programmes in the city. The situation in Delhi is not conducive (to such events), especially after the poll debacle and the recent attacks on Christian institutions,” said a Mahasabha member who didn’t wish to be named.
“There is pressure on us from the top,” admitted president of Hindu Sena Vishnu Gupta. He was heard trying to reason with the protesters while they were being marched into police buses, telling them that his organization had no problems with love but only with western celebrations like Valentine’s Day. In the melee, police, mistaking a Hindu Sena volunteer for a protester (he was holding a rose), shoved him into the bus, too. They let him off when the confusion cleared.
Protesters had come in waves on Saturday morning, breaking the police cordon at both ends of Mandir Marg where Section 144 had been enforced.
At 12.30pm, the first batch of students gathered near the intersection of Mandir Marg and Peshwa Road broke through the barricades and made a dash for the Hindu Mahasabha office. Another batch of protestors followed them. A few minutes after they began sloganeering, the police arrived in large numbers and started hauling them into buses.
One of the protest banners read: ‘Who the hell are you to stop me? See. I’m here in my streets.’ Police officials said 225 protestors had been detained, all of whom were let go in the evening.
Student groups from Delhi University and JNU, including Students Federation of India (SFI) and Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Students Union (JNUSU), had organized Saturday’s protest a few days ago on Facebook. That’s where most protestors heard about the event. The idea of the protest, which didn’t go as planned, was to reach the Mahasabha’s office and offer themselves to Hindu priests to be married. There were protesters from sexual minorities, too.
Pallav Dev from Kirori Mal College arrived with Riya from Ambedkar University, both looking for “spouses”. “I planned to look for a boy to marry and my friend Riya, a girl,” said Dev. An Austrian student, who didn’t want to be named, had joined the protest though she was taken aback by the subsequent violence. “I didn’t expect police to force so many people into the bus. All we did was to assemble here,” she said.
Among those who turned up for the protest and were detained by the police were members of the popular band, Ska Vengers. “I don’t know why the police stuffed us inside the bus. We had assembled here peacefully,” was all that Sammara Chopra, one of the lead singers of the band, could say before the bus was driven off.
Hindu priests, outraged by the brazenness of the protesters, weren’t amused. “This is not our culture. These people don’t have the right to do whatever they want. If they take this western path, they’ll surely end in misery. We can’t allow this,” Madhav Shastri, a priest from a temple run by Hindu Mahasabha, said.