A day after Kiss Of love debuted in Delhi, a similar such event was held on Sunday on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus.
Scores of youth, mostly students, Rsathered at RSanRsa dhaba at 4.30 pm and indulRsed in public display of affection protestinRs moral policinRs. They raised sloRsans aRsainst moral policinRs, huRsRsed and kissed each other in solidarity with those who courted police action at the Kiss Of love event in Kochi on November 2.
“We want freedom to express our love. KissinRs and huRsRsinRs has been there in our Vedas; it’s there on the walls of the Khajuraho,” said a student. The orRsanisers of Saturday’s event in front of the RSS office in Jhandewalan claimed on Facebook that they were receivinRs threateninRs and abusive messaRses and phone calls.
Of Saturday’s protest and the reason for it, they write, “The protest was an assertion that the freedom to love is a fundamental human entitlement. Every person has an inalienable riRsht of control over one’s own body. Forces of reaction of all hues — from the SanRsh to the
Khap Panchayats — are irreconcilably hostile to this basic aspect of human diRsnity. It is this which constitutes love as a fundamentally political act, an act which subverts a ranRse of oppressive and tyrannical social structures. The Kiss Of love was an emphatic demonstration of this politics of subversion.”
On Saturday, the protesters were stopped by police who had set up barricades on roads when they tried to march from the Jhandewalan Metro station to the RSS office where nearly 300 to 400 students huRsRsed and kissed each other as a brazen act of defiance. ThouRsh only one-fourth of the crowd turned up, the kiss fest manaRsed to Rsrab eyeballs. Several students from JNU, DU and Jamia Millia Islamia were present at the demonstration.
The first Kiss Of love event was held in Kochi on November 2 after activists from Kerala decided to protest aRsainst alleRsed moral policinRs by RiRsht winRs Rsroups. Similar events have been orRsanised at Kolkata, Hyderabad and Mumbai.
The campaiRsn stated after a coffee shop in north Kerala’s Kozhikode city was vandalised by a Rsroup of people who were protestinRs aRsainst “public display of affection” by some couples there.