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A fringe group of fundamentalist self-styled guardians of "Indian/Hindu culture" called Sri Ram Sene, has set in motion events that may lead to India's most colorful Valentine's Day, thanks to the timely Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose and Forward Women and their Pink Chaddi Campaign (chaddi = underwear). The campaign, which started as an online peace initiative against moral policing, has snowballed into a national cause for social freedom -- its Facebook avatar is now 30,000-member strong and growing. The idea is for women and men to send pink panties (the color code has been relaxed now) to the Ram Sene chief's office, take photographs of the contribution, upload them and spread the good word around.
Image source: thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com
Thanks to the Internet, several such campaigns -- including one to celebrate Kamasutra Day on March 1-- have sprung up, with men and women, young and older, joining in. But the Pink Chaddi Campaign is the clear winner. It's probably the first online-based campaign in India that has found a life in the real world. And what a life! (Blogs and Twitter are on fire. I have listed some at the end of the post.)
One of the founders of the movement explains the choice of pink panties:
"The symbolism is that we wanted something that was irreverent, a metaphor for thinking lightly. At the other end, we were also poking fun at the khaki chaddis of right-wing organizations that hold very extreme ideas about how things should be.”
It all started rather acrimoniously late last month when a group of Sri Ram Sene men attacked young women and men at a pub in the southern city of Mangalore, alleging such behavior was against "Indian culture" (You can find a piece of my mind at India Crumbs). The incident was, incidentally, shot on camera and broadcast on every channel. The national outrage and debate that followed became a bizarre mix of women's rights, Indian culture, the "misguided" Indian youth, westernization, pubs, obscenity, alcoholism, some arrests and local politics.
Thrilled with the pan-India recognition that the pub attack had got his group (he apologized for the violence but not for the thought behind it), the Sri Ram Sene chief declared his next culture war --- which he promised would be peaceful ---on the alien concept of Valentine's Day: His boys would protest peacefully against this western onslaught, against attires and behavior his group didn't think was Indian enough, and would forcibly marry off couples dating openly.
That must have done it for the ladies from the land of Gandhi, the Kamasutra and the kiss. The Pink Chaddi campaign was born. Now, I have to give credit to a Bollywood blockbuster for gifting modern India with Gandhigiri, the concept of passive aggression that has kicked off so many forms of protests against social injustice. The Pink Chaddi campaign seems to do exactly that: fight the aggression with some love.
The campaign has also responded to another independence-movement style campaign proposed by the Minister of State for Women and Child Development, Renuka Choudhury: the Pub Bharo (fill the pubs) campaign, which her daughter is now promoting on Facebook. The Pink Chaddi campaign blog says:
On Valentine's Day we do a Pub Bharo action. Go to a pub wherever you are. From Kabul to Chennai to Guwahati to Singapore to LA women have signed up. It does not matter if you are actually not a pub-goer or not even much of a drinker. Let us raise a toast (it can be juice) to Indian women. Take a photo or video. We will put it together (more on how later) and send this as well to the Sri Ram Sena.
What happens after Valentine's Day?
After Valentine's Day we should get some of our elected leaders to agree that beating up women is ummm... AGAINST INDIAN CULTURE.
Naturally, the Ram Sene leader was all fired up about this, and said the women were debasing themselves by mailing pink underwear. In return, he said, his group would send out khadi sarees to the girls. This, the campaign accepted with much grace:
“We greatly appreciate this and hope he continues to choose similar, non-violent methods to get his point across, just as we have chosen to be non-violent and loving in response to the brutality of the attacks on lovers and women in Mangalore and other parts of Karnataka. We will gladly
